ABSTRACT
The depopulation of many hot market cities of low-income residents over the past 20 years has been driven by the seemingly systematic destruction of affordable housing. The demolition of public housing in particular, as a matter of policy, has been so extensive that it requires great effort to see it as anything less than a concerted effort to remove entire communities occupying valuable real estate in and around valuable urban cores. Since 1995, over 200,000 public housing units have been demolished and currently another 230,000 are on the chopping block even as the waitlist backlog grows (Right to the City 2010). In the midst of a massive housing bubble, however, rather than seeking to protect affordable housing, the federal government and its allies fashioned housing policy into a weapon aimed directly at the most vulnerable urban communities.
