History has
transformed housing into a public cause, and future housing
policies are in large part prefigured by the policies of the past.
Housing is also an exceedingly long-lived good. The vast majority
of the nation's families in the year 2000 will be living in
dwellings that are standing today, and a substantial minority will
be the beneficiaries of subsidy arrangements legislated years or
even generations ago.
The
retrospective sweep intended in this chapter is panoramic, blurring
an infinity of detail. It fixes on immense successes and large
failures. And it introduces a select list of basic issues and
trends that have determined the housing status not just of the
contemporary poor but of all Americans. Among the salient points
considered are the following:
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— Despite
its special status and a strong government presence, housing
remains predominantly a private good produced, financed, traded,
and consumed in private markets. Resources are allocated and
exchanges transacted in the main through the workings of a price
and profit system.
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— Apart
from other exceptional qualities, housing has proved unusually
vulnerable to a rise in real costs, that is, adjusted to the
Consumer Price Index. That vulnerability stands at the heart of the
most critical housing issue of our era—affordability. The
affordability problem has crept steadily up the income ladder, past
the poor and near-poor and well into the middle class.
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— One
consequence of rising real costs and income-creep is a marked
decrease in the production of new housing units relative to
population and gross national product. That trend, also influenced
by demographic factors, is expected to continue into the
future.
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— A
second consequence is an ever-expanding system of public subsidy.
Government as intervenor to protect public health and safety has
become government as intervenor to expand and redistribute housing
resources.
The linked
problems of affordability and underproduction are rooted in
objective forces. They transcend political parties and political
values, although different administrations have wrestled with them
in different