PREFACE
The importance
of decent, safe, affordable housing to the stability of families
and communities is unchallenged. Whether the community is urban or
rural, housing means more than bricks and mortar, more than
physical shelter with heat and plumbing, to the people who occupy
it. It is a home, and as such is a fundamental reflection of
personal identity and dignity. It is also the beginning of
community. Indeed, in the hierarchy of human needs, shelter ranks
near the top.
Today, housing
problems have become so acute that our concern is no longer
directed solely to the ill-housed. Increasingly, the realities of
housing need are visible in the homeless—families and
individuals who cannot find shelter of any sort.
Throughout the
United States, the growing incidence of homelessness has pushed the
issue of affordable housing to the forefront of public attention.
In January 1989 the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that
requests for emergency shelter had increased by 13 percent over the
previous year, with no abatement expected in the near term. This
clear human need is all the more troubling because it has arisen
since 1983, a period when the United States has enjoyed one of the
longest periods of economic recovery since World War II.
Three trends
seem to have contributed to the problem of housing affordability
over the past fifteen years:
-
—
low-income families lost real income at an unprecedented
rate;
-
— housing
prices for the poor escalated faster than for any other
group;
-
— federal
support for new subsidized housing was substantially
reduced.
This paper
describes the evolution of these issues and the Foundation's
response to them. We hope that its publication will contribute to
further discussion of national, state, and local housing policy and
of public and private efforts to resolve the housing crisis.
Many
individuals contributed to the creation of this paper. The first
chapter, which places the Ford Foundation's strategy in historical
context, was written by Louis Winnick, former deputy vice president
of the Ford