No, Public Housing Policy Should Not Prioritize Mixed-Income Housing?

No, Public Housing Policy Should Not Prioritize Mixed-Income Housing?

Statement of the Issue/Problem

There are mammoth technical literatures on the particulars of both mixed-income housing programs and housing voucher programs. Virtually all commentators who contributed to these literatures understandably regard both of these strategies to be far superior to continuing to erect 100-percent-subsidized housing projects for poor families(Husock, 2011). But which of the alternative paths of reform—mixed-income projects or housing vouchers—is the route better taken? Or should both be pursued? On those fundamental questions, commentators have offered little guidance. The balance to be struck between housing vouchers and mixed-income projects is a central question of urban policy. The choices made will profoundly influence the future prosperity and social vibrancy of American cities.

Background

In the first half of the twentieth century, the United States, like most other developed nations, began to subsidize rents in housing projects entirely set aside for working-class (or even less prosperous) households. By the 1980s, a broad consensus had emerged that the construction of these projects, traditionally referred to as “public housing,” had been a policy blunder in many settings. Since that time, two primary alternative approaches have been competing for legislative blessing. The first perpetuates the tradition of tying government aid to specific buildings, but reduces the percentage of aided units in a project from 100 percent to a lower figure, perhaps as little as 10 to 25 percent. Proponents of this “mixed-income,” or “inclusionary,” approach hope that it will mitigate the social pathologies that too often arise when children grow up amid the concentrated poverty prevalent in traditional public housing. The second alternative approach calls for the provision of portable vouchers to targeted households to better enable them to rent dwellings from private landlords (Khadduri, ,2010). The voucher ...