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NEW SOCIAL HOUSING PROGRAMS SEEK TO MAKE HOMES PERMANENTLY AFFORDABLE
FOR A RANGE OF INCOMES  
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Susanne Schindler
July 7, 2025
The Conversation
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_ Social housing promises a different path forward. _

A group of people hold green signs next to two people dressed up as
anthropomorphic houses. Activists in Seattle gather signatures to put
a social housing initiative on the ballot. In early 2025, voters
passed the measure, which implements a payroll tax o, House Our
Neighbors, CC BY-SA

 

Seattle astounded housing advocates around the country in February
2025, when roughly two-thirds of voters approved a ballot initiative
proposing a new 5% payroll tax on salaries in excess of US$1 million
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The expected revenue – estimated to amount to $52 million dollars
annually – would go toward funding a public development authority
named Seattle Social Housing
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and maintain permanently affordable homes.

The city has experienced record high rents and home prices
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over the past two decades, attributed in part to the high incomes and
relatively low taxes paid by tech firms like Amazon. Prior attempts to
make these companies do their part to keep the city affordable have
had mixed results
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So despite nationwide, bipartisan skepticism of government and tax
increases
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Seattle’s voters showed that in light of a severe affordability
crisis
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a new role for the public sector and a new, dedicated fiscal revenue
stream for housing were not only necessary, but possible.

As a trained architect and urban historian
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study how capitalist societies have embraced – or rejected –
housing that’s permanently shielded from market forces and what that
means for architecture and urban design.

To me, Seattle’s social housing initiative shows that the
country’s traditional, “either-or” housing model – of
unregulated, market-rate housing versus tightly regulated,
income-restricted affordable housing – has reached its limits.

Social housing promises a different path forward.

The rise of the ‘two-tiered’ system

After World War I, amid a similarly dire housing crisis, journalist
Catherine Bauer
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traveled to Europe and learned about the continent’s social housing
programs.

She publicized her findings in the 1934 book “Modern Housing
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in which she advocated for housing that would be permanently shielded
from the private real estate market. High-quality design was central
to her argument. (The book was reissued in 2020
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reflecting a renewed hunger for her ideas.)

Early New Deal programs supported “limited-dividend,” or
nonprofit, housing sponsored by civic organizations such as labor
unions. The Carl Mackley Houses
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in Philadelphia exemplified this approach: The government provided
low-interest loans to the American Federation of Full-Fashioned
Hosiery Workers, which then constructed housing for its workers with
rents set at affordable rates. The complex was built with community
rooms and a swimming pool for its residents.

[Black and white photo of a swimming pool surrounded by an apartment
complex.]
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Financed by $1.2 million in federal funds, the Carl Mackley Houses,
completed in 1935, provided homes for union workers. Alfred Kastner
papers, Collection No. 7350, Box 45, Record 12, American Heritage
Center, University of Wyoming
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However, the 1937 U.S. Housing Act
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middle-income housing. Instead, the federal government chose to
support public rental housing for low-income Americans and private
homeownership, with little in between.

Historian Gail Radford has aptly termed this a “two-tiered system
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and it was problematic from the start.

Funding for public housing in the U.S. – as well as for its
successor, private-sector-built affordable housing – has always been
capped in ways that fall far short of demand
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with access to the homes largely restricted to households with the
lowest incomes. Private-sector-built affordable housing depends on
dangling tax credits for private investors
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and rent restrictions can expire.

While the U.S. promoted this two-tiered system, cities like Vienna
pursued a different path
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In Austria’s culturally vibrant capital, today half of all dwellings
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are permanently removed from the private market. Roughly 80% of
households
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qualify to live in them. The buildings take a range of forms, are
located in all neighborhoods, and are built and operated as rental or
cooperative housing either by the city or by nonprofit developers.

Rents do not rise and fall according to household income, but are
instead set to cover capital and operation expenses. These are kept
low thanks to long-term, low-interest loans. These loans are funded
through a nationwide 1% payroll tax, split evenly between employers
and employees. Renters also make a down payment, priced in relation to
the size and age of the apartment, which keeps monthly rents down. To
guarantee access to low-cost land, the municipality has pursued an
active land acquisition policy since the 1980s.

