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Howard Husock – The Failure of American Public Housing

Howard Husock – The Failure of American Public Housing

The Glenn Show

November 21, 202551m 55s

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Show Notes

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Video Links

0:00 Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing

5:58 The failed utopianism of American public housing

12:04 The dispossession of urban African American communities

14:54 Ground News ad

16:40 Did reformers have a reason for demolishing the slums?

22:01 Changing the culture of public housing

30:13 What’s working in public housing

33:35 Trump’s plan for a two-year limit on public housing

35:25 Howard’s criticism of Zohran Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze in NYC

41:13 The causes of homelessness

44:21 The “Move to Opportunity” experiments

48:11 What does it take to ensure that poor neighborhoods are also good neighborhoods

Recorded November 19, 2025

Links and Readings

Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing

Scott Davis’s book, The World of Patience Gromes: Making and Unmaking a Black Community

Le Corbusier’s book, The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be Used as the Basis of Our Machine-Age Civilization

Catherine Bauer’s book, Modern Housing

Herbert Gans’s book, Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans

HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program

Zohran Mamdani’s “freeze the rent” ad

Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

UCSF’s homelessness study



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