Social housing

Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, definitions of poverty, and other criteria for allocation vary within different contexts. Public housing developments are classified as housing projects that are owned by a city's Housing authority or Federally subsidized public housing operated through HUD.
Social housing is any rental housing that may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the two, usually with the aim of providing affordable housing. Social housing is generally rationed by a government through some form of means-testing or through administrative measures of housing need. One can regard social housing as a potential remedy for housing inequality. Private housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by an individual, private developer or by a non-profit organization. Privately owned apartment complexes are multifamily subsidized housing, where the subsidy is given to the owner who provides affordable housing. This subsidy stays with the property.

History

Social housing had existed sporadically prior to modern developments. The oldest still in use is the 16th century Fuggerei in Augsburg, Bavaria.

The origins of modern municipal housing lie in the dramatic urban population increase caused by the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. In the large cities of the period, many social commentators, such as Octavia Hill and Charles Booth reported on the squalor, sickness and immorality that arose. Henry Mayhew, visiting Bethnal Green, wrote in '' The Morning Chronicle'':

Some philanthropists began to provide housing in tenement blocks, and some factory owners built entire villages for their workers, such as Saltaire in 1853 and Port Sunlight in 1888. It was in 1885, after the report from a Royal Commission in England, that the state first took an interest. This led to the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885, which empowered Local Government Boards to shut down unhealthy properties and encouraged them to improve the housing in their areas.

The City of London Corporation built tenements in the Farringdon Road in 1865. The world's first large-scale housing project was built in London to replace one of the capital's most notorious slums – the Old Nichol. Nearly 6,000 individuals were crammed into the packed streets, where one child in four died before his or her first birthday. Arthur Morrison wrote the influential '' A Child of the Jago'', an account of the life of a child in the slum, which sparked a public outcry. Construction of the Boundary Estate was begun in 1890 by the Metropolitan Board of Works and completed by the then-recently formed London County Council in 1900.

The success of this project spurred many local councils to embark on similar construction schemes in the early 20th century. The Arts and Crafts movement and Ebenezer Howard's garden city ideas led to the leafy London County Council cottage estates such as firstly Totterdown Fields and later Wormholt and Old Oak. The First World War indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the British Army was noted with alarm. In 1916, 41% of conscripts were unfit to serve. This led to a campaign known as '' Homes fit for heroes'' and in 1919 the Government first compelled councils to provide housing, helping them to do so through the provision of subsidies, under the Housing Act 1919. Public housing projects were tried out in some European countries and the United States in the 1930s, but only became widespread globally after the Second World War.

Africa

South Africa

South African apartheid featured high poverty rates in Black South Africans due to racial segregation and discrimination, so the post-apartheid government has sought to build social housing for poor black households, in urban areas with economic opportunity

The Reconstruction and Development and Breaking New Ground programs have provided over 3.5 million houses from 1995 to 2020, but they did not fully meet demand, and were built away from inner urban areas, exacerbating racial divides. The housing shortage was estimated to be 3.7 million units in 2021. The Department of Human Settlements, which facilitates national housing development, has sought to transition from a housing-focused development model to a holistic view, including services.

Americas

Brazil

("My House, My Life"), the Brazilian Government, Brazilian federal government's social housing program, was launched in March 2009 with a budget of R$36 billion (US$18 billion) to build one million homes. The second stage of the program, included within the government Growth Acceleration Program (PAC, ) was announced in March 2010. This stage foresaw the construction of a further two million homes.

All funds for properties were provided by the Brazilian public bank, . The bank financed development and provided mortgages for qualifying families.

, 4.5 million homes were built and distributed to the population. The project has been criticized for its placement and quality of the houses. Houses are built far from the city centre to reduce housing costs which consequently reduces access to the labor market; a study of randomly selected houses of the MCMV project in Rio de Janeiro showed a reduced likelihood of being formally employed in job-seekers but income was not affected in those who were already employed.

Canada

In Canada, public housing is usually a block of purpose-built subsidized housing operated by a government agency, often simply referred to as community housing, with easier-to-manage townhouses. Many cities in Canada still maintain large high-rise clustered developments in working-class neighborhoods, a system that has fallen into disfavour in both the United States and the United Kingdom. However, many public housing corporations still offer a variety of buildings and communities ranging from individual houses to townhouse communities and mid-rise and high-rise apartments in both working-class and middle-class neighborhoods that house a significant number of low-income Canadians.

