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Social Housing Emerging in Cities need Local Govt Support
Seattle is the most recent city to see a populist movement get behind social housing.
Six cities and a county have initiated social housing programs to provide permanently affordable, publicly owned, and controlled housing for lower and middle-income working families.
Seattle, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Montgomery County, MD, are the most prominent ones in North America to have passed social housing laws that are being implemented or are in development. All five U.S. cities started their programs in the last four years.
Local Progress, a national network of progressive municipal officials, has released a detailed report on the status of social housing programs in these cities and Montgomery County, not including Toronto.
Some city governments are reluctant to promote social housing because they have limited revenues and little or no surplus to fund it. However, North America’s oldest and most successful entities building mixed-income affordable housing, Montgomery’s Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), have survived. They are even able to expand because of supportive local governments.
