The Projects

About the Book

How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help – and how to fix it

As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In The Projects, Howard A. Husock explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group of New York City philanthropists, politicians, and business magnates who first championed public housing as a solution to urban blight. From First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the controversial city planner Robert Moses, many well-known historical figures made a convincing case for affordable housing in America.

Despite the movement's lofty ideals, the creation of the Projects led to the destruction of low-income communities across the country. From the Hill District in Pittsburgh to Black Bottom in Detroit, predominantly Black neighborhoods were judged only by the quality of their housing. Husock looks beyond these neighborhoods' physical conditions to their uncounted riches, from local artists like August Wilson to vital community institutions. As he shares residents' stories, he honors what they crafted through their own plans, rather than those of city planners.

Husock traces the history of public housing to contemporary debates on the government's role in the housing market. Through interviews with residents, he reveals how public housing transformed the lives of Americans and the physical faces of cities and towns. He ultimately critiques "repair and reform" efforts, making policy recommendations that address the core failings of public housing for the people it was once designed to help. Mapping out a better path for policy-makers, he lays a new foundation for upward mobility in America.

About the Author :
Howard A. Husock is Senior Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of many books, including America's Trillion-Dollar Housing Policy Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy, The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It, Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms, and Philanthropy Under Fire. Husock has received many awards for his work as a documentary film producer, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, a National News and Documentary Emmy Award, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and many other leading publications.

Review :
"The history of public housing amounts to a history of social engineers trying to unsort people who have sorted themselves a certain way for various reasons. The irony is that failing to understand those reasons has needlessly disrupted the advancement of millions of low-income people in the name of helping them." - Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal

"Howard Husock has written a sweeping and fascinating chronicle of public housing America. This is mostly a cautionary tale of housing projects born in modernist hubris, and destroyed in a storm of exploding concrete. Yet there are also examples that bring more hope, especially when public actors respect incentives and social connections that are far more important than bricks and mortar. As a public housing critic, Husock is a worthy successor of the great Jane Jacobs." - Edward Glaeser, Professor Economics at Harvard University and co-author of Survival of the City: The Future of Urban Life in an Age of Isolation

"Following in the footsteps of legendary housing-activist Jane Jacobs and Senator Patrick Moynihan, Husock brings the wisdom of the historian, the humanity of the sociologist and the journalist's knack for deep reporting to the vexing story of public housing in America. Intellectually honest and refreshingly non-ideological, The Projects delivers fresh insight and original thinking." - Steven Pearlstein, Pulitzer prize-winning columnist, Washington Post and author of Moral Capitalism: Why Fairness Won't Make Us Poor

"In The Projects, Husock tells the story of the evolution of U.S. public housing over the past nine decades. Particularly refreshing is his understanding of the defining housing exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in the nineteen-thirties which envisioned public housing as safe, sanitary, and possibly utopian, benefitting lower middle and low-income people. Husock argues that these visionaries ignored demolitions, widespread resident displacement, and residents' existing relationships in these communities, limiting the advancement of minorities. This alternative history provides much food for thought." - Katrin B. Anacker, Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of Housing in the United States: The Basics

"Public housing began as the dream of progressive elites ignorant of the neighborhoods they sought to replace and of the complex realities of housing markets and character formation. In a supreme irony, the demolition of existing neighborhoods that preceded the creation of public housing was followed by the demolition of the projects themselves. Richly researched and lucidly written, The Projects is a compelling case study in hubris whose lessons are urgently needed." - Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow of the Manhattan Institute and the New York Times best-selling author of The War on Cops