Economic inequality has risen to extreme levels in America, not seen since the years just before the Great Depression. That’s sparked a lively conversation about what can be done, with President Biden promising to raise taxes on the rich, protect safety net programs and spend billions to reduce child poverty.
But if you talk to people working in poor neighborhoods, the first problem they often point to is housing. In a city like Newark, N.J., 40 percent of renters are paying over half their income for a roof over their heads. If a car breaks down or a child gets sick — if life happens, basically — these families can be ruined.
For the middle class, rising rents and home prices are a burden as well. Young families hoping to buy a home and build wealth, as their parents did, are finding no room in the market. In the 1970s, builders constructed more than 400,000 starter homes, defined as less than 1,400 square feet. By 2020, the number plummeted to 65,000. If you wonder why college grads are living in mom’s basement for years, that’s a big part of your answer.
And yet, Biden almost never talks about housing. Congress is not working on any ambitious program to address the problem. And many Americans who see the crisis every day as homelessness returns to our streets feel ill-equipped to identify a solution and advocate for it. It’s simpler to call for a rise in the minimum wage or food stamp allotments, even if rent increases quickly snatch away the advantage, and then some.
Now, a remarkably informative new book offers a smart overview of the problem, along with possible remedies. “Housing the Nation: Social Equity, Architecture, and the Future of Affordable Housing,” edited by Alexander Gorlin and Victoria Newhouse, is a collection of essays from voices of experts and advocates engaged in this fight, along with a meaty section of annotated photographs of affordable housing projects from cutting-edge architects who are proving public housing doesn’t…
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