I watched a video of an excellent lecture called, “The Death of Public Housing” given by Professor Edward Getz given at the University of Washington School of Urban Studies in Tacoma. Professor Goetz is highly critical of the move away from publically built, owned, and operated housing in the United States.

In his new book, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice and Public Housing, Prof. Edward Goetz tells the story of the dismantling of the public housing program over the past 20 years. Nascent patterns of disinvestment in public housing during the 1980s gave way to a full scale policy shift in the 1990s toward demolition of public housing in favor of subsidized units in mixed-income communities and the use of tenant-based vouchers. These policies, most fully articulated in the HOPE VI program begun in 1992, were justified by claims that they would improve the social and economic conditions of public housing residents while simultaneously revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods. Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and more than 250,000 units of public housing have been demolished or sold off.

I agree with Goetz on some points, especially the idea that the concept of scattering residents of public housing doesn’t necessarily lead to a good outcome. Rather than preserve the concept of subsidized housing being entirely in the public realm, the Federal government has undertaken an effort to get out of the housing business. They’ve done that by privatizing subsidized housing through tax credit programs, vouchers, and mixed income redevelopment of Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) projects like High Point using Hope VI funding.

But what’s wrong with the City or SHA using publically owned land to create lots of subsidized housing? Nothing! It’s a great idea! The problem comes from resistance by City staff to giving up City owned land and using the City’s borrowing authority.  Also, there is a bizarre argument that says two totally opposite things: Seattle’s subsidized housing is all concentrated in the south end of the city, but we also don’t want to gentrify neighborhoods like the Rainier Valley with new development. In other words, poor people are all concentrated and that’s bad but mixing different levels of income is a bad too.

The argument that lots of poor people living in the same place is bad drives the move to end public housing described by Goetz. Then, those same people argue that new people of higher incomes moving to the Rainier Valley is bad too.  The truth is that subsidized housing is everywhere in Seattle, in every quarter of the city. And that’s a good thing.

But Goetz’s point, that government can and should have a role in solving housing makes sense. Well managed public housing on publically owned land using public financing is something we need as part of the solution. Unfortunately, this idea didn’t make it into the recommendations of the Housing Affordabilty and Livabilty Agenda (HALA) Committee. And the Council voted down Councilmember Sawant’s efforts to get an outside consultant to study the idea. It’s an idea that’s legal, possible, and could generate lots of housing options, something that can’t be said about the Grand Bargain. It’s not too late to give this another look.