Shelter Poverty

by Stone, Michael E.

• ISBN13: 9781566390507
• ISBN10: 1566390508
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-06-01
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome?>p>Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous. Author note: Michael E. Stone is Professor of Community Planning at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
What Is Shelter Poverty?
Human Needs and Housing Affordability	p. 13
The Shelter-Poverty Concept of Affordability	p. 32
Why Does Shelter Poverty Exist and Persist?
The Historical Roots of the Affordability Problem to the Early 1930s	p. 61
The Triumph and Illusions of Housing Policy and the Economy, 1930-1970	p. 91
Economic Crisis, Shelter Poverty, and Housing Programs, 1970 to the Early 1990s	p. 126
The Instability of Housing Production and Finance Since the Late 1960s	p. 163
How Can Shelter Poverty Be Overcome?
Social Ownership	p. 191
Financing and Implementing Social Ownership	p. 218
Housing Reform with a Vision: Ownership and Production	p. 235
Housing Reform with a Vision: Financing and Other Elements	p. 258
Housing Affordability and Social Change	p. 277
Conclusion: Shelter Poverty and the Right to Housing	p. 310
Appendix A. Methods and Issues in Deriving the Shelter-Poverty Affordability Standard	p. 323
Appendix B. Determining the Extent and Distribution of Housing Affordability Problems: Methodological Comments	p. 345
Appendix C. Tables of Shelter Poverty and Conventional Affordability Problems, 1970-1991	p. 351
Notes	p. 361
References	p. 391
Index	p. 417
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