Table Of ContentTHE AFFORDABLE
HOUSING READER
This second edition of The Affordable Housing Reader provides context for current discussions
surrounding housing policy, emphasizing the values and assumptions underlying debates over strategies
for ameliorating housing problems experienced by low-income residents and communities of color.
The authors highlighted in this updated volume address themes central to housing as an area of social
policy and to understanding its particular meaning in the United States. These include the long history of
racial exclusion and the role that public policy has played in racializing access to decent housing and
well-serviced neighborhoods; the tension between the economic and social goals of housing policy; and
the role that housing plays in various aspects of the lives of low- and moderate-income residents.
Scholarship and the COVID-19 pandemic are raising awareness of the link between access to adequate
housing and other rights and opportunities. This timely reader focuses attention on the results of past
efforts and on the urgency of reframing the conversation.
It is both an exciting time to teach students about the evolution of United States’ housing policy and a
challenging time to discuss what policymakers or practitioners can do to effect positive change. This
reader is aimed at students, professors, researchers, and professionals of housing policy, public policy, and
city planning.
Elizabeth J. Mueller is an associate professor of Community and Regional Planning and Social Work at
the University of Texas at Austin.
J. Rosie Tighe is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies in the Levin College of
Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
The Affordable
Housing Reader
Second Edition
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Edited by
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Elizabeth J. Mueller
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and
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J. Rosie Tighe
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Cover Images: Aerial view of suburban Levittown, Pennsylvania. Circa 1959. Unknown author.
Public domain.
Vacant rowhouses, Shipley Hill, Baltimore. Photograph by Eli Pousson, Feb 17, 2017.
Rent Strike, Austin, Texas. Photograph by Elizabeth Mueller, 2020.
Second edition published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Elizabeth J. Mueller and J. Rosie Tighe; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Elizabeth J. Mueller and J. Rosie Tighe to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2013
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mueller, Elizabeth J., editor. | Tighe, J. Rosie, editor.
Title: The affordable housing reader / edited by Elizabeth J. Mueller and J. Rosie Tighe.
Description: 2nd Edition. | New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. | Revised edition of The affordable
housing reader, 2013. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021059414 (print) | LCCN 2021059415 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367280468
(hardback) | ISBN 9780367280475 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429299377 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Low-income housing‐‐United States. | Housing policy‐‐United
States. | Housing‐‐United States‐‐Costs.
Classification: LCC HD7287.96.U6 A38 2022 (print) | LCC HD7287.96.U6 (ebook) | DDC 363.5/
820973‐‐dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059414
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059415
ISBN: 978-0-367-28046-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-28047-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29937-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429299377
Typeset in Weidemann
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
We dedicate this book to our students.
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Contents
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List of figures xi
Notes on contributors xii
Editors’ introduction to the second edition xxvii
PART 1 CONFLICTING MOTIVATIONS FOR HOUSING POLICY 1
Editor’s introduction 2
1 A citizen’s guide to public housing 6
Catherine Bauer
2 The Housing Act of 1949 16
William L.C. Wheaton
3 The evolution of low-income housing policy, 1949 to 1999 21
Charles J. Orlebeke
4 The Kerner Commission and Housing Policy 41
Stephen Menendian and Richard Rothstein with Nirali Beri
5 Advancing the right to housing in the United States: Using
international law as a foundation 52
International Human Rights Committee of the
New York City Bar Association, 2016
PART 2 DEFINING AND MEASURING HOUSING PROBLEMS 71
Editor’s introduction 72
6 What is housing affordability? The case for the residual
income approach 76
Michael E. Stone
viii CONTENTS
7 How do we know when housing is “affordable”? 92
Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko
8 How affordable is HUD affordable housing? 97
Shima Hamidi, Reid Ewing, and John L. Renne
9 Consequences of segregation for children’s opportunity and wellbeing 113
Nancy McArdle and Dolores Acevedo-Garcia
10 Home is where the harm is: Inadequate housing as a public health crisis 123
Samiya A. Bashir
PART 3 HOUSING TENURES 131
Editor’s introduction 132
11 The grapes of rent: A history of renting in a country of owners 136
Donald A. Krueckeberg
12 The sustainability of low-income homeownership: The incidence of
unexpected costs and needed repairs among low-income homebuyers 146
Shannon Van Zandt and William M. Rohe
13 Old wine in private equity bottles? Resurgence of contract‐for‐deed
home sales in US urban neighborhoods 162
Dan Immergluck
14 Making home more affordable: Community land trusts adopting
cooperative ownership models to expand affordable housing 176
Meaghan M. Ehlenz
PART 4 PROVISION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING 191
Editor’s introduction 192
15 The quadruple bottom line and nonprofit housing organizations
in the United States 196
Rachel G. Bratt
16 American murder mystery revisited: Do housing voucher
households cause crime? 212
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Michael Lens, and Katherine O’Regan
CONTENTS ix
17 From public housing to public–private housing 230
Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark
18 What should be the future of the Low-Income Housing
Tax Credit Program? 251
Kirk McClure
PART 5 THE MEANING OF PLACE 269
Editor’s introduction 270
19 Federal support for CDCs: Some of the history and issues
of community control 273
Stewart E. Perry
20 W(h)ither the community in community land trusts? 281
James DeFilippis, Brian Stromberg, and Olivia R. Williams
21 Community Development Corporations in the right-sizing city:
Remaking the CDC model of urban redevelopment 296
Melissa Heil
22 Planning for empowerment: Upending the traditional approach to
planning for affordable housing in the face of gentrification 310
Kathryn L. Howell
PART 6 PLANNING AND LAND USE 325
Editor’s introduction 326
23 It’s time to end single-family zoning 329
Michael Manville, Paavo Monkkonen, and Michael Lens
24 Democracy in action? NIMBY as impediment to equitable
affordable housing siting 337
Corianne Payton Scally and J. Rosie Tighe
25 Progress for whom, toward what? Progressive politics and
New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing 355
Samuel Stein
26 One size fits none: Local context and planning for the preservation
of affordable housing 367
Kathryn L. Howell, Elizabeth J. Mueller, and Barbara Brown Wilson
