Howard Husock – The Failure of American Public Housing
Description
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Video Links
0:00 Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing
5:58 The failed utopianism of American public housing
12:04 The dispossession of urban African American communities
14:54 Ground News ad
16:40 Did reformers have a reason for demolishing the slums?
22:01 Changing the culture of public housing
30:13 What’s working in public housing
33:35 Trump’s plan for a two-year limit on public housing
35:25 Howard’s criticism of Zohran Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze in NYC
41:13 The causes of homelessness
44:21 The “Move to Opportunity” experiments
48:11 What does it take to ensure that poor neighborhoods are also good neighborhoods
Recorded November 19, 2025
Links and Readings
Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing
Scott Davis’s book, The World of Patience Gromes: Making and Unmaking a Black Community
Le Corbusier’s book, The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be Used as the Basis of Our Machine-Age Civilization
Catherine Bauer’s book, Modern Housing
Herbert Gans’s book, Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans
HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program
Zohran Mamdani’s “freeze the rent” ad
Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
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United States
