Menu
Idea

housing policy

83
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Robert Moses sitting in front of a catelog of blueprints.

The Inadequacy of the Abundance Agenda

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on March 27, 2025
Protestors against eviction.
partner

Covid-19 Has Exposed the Consequences of Decades of Bad Public Housing Policy

A reduction in public housing units left Americans at the mercy of private landlords.
by Gillet Gardner Rosenblith via Made By History on September 8, 2020
President Richard Nixon, HUD Secretary George Romney, and Washington Mayor Walter stand near a pile of rubble

How Federal Housing Programs Failed Black America

Even housing policies that sought to create more Black homeowners were stymied by racism and a determination to shrink the government’s presence.
by Marcia Chatelain via The Nation on August 25, 2020

The Depression-Era Book That Wanted to Cancel the Rent

“Modern Housing,” by Catherine Bauer, argued—as many activists do today—that a decent home should be seen as a public utility and a basic right.
by Nora Caplan-Bricker via The New Yorker on July 18, 2020
Children play basketball in front of boarded-up houses in Baltimore.
Exhibit

Housing Injustice

This exhibit explores the complex legacies of redlining, urban renewal, and financial deregulation to explain the persistence – and costs – of residential segregation today.

Racism After Redlining

In "Race for Profit," Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor walks us through the ways racist housing policy survived the abolition of redlining.
by N. D. B. Connolly via Black Perspectives on April 21, 2020
A rent strike in Harlem, New York City, September 1919.

The Fight for Rent Control

In the early twentieth century, immigrant tenant organizers made rent control laws a reality. Today, working-class New Yorkers still fight for housing justice.
by Daniel Wortel-London via Dissent on June 5, 2019

The Housing Revolution We Need

A decade after the crash of 2008, a growing movement has thrust our prolonged housing crisis to the center of the national agenda.
by Thomas J. Sugrue via Dissent on October 1, 2018

151 Years of America’s Housing History

From the first tenement regulation to work requirements for public-housing residents, these are key moments in housing policy.
via The Nation on May 24, 2018
The Henry Rutgers Houses, a public housing development built and maintained by the New York City Housing Authority.
partner

The False Promise of Homeownership

Instead of boosting the American Dream, policies encouraging homeownership exacerbate inequality.
by Marisa Chappell via Made By History on July 20, 2017
Herbert Hoover breaking ground on a model home in front of a crowd.
partner

Home Sweet Home

On the early years of the real estate industry, and the racist effort to convince white Americans to buy single-family homes.
by Adrienne Brown via HNN on June 20, 2024
A gavel smashing a wooden house.

The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning

America is suffering from a severe housing shortage. A crucial tool may lie in the Constitution.
by Ilya Somin, Joshua Braver via The Atlantic on June 12, 2024
Title card of the cartoon, featuring FDR committing money to a federal housing program.

The Tragedy and Tenacity of Public Housing in America

A cartoon report on the only policy proven to address the housing shortage and how racism, inept management, and disinvestment led to long-term decline.
by Eric Orner via The Nation on March 18, 2024
Painting of a square, white, house surrounded by trees, shrubbery, and a sidewalk.

Chicago Dream Houses

How a mid-century architecture competition reimagined the American home.
by Siobhan Moroney via Belt Magazine on January 29, 2024
Cover and pages of "American Redux" book about housing.

The Rich American Legacy of Shared Housing

A visual journalist remembers a time when "housing was more flexible, fluid and communal than it is today.”
by Ariel Aberg-Riger via CityLab on May 2, 2023
Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol hears from citizens at a board meeting in November. The attendees were demanding more affordable housing in Arlington, Va.
partner

The Battle of the Suburbs is Back. Will It End Differently?

The lessons of the past for suburban affordable housing advocates.
by Lily Geismer via Made By History on April 25, 2023
From left to right, Langston Hughes with Charles S. Johnson; E. Franklin Frazier; Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney.

Why Harlem? Considering the Site of “Civil Rights by Copyright,” 100 Years Later

The confluence of Black modernity, self-determinism, and belongingness of Harlem's housing.
by Bo McMillan via Literary Hub on February 13, 2023
Redlining map from the 1930s

The Tyranny Of The Map: Rethinking Redlining

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?
by Robert Gioielli via The Metropole on November 3, 2022
original

Redlining is Only Part of the Story

An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the long history of housing discrimination.
by Julian Maxwell Hayter on October 5, 2022
A vacant home surrounded by a chain link fence is seen in Los Angeles, February 16, 2010.

Why Obama-Era Economists Are So Mad About Student Debt Relief

It exposes their failed mortgage debt relief policies after the Great Recession.
by David Dayen, Lindsay Owens via The American Prospect on August 31, 2022
Picture of the apartment buildings within Co-op City sit along the banks of the Hutchinson River in the Bronx.
partner

Could Cooperative Housing Solve Today’s Affordability Crisis?

Housing costs are skyrocketing. History offers a path forward.
by Annemarie Sammartino via Made By History on August 24, 2022
Plans for the Baldwin Terrace housing development (Plat Book 22, Page 35, St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds, Clayton, Missouri).

Who Segregated America?

Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.
by Colin Gordon via Dissent on June 29, 2022
An image of a sardine can with a large group of people shoved inside.

The People Who Hate People

Of all the objections NIMBYs raise to new housing and infrastructure, perhaps the most risible is that their community is already too crowded.
by Jerusalem Demsas via The Atlantic on May 24, 2022
A Vietnam veteran greets supporters and press outside District Court in Concord

The Second (and Third) Battle of Lexington

What kind of place was the town I grew up in?
by Bill McKibben via The New Yorker on May 1, 2022
1935 redlining map of the cities of Pawtucket and Central Falls in Rhode Island.

Reporting on Redlining: An Interview with Scott Markley

How can historic data about segregation, redlining, and real estate be more accessible? In this interview, we dive into a new data set derived from HOLC maps.
by Ian Spangler, Scott Markley via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on January 23, 2022
A row of large new suburban houses at sunset.

The Ongoing Toll of Segregation

Sheryll Cashin’s “White Space, Black Hood” shows how economic discrimination combines with racial injustice in America’s housing policy.
by Richard D. Kahlenburg via The New Republic on December 2, 2021
Residential Security map of central Chicago, sourced from "Mapping Inequality"

How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining

The connections between private industry and government were much more fluid than was previously imagined.
by LaDale Winling, Todd Michney via Platform on November 1, 2021
Cori Bush outside the Capitol holding a sign that says "housing is a human right"

Anti-Rent Wars, Then and Now

During the 1840s, landlords tried to drive out tenants in default. The movement that rose to challenge evictions can be a model for today’s housing activists.
by Alissa Quart via New York Review of Books on October 25, 2021
Demonstrators outside the New York City offices of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Aug. 31.
partner

The Supreme Court Ended The Eviction Ban But Not The Fight Against Evictions

Historically, the failures and limitations of federal policy have emboldened activists.
by Maia Silber via Made By History on September 9, 2021
Margaret Watson, 93, touches a section of the Birwood Wall that runs behind her house

Built to Keep Black From White

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.
by Erin Einhorn, Olivia Lewis via NBC News on July 19, 2021
Janet Robinson and Yolanda Grayson King inside Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church

In Virginia, a Historic Black Neighborhood Grapples With Whether to Grow

Some in The Settlement, founded by formerly enslaved people, say development should be allowed to create generational Black wealth while others disagree.
by Antonio Olivo via Washington Post on July 18, 2021
View More
30 of
83

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History