The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It combines a critique of more than a century of housing reform policies, including public and other subsidized housing and 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. The book tells the 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, and it includes 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.
Reviews and Comments
“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. The unreformers, Mr. Husock writes, “understood something fundamental: Community develops when keeping one’s property becomes part of a positive conspiracy of shared self-interest.”
“Politics: When the Lights Go Down in the City” | The Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim, October 29, 2021
Husock’s key argument, contrary to the high-handed reformist narrative, is that poor neighborhoods can be good neighborhoods, but bad policies can sap this potential. He shows how the value of a place is best understood through qualities that meet practical ends, rather than aesthetics or comforts.
“How the Other Half Builds” | National Review, Theo Mackey Pollack, January 23, 2022
“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
“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 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
“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
Book Event Video
Articles and Op-Eds
“The destruction of Detroit’s Black Bottom” | Reason, February 7, 2022
“The West End’s lesson for Mayor Wu” | Boston Globe, January 24, 2022
“The affordable housing formula we’ve forgotten” | Washington Examiner, October 1, 2021
“How progressive housing policy gutted a thriving Black town” | Bridge Detroit, August 17, 2021
“Rock bottom” | City Journal , June 4, 2021
“Bringing back housing diversity” | National Affairs, January 4, 2021
Media Appearances
‘What Happens Next’ Podcast, April 4, 2022
Lambda Alpha International Land Economics Society Event, December 6, 2021
Nevada Policy Research Institute’s ‘Free to Offend’ Podcast, November 17, 2021
Pacific Research Institute’s ‘Next Round’ Podcast, November 4, 2021
C-SPAN’s Q&A with Susan Swain, November 1, 2021
Detroit Public Library Author Series, October 29, 2021
San Francisco YIMBY Neoliberal Event, October 19, 2021
AEI Events Podcast, September 30, 2021
Heartland Institute’s ‘Ill Literacy’ Podcast, September 23, 2021
Myths and Facts
Myth: Only government subsidies can provide housing for the poor.
Fact: Private builders can provide low-cost housing if permitted.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, private developers built millions of “naturally affordable units,” including row houses, bungalows, duplexes, and two- and three-family homes. Even post–World War II developments such as Levittown were affordable for the same basic reason: small homes built on small lots. In the years since, a zoning straitjacket has made such construction impossible.
Myth: Public housing was an improvement over “slums.”
Fact: Public housing and its cousin, urban renewal, replaced healthy communities.
Housing reformers convinced government that public housing would be better than low-cost neighborhoods. Thriving communities of modest means, including African American neighborhoods in northern cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland, were cleared, demolishing large numbers of owner-occupied structures and hundreds of black-owned businesses.
Myth: Public housing could work if only it were better funded.
Fact: Public housing has helped cause the black-white wealth gap.
Public housing by its nature denies residents the chance for ownership — the major means of wealth accumulation in the US. It wiped out homes owned by people of color and replaced them with high-rises specifically reserved for African Americans. It has been a scandal as serious as that of redlining. Originally intended to be maintained with rental income from residents, public housing has itself become an isolated slum, bereft of stores and urban life.
Myth: Zoning out new construction protects suburban communities.
Fact: Exclusionary zoning hurts communities.
By ensuring that only expensive large homes on large lots are built, it makes it impossible for many people to live where they grew up and for many police officers, firefighters, and teachers to live where they serve.
Myth: New residents will cost too much to serve.
Fact: New construction brings in new tax revenue.
Many school systems have available unused classroom space, and new construction of homes brings in new tax revenue that benefits localities. Working from home makes it possible for new residents not to bring more traffic. Remote learning can provide opportunities for specialized learning without hiring new staff.
Myth: Only the federal government can end exclusionary zoning.
Fact: Federal coercion will lead to backlash and paralysis.
It is far better to persuade local planning boards across the country to permit “missing middle” housing to be built. A range of housing types should be our goal, increasing affordability at every income level. This is a far better alternative than costly subsidized housing for a few households. If we believe poor families can’t afford housing, it is better to subsidize income, not housing.
