[ What is social housing? The simple answer is that it is a
systemic approach to providing homes that treat housing not as a
commodity, but as a human right. But to make it more than just a
slogan, you need policies and institutions to make that right]
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SOCIAL HOUSING: HOW A NEW GENERATION OF ACTIVISTS ARE REINVENTING
HOUSING  
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H. Jacob Carlson and Gianpaolo Baiocchi
June 6, 2023
Nonprofit Quarterly
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_ What is social housing? The simple answer is that it is a systemic
approach to providing homes that treat housing not as a commodity, but
as a human right. But to make it more than just a slogan, you need
policies and institutions to make that right _

, RDNE Stock project on pexels.com

 

Not so long ago, social housing was rarely discussed in the United
States. But today there are over a dozen social housing campaigns
across the country: from municipal efforts in Los Angeles
[[link removed]], Washington DC
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Seattle
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Kansas City
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and San Francisco
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to statewide campaigns in California
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New York
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Rhode Island
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mention a few. Some are grassroots campaigns; others are led by
elected officials. Each seeks a unique path to meet the needs of their
own localized version of the broader housing crisis. 

Many reports, too, have called for social housing, including Right To
the City
[[link removed]]_,
_People’s Policy Project
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_People’s Action
[[link removed]],_
_Community Service Society
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the Center for Popular Democracy
[[link removed]]._ _Some point
to large-scale, government-run rental housing, while others also
explicitly include housing cooperatives
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and community land trusts.
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And among the most original proposals make an ecological case for
social housing as a core part of a Green New Deal
[[link removed]].   

It makes sense that social housing is gaining popularity today. In the
fallout of the pandemic, it looked for a moment as if US housing
policy was about to fundamentally change
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But in the end, governments dragged their feet and promised change
stayed on the drawing board. But that hasn’t stopped movements from
pushing. So, might a profound shift to social housing yet be on the
horizon?

VIENNA AND THE BIRTH OF SOCIAL HOUSING

The staff and residents of Karl Marx-Hof
[[link removed]], the famous public
housing complex in Vienna, have seen an uptick in international
visitors. The “people’s palace” houses 3,000 residents in 1,300
comfortable apartments, all in a pleasant and well-maintained complex
that includes a large courtyard and ample common facilities. 

When it opened in 1930, it was the largest residential housing project
in Europe. Today a city streetcar line makes four different stops
along the iconic kilometer-long façade. At the age of 93, it has a
storied past but is also a powerful exemplar of Vienna’s ongoing
commitment to housing. Visitors from the US cannot help but be shocked
at the contrast with public housing
[[link removed]] at home, as
Karl Marx-Hof seems to suffer from none of the problems of
underfunding and poor quality that plague its US counterparts. 

And while Karl Marx-Hof is a mandatory stop, what is actually more
interesting is the broader system of social housing it exemplifies,
which includes public housing, limited equity cooperatives, public
developers, inclusive urban and environmental planning, excellent
public transit, and extensive regulation and taxation of the private
market. Nearly two-thirds of the city’s housing stock is considered
social housing. 

Local housing authorities expect the flow of visitors to increase this
year as the city celebrates 100 years of social housing. In 2022,
delegations from California
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Hawaii
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New York
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visited the housing complexes, and now, for a second year in a row,
there will be a course
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Global Policy Leadership Academy for elected officials and
philanthropists interested in learning about the city’s success. 

Attention to Vienna’s housing is not new, but interest from the
United States is. Not since the founding of public housing in the US,
when Vienna was also the standard housing expert tour itinerary, has
social housing been so prominently part of US public discussion. 

A LOOMING HOUSING CRISIS

Why is social housing gaining US adherents? The reasons are not hard
to discern. Evictions are up, while year-over-year rent growth
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for new leases of single-family rentals peaked at 16.7 percent in July
2021, and has remained in double digits since then. A leading driver
of inflation, rent growth
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had a singular effect on rising prices.

Meanwhile, housing prices rose so fast in 2021 that, on paper at
least, people could earn more from their home than from work
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As many would-be homeowners were priced out
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investors have swept in. At the end of 2021, investors bought 26
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percent of single-family homes on the market, driven by the promise of
higher rental incomes. 

These problems stem from the contradictory demands for real estate as
a commodity and housing as a social good
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housing activists around the country, the appeal of social housing is
its promise to “decommodify” housing—that is, to shield housing
costs and access from the private market. 

