Abstract

Communities, Not Carpetbaggers

As details of the scandal at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development steadily seep out, some in the Government and in the U.S. Congress have begun to suggest that a solution to the problem of influence peddling and corruption may lie in the further dismemberment of Federal housing programs for the poor. Warped, as this suggestion is at a time of phenomenal shortage in affordable housing, it does raise the right question, for the scandal. If the United States is to carry out its long-standing promise to house its citizens, it should take a lesson from Canada and other industrial nations, such as Sweden, Holland and France, whose record in directing public funds to nonprofit developers for low- and moderate-income housing presents a vivid and successful contrast to that of the for-profit U.S. model. The government must not only allocate more money to build affordable housing, it must also insure that the money is well spent. Many other industrial nations have responded to this challenge by channeling funds to non-profit, community-based developers.