[A blue, modern-looking, two-story dwelling with red flowers in the
windows.]
Vienna’s Pilotengasse Housing Estate, a social housing development
featuring low-rise buildings with abundant greenery, was completed in
1992 and serves a range of income groups. Viennaslide/Construction
Photography/Avalon/Getty Images
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Housing shielded from the private market

The inequities created by the two-tiered system – along with the
absence of viable options for moderate- and middle-income households
– are what social housing advocates in the U.S. are trying to
address today.

In 2018, the think tank People’s Policy Project published what was
likely the first 21st-century report
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advocating for social housing in the U.S., citing Vienna as a model.

Across the U.S., social housing is being used to describe a range of
programs
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limited equity cooperatives and community land trusts to public
housing.

They all share a few underlying principles, however.

First and foremost, social housing calls for permanently shielding
homes from the private real estate market, often referred to as
“permanent affordability.” This usually means public investment in
housing and public ownership of it. Second, unlike the ways in which
public housing has traditionally operated in the U.S., most social
housing programs aim to serve households across a broader range of
incomes. The goal is to create housing that is both financially
sustainable and appealing to broad swaths of the electorate. Third,
social housing aspires to give residents more control over the
governance of their homes.

Social housing doesn’t all look the same. But thoughtful design is
key to its success
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It’s built to be owned and operated in the long-term, not for
short-term financial gain. Construction quality matters, and
developers realize it needs to be appealing to a range of tenants with
different needs.

Early successes

In recent years, there have been significant wins for the social
housing movement at the state and local levels.

In 2023, Atlanta created a new quasi-public entity
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city-owned land. In 2024, Rhode Island voters
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and the Massachusetts legislature
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funded pilot projects to test public investment in social housing. And
2025 has seen the the passage of Chicago’s Green Social Housing
ordinance
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Many of these programs were directly inspired by affordable housing
initiatives in Montgomery County, Maryland
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Since 2021, the county’s housing authority has used a $100 million
housing fund
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to invest in new mixed-income developments. Through these investments,
the county retains co-ownership and has been able to bring down the
cost of development enough to offer 30% of homes at significantly
below market rents, in perpetuity. If Vienna is the global paragon for
social housing, Montgomery County has become its domestic counterpart.

In Seattle, social housing will mean homes delivered and permanently
owned by Seattle Social Housing, which is funded through the payroll
tax on high incomes. The initiative envisions developments
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featuring a range of apartment sizes to meet the needs of different
family sizes, built to high energy-efficiency standards. Homes will be
available
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households earning up to 120% of area median income, with residents
paying no more than 30% of their income on rent. In Seattle, that
means that a single-person household making up to $120,000 will
qualify.

[Activists stand on steps holding colorful signs while a woman stands
in front of them speaking from a lectern.]
Members of the New York City Council hold a rally with housing
activists to promote social housing legislation in March 2023. William
Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit
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CC BY-SA [[link removed]]

Ongoing debates

Despite these successes, many Americans remain skeptical of social
housing.

Sign up for a webinar
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on the topic, and you’ll hear participants question the term itself.
Isn’t it far too “socialist” to be broadly adopted in the U.S.?
And isn’t this just “old wine in new bottles”?

Join a housing task force, and established nonprofits will be the ones
to push back, arguing that they already know how to build and manage
housing, and that all they need is money.

Some housing activists also question whether using scarce public
dollars to pay for mixed-income housing will yet again shortchange
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those who most need governmental assistance – namely, the poor.
Others point to the need to provide more ways to build
intergenerational wealth, especially for racial minorities, who have
historically faced barriers to homeownership
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Urban planner Jonathan Tarleton
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another important issue: the danger of social housing reverting over
time to private ownership, as has been the case with some cooperatives
in New York City. Tarleton stresses the need for “social
maintenance” – the importance of telling and retelling the story
of whom social housing is meant to serve.

These debates raise important questions. Social housing may be a
confusing term and an aspirational concept. But it is here to stay: It
has galvanized organizers and policymakers around a new approach to
the design, development and maintenance of housing.

Social housing keeps prices down through long-term public investment,
ensuring that future generations will still benefit. Developers can
design and provide homes that respond to how people want to live. And
in an increasingly polarized country
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social housing will allow people of various backgrounds, incomes and
ideological persuasions to live together again, rather than apart.

Whether it’s the kind found in Seattle, in Maryland or somewhere in
between, I believe social housing is needed more than ever before to
address the country’s twin problems of affordability and a lack of
political imagination
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_This article is part of a series centered on envisioning ways to deal
with the housing crisis
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* Social Housing; Housing Policy; Housing Affordablility;
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