Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability"...the most original--and profoundly disturbing--work on the critical issue of housing affordability...." --Chester Hartman, President, Poverty and Race Research Action Council In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome? Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
II Why Does Shelter Poverty Exist and Persist? | 59 |
III How Can Shelter Poverty Be Overcome? | 189 |
A Methods and Issues in Deriving the ShelterPoverty Affordability Standard | 323 |
Methodological Comments | 345 |
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Common terms and phrases
30 percent affordability problem average banks benefits BLS Lower Budget Boston Boston Globe capital grants Census City Consumer Expenditure Survey coop corporations decade decline dollars economic elderly equity families federal Figure FNMA foreclosure growth Hartman homeless homeownership hous housing affordability housing costs housing finance housing market housing production housing program Housing Trust Fund ideology increase inflation institutions interest rates investment labor landlords Latino lenders LIHIS limited-equity long-term low-income median ment middle-income million moderate-income mortgage debt mortgage payments movement National nearly neighborhoods non-elderly non-profit non-shelter costs non-speculative owners persons Policy political Poverty Level profits progressive housing public housing rent control rental housing residential construction residents shelter poverty shelter-poor households social housing social ownership speculative subsidized housing tenant organizing tenure thrifts tion U.S. Bureau U.S. Congress U.S. Department units Urban URPE Washington World War II York