General Characteristics of the Public Housing in the U.S. Market Term Paper

General Characteristics of the Public Housing in the U.S. Market - Term Paper Example In the United States and Canada [9], public housing is usually a ‘block of purpose-built housing operated by a government agency, often simply referred to as "projects"’ The history of the specific sector is formulated under the influence of a series of events and governmental decisions that seek to intervene in the private initiatives regarding the formulation and the operation of housing associations designed especially for the needs of the public. In this context [9] ‘in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government involvement in housing for the poor was chiefly in the area of requiring new buildings to meet certain standards - like having airshafts - for decent livability; most housing communities were developed from the 1930s onward and initial public housing was largely slum regeneration, with no nationwide expansion of public housing; public housing was only built with the blessing of the local government, and projects were almost never built on suburban greenfields, but through regeneration of older neighborhoods; the destruction of tenements and eviction of their low-income residents consistently created problems in nearby neighborhoods with "soft" real estate markets’. As for the modern era [9], many of the above-described projects have been ‘torn down, renovated or replaced after criticism that the concentration of poverty in economically depressed areas, inadequate management of the buildings, and government indifference have contributed to the increased crime. U.S. public housing continues to have a reputation for violence, drug use, and prostitution, leading to the passage, in 1996, of a federal "one strike you're out" law, calling for the eviction of tenants convicted of crimes, especially drug-related; in reaction to the problems surrounding public housing, the US Congress passed legislation enacting the Section 8 Housing Program in 1974, which Richard Nixon signed into law, to encourage the private sector to construct affordable homes; this kind of housing assistance assists poor tenants by giving a monthly subsidy to their landlords’.