Rebuilding a Dream: America's New Urban Crisis, the Housing Cost Explosion, and How We Can Reinvent the American Dream for All

"Rebuilding a Dream" takes a refreshingly positive view of a difficult and seemingly intractable problem that affects millions of Americans: The increasing scarcity of housing we can afford. This hard-hitting book explains why media reports that America's housing crisis has ended are wildly misleading. Many people - especially lower-income groups but also the middle class - face an ever-increasing gap between what they can afford to pay for a home or apartment and what it costs to obtain one. This books explains why this gap will get steadily worse unless our elected officials stop working against housing affordability and start supporting it. It explains how the foreclosure crisis continues to have a devastating impact on minority communities, spawning a new wave of urban (and increasingly suburban) decay. It shows how the housing problems of lower income groups tie directly to the growth of income inequality and the resurgence of racial and economic segregation, hurting our economic and social stability. But "Rebuilding a Dream" also delivers the good news that all these problems can be solved. It explains how the dream of homeownership and the upward mobility it brings can be restored - and how we can resume progress toward Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of equal opportunity in housing. The book reports on the progress that has been made since the tumultuous days 50 years ago, when dozens of cities exploded in violent riots and Congress enacted a wide array of government housing and community development programs. This book shows that many of the programs enacted back then and in subsequent years have succeeded in transforming neighborhoods and improving millions of lives. Great innovations in community development are underway, including plans to better link housing and transportation to provide for greater environmental as well as economic sustainability. The book describes how veterans, homeless families and lonely elders have had their lives transformed, and even saved, by government housing programs (contrary to a concerted right-wing campaign to paint all such programs as failures.) But, while these programs are more important than ever, they are also under a full-scale political attack. Advocates of budget austerity (and extremists with an "us vs. them" agenda) have forced deep cuts in spending for housing and urban programs, including elimination of housing construction for poor elders, among other things. With more cuts threatened under the new Republican-controlled Congress, the book warns, much of the progress of the last 50 years is being lost each year. "Rebuilding a Dream" calls for a new political consensus to reinvest in those programs and reverse the recent budget cuts and program eliminations. It calls for a new resolve to address the shameful reality that there are over 1.6 million children who are homeless in America, and many more whose families are barely able to pay their rent. Finally, the book explains how regular citizens can get involved and join the effort to get housing markets back in the business of provide affordable options and making sure governments have good, proactive housing policies.