America's public housing crisis may worsen with Trump budget

The loss of more than 80 lives in London’s Grenfell Tower fire on June 14 was tragic and wholly preventable.

It is no coincidence, though, that it happened in subsidized low-income housing.

As someone who has spent 25 years researching and writing about the travails of public housing in the U.S., I had this immediate thought: Could the same thing happen here?

Various commentators have pointed out that American regulations require sprinklers and do not permit the use of cladding materials with combustible plastic cores in high-rise structures.

Yet while the facades of American public housing may be less flammable, the system suffers from a toxic convergence of long-deferred maintenance, squeezed budgets and cost-cutting measures. Privatization policies, deeply rooted suspicions about the character of public housing residents and long-term inattention all threaten the capacity of stigmatized low-income families to remain in their homes.

Sometimes, destruction happens quite slowly. The American supply of what is conventionally called public housing – heavily subsidized housing for low-income households owned and operated by the government – peaked in the early 1990s at about 1.4 million apartments. Since then, approximately 20 percent of it has been demolished. Over the last 50 years, the federal government has introduced many other new forms of public-private subsidized housing programs.

Even so, the total supply serving those with the lowest incomes has declined. Moreover, much of the housing that remains requires funds to repair or replace aging buildings and failing infrastructure. While supply declines, demonstrated need continues to increase.
READ MORE