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A problem can be solved only if its causes are correctly understood.
Some community-based organizations struggle to find affordable housing, or any housing at all, for low-income residents, while in other communities residents struggle to resist a flood of investment threatening to displace them all. Meanwhile, government policy-makers try one program after another in efforts to overcome what they see as, in some places, blighted neighborhoods with vacant housing, and in other places, a shortage of affordable housing.
Yet the problems persist. Even as one neighborhood is completely rebuilt–some would say, gentrified–other neighborhoods show new signs of disinvestment. Decay previously found only in central cities is increasingly found in the suburbs. Large new subdivisions continue to be built–sometimes in central cities, sometimes in far-out suburbs–and at the slightest hint of an economic slowdown, governments seek new ways to support the construction industry.
Something is wrong. The disease is not being cured but it’s not for lack of trying. This paper provides a detailed summary of the evidence, beginning with affordable housing and bringing in other data as necessary, in order to diagnose the U.S. housing and blight problems.