But 1920s Vienna is not 2023 United States. Vienna’s social housing
was created when the city’s hegemonic Social Democratic Party
decided to discipline a weak real estate sector and build up a robust
local welfare state. The broader development of welfare states in
Europe was also in a period when a post-war housing boom, a powerful
administrative apparatus, and an organized working class made public
inroads into the market possible.

In contrast, neoliberalism, marked by its favoring of private sector
over direct government provision, has reduced the financial and
administrative capacities of US federal, state, and local housing
agencies. After pulling back from providing for the direct ownership
and management of public housing, US affordable housing policy is now
handled almost entirely through subsidies to the private market via
tax credits and rental assistance. 

Even in Europe, in recent years investment in social housing has been
on the decline
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much as a third of the original social housing has been privatized due
to neoliberal pressures there. Legislative change is difficult, since
the real estate industry has largely captured the state at all levels
of government, creating what urban planner Samuel Stein calls “the
real estate state
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policy advocates in the US and beyond must contend with the task of
growing a robust social housing system in the infertile soil of
neoliberalism.

ADVANCING A SOCIAL HOUSING VISION IN AMERICA

What is emerging today in US social housing campaigns is a mosaic of
different variations of decommodified housing. Despite the debates on
how to define it, for these campaigns social housing has three
qualities: it’s nonspeculative, it’s democratically run, and
it’s publicly backed. _Nonspeculative_ means that the price of
shelter and access to it are not determined by the market.
_Democratically run_ means that residents have meaningful say over
their living conditions. _Publicly backed_ means that housing has
governmental resources, and institutions are ready to support a social
housing sector. These qualities distinguish social housing from
market-oriented programs like housing vouchers or the Low-Income
Housing Tax Credit. 

Today’s proposals are building on models and lessons from previous
eras of social housing. In an era that we call Social Housing 1.0,
governments felt that they could build big projects, and thus created
and managed large-scale, nonmarket housing. This includes the
well-planned and universalist government housing of many places in
Europe, as well as the marginal public housing system in the US that
only served the poor. These were almost exclusively rental properties.

But as neoliberalism eroded the capacity and willingness of
governments to build housing, communities had to roll up their sleeves
and do it themselves. In response to the market-based system’s
failure to develop adequate affordable housing, we have seen the rise
of cooperatives, nonprofit housing corporations, community land
trusts, and tenant syndicates—in other words, housing provisions
outside of the government.

Today’s campaigns are drawing on a mix of institutional designs and
transitionary policies of the prior eras to deal with the unique
conditions of the US. The result is what we might call Social Housing
2.0, a kind of “institutional bootstrapping” where all the tools
are potentially on the table. This means campaigns are pushing for a
mix of public and community ownership, and that they are grappling
with the challenges of where to get the money.

Creating a system where housing is a right is treacherous.
Neoliberalism put millions into deep poverty and simultaneously
atrophied the kind of public sector needed to pull them out. Thus, an
“ideal” social housing policy may have to be preceded by something
that could actually be created in the world of today. But too many
concessions risks creating a warmed-over version of the market-based
affordable housing policies that are currently in place.

Social housing will have to contend with many dilemmas and
contradictions, for which the best resolutions are not clear and
likely not applicable to every local context. Dealing with these is
not necessarily an either/or. In fact, solutions will often lie
somewhere in between. In particular, in structuring social housing
policy it is important to address the following tensions:

* TARGETED VERSUS UNIVERSALIST: A targeted housing policy focuses on
those most in need. The existing housing system has left hundreds of
thousands
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homeless, and millions more giving
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over half of their income to their landlords, only to (often) live in
substandard housing. Traditionally, US housing policy has focused on
the neediest, yet even that approach has failed miserably.

By contrast, a universalist social housing policy provides benefits to
broad swaths of the population. Universal programs cost more money but
typically attract far broader political support. This is one reason
why Social Security has proven more sustainable than US public
housing. A universalist program also doesn’t require means testing,
which is both bureaucratically costly and often degrading to
beneficiaries.

* COMMUNITY-OWNED VERSUS GOVERNMENT-OWNED: Community-owned housing is
decentralized and decisions about what to do with a property are made
by residents. These models often involve cooperatives or
mission-driven nonprofits—and can involve a mix of resident-owned
and rental housing. Community-owned housing also has a history of more
democratic and engaged management
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Government-owned housing means that governments hold all property
rights to the housing. It is therefore entirely rental housing. It is
much easier to grow and manage government-owned housing at a large
scale, since it has greater financial and administrative capacity than
small-scale community-owned housing, though resident engagement,
especially in the US
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has been mostly symbolic rather than empowering.  

