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The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It
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About The Poor Side Of Town: And Why We Need It
Product Description This book combines a critique of more than a century of housing reform policies, including public and other subsidized housing as well as exclusionary zoning, with the idea that simple low-cost housing―a poor side of town―helps those of modest means build financial assets and join in the local democratic process. It is more of a historical narrative than a straight policy book, however―telling stories of Jacob Riis, zoning reformer Lawrence Veiller, anti-reformer Jane Jacobs, housing developer William Levitt, and African American small homes advocate Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood, as well as first-person accounts of onetime residents of neighborhoods such as Detroit’s Black Bottom who lost their homes and businesses to housing reform and urban renewal. This is a book with important policy implications―built on powerful, personal stories. Review “Howard Husock has written a masterful history of America’s mistaken quest to destroy housing that actually worked for poorer urbanites. That history is the backdrop behind the gentrification crisis today. Husock’s book is must reading for anyone trying to understand how America’s cities stopped being places of affordable opportunity.”—Edward Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University and author of Triumph of the City "The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It masterfully reveals the damage done to America’s housing patterns by the always dangerous human impulse to socially engineer. Against this, Husock offers ‘unreform’ as a new way ahead. Here, housing patterns would be formed by people naturally living their lives, rather than by those who would idealistically ‘sculpt’ cities. What is bracing and inspiring about this book is its abiding faith that human beings, unburdened by self-conscious schemes of the good—‘unreformed’ people—will lead naturally to the best housing for the most people.”—Shelby Steele, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of Shame and The Content of Our Character“Husock skewers the professional housers who pursue the expensive dream of building government-subsidized housing projects. Substantial deregulation of housing supply, as Husock shows, is the far less costly way to proceed.”—Robert C. Ellickson, Walter E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School“The spirit of the great Jane Jacobs runs through Howard Husock’s surprising, sharply detailed The Poor Side of Town. Low-income neighborhoods with inexpensive housing have often been springboards of opportunity in American history, Husock shows—not the desperate prisons of city planner caricature. This is a marvelous book, expressing a living urbanism.”—Brian C. Anderson, editor of City Journal“Howard Husock has written a critically important book. His emphasis on ‘urban ecosystems’ makes the case long associated with the late Jane Jacobs, that organic neighborhoods—even notionally poor ones—can be places of true diversity, in ethnicity, class, housing types. At a time when progressive planners have embraced again on public housing and enforced density, Husock offers both a stinging critique and a hopeful way out if we see that, under the right conditions, even poor neighborhoods can serve as springboards for upward mobility.”—Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow at Chapman University and author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism "The Poor Side of Town is a sensitive work of history and analysis chronicling a century-long debate between reformers—public housing gurus, champions of zoning laws—and the 'unreformers' who favored incremental improvements but defended the virtues of low-cost construction and property ownership."—Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal About the Author Howard Husock is an Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute as well as a Contributing Editor to City Journal. From 2006-2019 he served as Vice-President, Research and Publications at the Manhattan Institute; from 1987-2006 he was the Director,
