ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several proposals in more depth, seeking to expose weaknesses as well as strengths. It analyses with a short discussion of the relationship of a low-income housing strategy generally to larger market forces and broader central-city goals. Modest rehabilitation does suffer from most of the limitations its critics ascribe to it. Since it focuses on structures which, for the most part, do not represent a serious threat to health and safety, it contributes little to the basic housing goals. Modest rehabilitation would not be the centerpiece of the low-income housing effort, except possibly in terms of the number of lives affected. Only direct assault on mismanagement and undermaintenance, namely code enforcement, is the “second front” of housing policy. And given the investment outlook, even federally assisted code enforcement does little to alter the fundamental underlying problems in the inner-city rental market.
