The American Housing Question: Racism, Urban Citizenship, and the Privilege of Mobility

Description

The American Housing Question reframes the question of affordable housing through the concepts of urban citizenship and racism. Randolph Hohle argues that when we consider who benefits from affordable housing, we end up with a complex story of inclusion and exclusion and of privilege and mobility centered around race and social class. Historically, affordable housing’s underlying logic was to create the conditions for white people to exercise the privilege of mobility. Affordable housing policy was first and foremost about granting white people the ability to live in racially-segregated neighborhoods within and across urban areas. When the beneficiaries of affordable housing policy were predominately white, the state proceeded with a comprehensive and multifaceted plan to supply housing, including public housing, subsidizing the construction of market rate housing, rental vouchers, and rent control. The white response to the Civil Rights era – the precursor to neoliberal urban policy – privatized public housing, switched the responsibility to provide affordable housing to the market, and created the conditions for the financialization of housing in the twenty-first century that have made housing unaffordable for everyone. As the author aptly demonstrates, solving America’s housing question means addressing both racism and revaluing the notion of the public. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction A Post-Disciplinary Approach to America’s Housing Question Housing Fields: Regulations, Elites, and Urban Social Movements Racial Languages and the Domain of Affordable Housing Methodology Organization of the Book Chapter 2: Urban Citizenship, the Privilege of Mobility, and the Affordable Housing Debates Urban Citizenship The Privilege of Mobility and the Affordable Housing Debates Conclusion Chapter 3: Making Housing Affordable If You Build It, They Will Go: Supply Side Affordable Housing Public Housing and the White Privilege to Not Live in Slums Rent Control and the Right to Stay Conclusion Note Chapter 4: The Undoing: Affordable Housing in the Neoliberal Era Citizenship, Housing, and the Civil Rights Movement White-Private Spaces: Disinvestment, Flight, and Resettlement White-Private Vouchers and Black-Public Housing Deregulating Rent Regulations: From Rent Control to Rent Stabilization Conclusion Note Chapter 5: America’s Housing Question in the Twenty-First Century From Crisis to Response to the Response to the Crisis: The Role of Race, Finance, and Globalization on Twenty-First-Century Housing Urban Social Movements and the Affordable Housing Solutions Toward a Solution to the American Housing Question Introduction Reclaiming the Value of Public Note Index