Keywords
resilient cities, Housing Trust, public infrastructure, public housing, projects, St. Louis, New York City
Abstract
In the 1970’s, cities across the United States faced new obstacles due to the deterioration of public infrastructure. Public housing projects that were built through federal housing initiatives were reaching the end of their lives after less than twenty years of being in service. Over the last forty years, cities in the United States have turned increasingly to housing trust funds to address the conjoined problems of the withdrawal of federal resources dedicated to affordable housing provision, and insufficient public housing infrastructure. In this Article we focus on the emergence of the Housing Trust as a vehicle for shoring up political and economic resilience at the local scale, in a context of federal financial retrenchment and a political tide that had turned away from state-led housing provision. Housing Trusts are legislatively engineered funds that earmarked and protected resources dedicated to various forms of affordable housing delivery. They emerged in the 1970’s as a vehicle to redirect city funds into affordable housing projects through dedicated revenue streams. Campaigns through the 1980’s made the housing trust fund a go-to vehicle for local governments needing to address the affordable housing gap.
Recommended Citation
Marc L. Roark & Lorna F. O'Mahony,
Resilient Cities and the Housing Trust,
76 Ark. L. Rev.
(2024).
https://doi.org/10.54119/alr.bdfq4897
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol76/iss4/4