ABSTRACT
Lower income Americans are disproportionately concentrated in the nation's urban areas and older inner ring suburbs, often within areas of concentrated poverty within built communities. Despite periodic attempts to address the issue, the great majority of affordable housing has been constructed in those locations, reinforcing the relegation of low-income households to areas that lack access to jobs and educational opportunities and are also often unsafe and unhealthy. The origins of suburban exclusion lie in the highly decentralized manner in which American local governments are organized. By the 1960s, the extent of that practice as a vehicle for excluding the less affluent from the greater part of suburban America had become widespread. It was inevitable that suburban towns would focus on the use of undeveloped land within their boundaries as the single most important factor in preserving the social and economic character of the community and the value of the homes already built and occupied.
