ABSTRACT
Shelter is one of the three basic human needs, and a responsible society has an obligation to prevent people from dying out in the cold. In 1949, however, the United States set a goal that would take this minimum obligation several steps further – to “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.” This declaration moved the nation beyond the obligation to provide mere shelter and into the realm of “housing,” a market commodity produced by a complex and politically infl uential industry. It also embraced “every American family,” not just the obviously needy found huddled under viaducts. This challenge meant confronting the issues of defi ning who besides the immediately desperate might receive housing assistance, what form such assistance might take and for what types of “decent” housing, and who should be administratively responsible for running the system. Since Congress’s famous formulation in 1949, efforts to achieve the goal have turned on such questions.
