In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse

    Housing has gone from a place where people live, to a commodity traded by absentee investors, often with the collusion of local governments. Even without reading this book I can understand the point of the authors, because I’ve seen firsthand how a house can change owner four times in a month. One of their arguments in the book is that the local councilmen or aldermen can be enticed into joining the scheme, sometimes using public money. In a cash-strapped state, the governor can throw eminent domain at a homeowner, and force the demolition of beautiful old houses, replacing them with a pharmaceuticals factory. The owner gets a payout, no matter how much money they get, it can never account for the fact that she’s lived there for 30 years. As for whatever the developer intends to build on the site, it may never get built, leaving behind an empty lot.

    Another argument of the authors Madden and Marcuse is that the government’s regulation and backing of mortgages may be part of the problem. Bank racism and redlining have persisted for years, even after civil rights legislation, even in federally-guaranteed loans. They pushed Chicago’s black residents further and further south, kept them from getting loans to fix the houses in their neighborhoods, and left perfectly good houses to rot for lack of repair funds. The result was Chicago’s violent, decrepit, drug-infested housing projects.

    In the chapter Oppression and Liberation in Housing the authors show us how urban renewal can be used to control the populace. They start with Baron Haussman, who rebuilt Paris by tearing down whole blocks and replaced narrow, medieval streets with boulevards, plazas, and stricter building codes. They also show how, after years of rebellions, the government wanted the streets to be designed so they couldn’t be barricaded. However, I don’t see this as a bad thing, because the anti-barricading plan also made it easier for firefighters to get close to the building.  As for urban renewal elsewhere, like New York City, it can keep business in the community. Lincoln Center is one example; it was built on the site of a crumbling neighborhood, full of buildings that were emptying rapidly. The project came just in time, replacing a fire-trap neighborhood with a useful, attractive concert venue. If the city had waited ten years, the financial crisis would’ve prevented it from being built.

    One of my problems with this book is that gerrymandering, redlining, and blockbusting are discussed in vague terms or are left out. This is a major problem in housing, because a massive housing project, like the Robert Taylor houses in Chicago, can jam the votes of the poor into one district. It was a problem not only in Chicago but also in Northern Ireland, South Boston, Paris, and Israel. The authors don’t give much attention to success stories, like the Mitchell-Lama program in New York City, or homesteading.

    The origin of the housing projects may have been to provide good housing and prevent crime, but it had adverse effects. It kept Catholic in Belfast from having any voting power, kept Chicago’s black population out of the way, and kept low-class Irish in the lousy parts of Boston. Today it keeps Africans in Paris’ least desired areas, keeps Ethiopian and Yemeni Israelis in out-of-the-way places, and things in Chicago haven’t changed.

    Perhaps it had a lot to do with the Fabian Society’s idea of housing? It’s possible that the wealthy elite, no matter how liberal they were, didn’t want the poor to enter their territory? Conservative elements desired the same thing, but didn’t want the serving classes to live so far away that they couldn’t get to work. Building contractors could smell opportunity; they’d build the projects with the cheapest materials they could, and turn huge profits. Politicians on both sides saw the chance to create jobs and get in good graces with construction unions. They all patted each other on the back, and the projects were born.

    They would soon fall apart, and the governments that built them had no interest in maintaining them.