ABSTRACT
What should be the goals of housing policy? The author suggests a policy that "maximizes choices," but he is quick to point to several constraints on its implementation: scarcity of resources, the visibility of past mistakes, and the American bias in favor of the single-family, owner-occupied house. He traces the influence of these factors on the directions of housing policy, and against this background inquires whether the poor have benefited from federal housing policy and whether the federal policy has encouraged segregation by social class, race, and family life-style. In any public policy that involves building relatively expensive physical facilities, the constraint on a program that maximizes choices—that is, offers many different possibilities—is particularly great. The first federal action in the field of housing was a survey of slums in 1892. The major federal program for the poor has been public housing.
