Housing civilizes, and housing riots
Over in AHI’s South African blog, Kecia Rust has an outstanding and chilling post about the housing riots that recently took place in Capetown.
Go read it now. I’ll wait. Then come back.
The Capetown riots come in the context of rising expectations creating impatience and then frustration with a government that promised hope and is seen — probably unfairly — to have delivered little. When I saw the picture in Kecia’s post, it quite took me back, to the mid-Sixties, when I was a stripling of twelve and thirteen, and television brought into our homes something we thought inconceivable in America: urban riots, in our core cities, like Watts (Los Angeles) in 1965, Detroit in 1967, and Chicago, Washington and many other places in 1968 (after the hammer blows of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy).
Dr. King was shot in a Memphis motel. Today it is the National Civil Rights Museum. You tour the museum in sequence, culminating in that very room, where Dr. King was shot, which is preserved just as it was on that fateful April day. There is no experience like it.
Suddenly it became frighteningly, immediately clear to Americans in their living rooms that something had gone wrong, horribly wrong, violently and inconceivably wrong in our cities. 
Something had to be done. President Lyndon B. Johnson organized the President’s Commission on Urban Housing (the “Kaiser Commission”), whose report, A Decent Home,
emphasized throughout the need of greater private sector involvement in providing affordable housing. The Commission noted, “that this country will not reach the required level of production without the full involvement of American business.” The Kaiser Commission:
· Recommended the creation of a Federally-chartered corporation, the National Corporation for Housing Partnerships (”NCHP”) as a means of attracting private capital.
· Endorsed expansion of the Section 236 program, created in the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 (the “1968 Act”), as an enhanced successor to the Section 221(d)(3) program.
The Kaiser Commission envisioned that NCHP would attract private investment in low income housing, both for the social and financial (mainly tax) benefits [First wide scale usage of soft equity — Ed.].
Following through on the Kaiser Commission’s recommendation, Congress established the National Corporation for Housing Partnerships in Title IX of the 1968 Act.
Although not directly related to Section 8, the role played by NCHP is indicative of Congress’ view that only a strong, voluntary response from the private sector could address the Nation’s housing needs. As the statement of purpose of the 1968 Act emphasizes, Congress “declares that it is the policy of the United States to encourage the widest possible participation by private enterprise in the provision of housing for low or moderate income families.” Significantly, Congress used the word “encourage” to suggest the need to partner public and private sector involvement in housing, instead of any indication of mandated private sector participation.
(Back in 1968, I bought a paperback copy of the Kaiser Commission’s report. It’s still on my bookshelf, filed under non-fiction, carried with me from Marblehead to college to rent controlled apartment to condo to house to bigger house.) Out of those riots, in other words, was born HUD, which Johnson elevated to a Cabinet-level branch by cobbling together the Depression-era government bank the Federal Housing Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), and a couple of minor agencies. And from HUD and the Johnson Administration came a commitment to affordable housing that lasted more than twenty years and birthed us several million homes of quality affordable housing throughout the nation. Today, 37 years later, HUD has lost its way, Congress has lost its sense of purpose, and I am still here, working out and recapitalizing Section 221(d)(3) and Section 236 properties, dealing with Section 8 recapitalizations, and seeking ever to understand more about what makes healthy communities, what makes affordable housing work, and how to create viable affordable housing programs. Because if we don’t, if we do not provide affordable housing to those who need it, our cities go up in flames. 
(Image from Jo Freeman)