* REVENUE-INDEPENDENT VERSUS SUBSIDIZED: Where does the money come
from to create social housing and to keep it running?
Revenue-independent social housing is financially sustainable on its
own. For construction, it may rely on traditional private sources of
startup capital, such as loans, government bonds, or funds from the
residents themselves. For ongoing costs, these types of housing often
“cross-subsidize” the lower-income rents with higher rents from
moderate-income renters. The pool of potentially available private
capital has fewer political obstacles than relying on public
appropriations. But private capital introduces the pressure to
generate surpluses to pay back lenders.In contrast, for subsidized
models, the government makes up the difference in lower revenue that
results from housing low-income tenants. This may come in the form of
initial construction subsidies, or with subsidies for ongoing
operations costs. Subsidies reduce the pressure for the housing to
“break even” and for deeper affordability for those who need it.

How can social housing advocates proceed? Given the challenges of
making federal policy gains, at least initially social housing
policies are more likely to gain traction at the state and local
levels. That means that policies will need to be tailored to local
contexts, especially given budgetary challenges. Therefore, the
question may be not whether, for example, to depend fully on private
funding or to exclude it altogether, but rather how much market
influence to allow, while still ensuring that the housing is
nonspeculative, democratically run, and publicly backed.

We have already seen early local legislation that is navigating these
tradeoffs. In February 2023, Seattle’s I-135 ballot initiative
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created a municipal Social Housing Developer
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The agency will create housing that will be entirely owned by the
city, not by nonprofits or cooperatives. People making up to 120
percent of area median income will be eligible for the housing, thus
giving it a broader constituency. The agency relies entirely on bond
capital for its work, which will require it to generate a surplus from
the housing to pay back investors.

In November 2022, Los Angeles voters approved the affordable housing
ballot initiative Measure ULA with a yes vote of over 57 percent
[[link removed](November_2022)],
establishing a transfer tax on properties
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that sell for over $5 million. Seventy percent of proceeds will go to
affordable housing and 30 percent will go to various homelessness
prevention services. Of the affordable housing dollars, up to 22.5
percent
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can be used for “alternative models for permanent affordable
housing,” which includes public housing, limited equity
cooperatives, and community land trusts. The housing is mostly
targeted
[[link removed](November_2022)]
to those making less than 80 percent of area median income—with at
least 20 percent of the units reserved for those making less than 30
percent of area median income—while up to 20 percent of the units
may be market rate. The revenues from the transfer tax create the
ability to provide an ongoing subsidy to low-income renters;
therefore, rents do not need to cover all costs.

Like all local social housing advocates, organizers in Seattle and Los
Angeles had to make choices on what to prioritize, given local
conditions and politics. There is no clear “right” answer, since
all the decisions invoke the tradeoffs discussed above.    

BUILDING SOCIAL HOUSING FOR THE LONG HAUL

A single cooperative, community land trust, or public housing project
on its own is not social housing. Real social housing is a system that
establishes housing as a right. Advancing and establishing housing for
all as a right requires not just building decommodified housing but
also maintaining housing outside of the market for the long haul. It
also requires an “ecosystem” of policies, organizations, and
movements to keep the system working and holding true to its mission.
The more that housing and real estate are treated as a primary fuels
of capital accumulation, the less our ability to create homes for all.
 

Elsewhere, we have proposed a Social Housing Development Authority
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which would be a federal institution to acquire and rehabilitate
distressed real estate to convert to social housing, as well as build
new social housing. This is one possible answer to the complex
question of how to build a system of social housing in the United
States even amid an inhospitable political context. 

Such a federal authority could help local initiatives scale, while
transitioning increasing shares of housing out of the housing market
through a combination of subsidies, affordable financing, and
revolving funds. It would develop new public rental housing as well as
seed housing cooperatives. Central to the work too would be extensive
organizing and mobilizing work by tenants and movements to keep the
federal agency focused on its mission—and to avoid capture by
private real estate interests.

To our minds, all these issues boil down to the question of political
will. And political will can change. Already in a few short years,
social housing has moved from abstract concept to broadly debated
policy
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The grassroots organizing that has made this possible shows little
sign of letting up.

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H. Jacob Carlson
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H. Jacob Carlson is an urban and political sociologist at Kean
University, whose research focuses on democracy, housing, and changing
cities. He is also a lead author of a proposal to develop a Social
Housing Development Authority.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi
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Gianpaolo Baiocchi is a sociologist at New York University and a
leading author of a proposal to develop a Social Housing Development
Agency that can support housing co-ops and community land trusts and
help ensure access to housing for all.

* Housing is a Right; Social Housing; Karl Marx-Hof
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* Public Housing; Vienna;
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