Following the decentralisation of public housing to local municipalities, Social Housing Services Corporation (SHSC) was created in the Province of Ontario in 2002 to provide group services for social housing providers (public housing, non-profit housing and co-operative housing). It is a non-profit corporation which provides Ontario housing providers and service managers with bulk purchasing, insurance, investment and information services that add significant value to their operations.

Recently, there has been a move toward the integration of public housing with market housing and other uses. Revitalization plans for properties such as in the notorious Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Regent Park, in Toronto, and Rochester Heights in Ottawa, aim to provide better accommodations for low-income residents, and connect them to the greater community. The aim of the reconstruction plans are often to better integrate it into the traditional grid of streets, improve leisure and cultural amenities. However, the residents of these communities often have had little effective input in the plans and have had mixed reactions to the construction.

In 2014, Vancouver, long considered one of the least affordable cities in the world, changed the definition of social housing to mean rental housing in which a minimum of 30 percent of dwelling units are occupied by households that cannot pay market rents, due to lack of income.

Mexico

At the end of the Second World War, enriched by US investments and an oil boom, Mexico had its first demographic boom, in which the primary destination for rural immigrants was Mexico City. , a famous architect at time, was charged to build its first large-scale public housing project. Built for the (the National Pensions office, today ISSSTE), the (or ) (1947–50) in the Colonia del Valle and the (or ) (1951–52) in the , introduced formal ideas from Le Corbusier's into the urban fabric.

His later project, the built in 1960–65, was meant to develop one of the poorest parts of the city, , which was becoming a slum. Unfortunately, after a while, instead of giving the residences to the previous residents of , corruption took place and most of the dwellings were handed to state employees.

During the earthquake of 1985, both the and complexes suffered major damage, with some buildings collapsing. Today most of the has been demolished.

Mexico has had experience with housing projects since 's regime (1877–1880, 1884–1911). One of those still remains and is the of in in Mexico City, that was a project for a paper factory workers.

Puerto Rico

Neighbourhoods in Puerto Rico are often divided into three types: , (urbanisation) and (public housing).''La realidad de las mujeres en las cárceles del país.''
Primera Hora. 7 April 2014. Retrieved 11 April 2014. An is a type of housing where land is developed into lots, often by a private developer, and where single-family homes are built. More recently, non-single-family units, such as condominiums and townhouses are being built which also fall into this category. (In Puerto Rico, a condominium is a housing unit located in a high-rise building. It is popularly called an (English: 'apartment'), whether or not its resident owns the unit or lives it as a renter.) Public housing, on the other hand, are housing units built with government funding, primarily through programs of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). These have traditionally consisted multi-family dwellings in housing complexes called a or a (and more recently a ), and where all exterior grounds consist of shared areas.

Increasingly, however, public housing developments are being built that consist of other than the traditional multi-family dwellings with all exterior grounds consisting of shared outside area, for example, public housing may consist of single family garden apartments units. Finally, a home that is located in neither an nor of a public housing development is said to be located in (and to be a part of) a . In Puerto Rico, a also has a second and very different meaning official meaning: the geographical area into which a is divided for official administrative purposes. In this sense, as well as public housing developments (as well as one or several in the popular sense) may be located in one of these 901 official geographic areas.

United States

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government involvement in housing for the poor was chiefly in the introduction of building standards. Atlanta, Georgia's Techwood Homes, dedicated in 1935, were the nation's first public housing project. Most housing communities were developed from the 1930s onward and initial public housing was largely slum clearance, with the requirement insisted upon by private builders that for every unit of public housing constructed, a unit of private housing would be demolished.

This also eased concerns of the establishment by eliminating or altering neighborhoods commonly considered a source of disease, and reflected progressive-era sanitation initiatives. Moreover, public housing, along with the Federal Highway Program, demolished the older, substandard housing of communities of color across the United States.

However, the advent of makeshift tent communities during the Great Depression caused concern in the Administration. The Federal public housing program was created by the 1937 Act, in which operations were "sustained primarily by tenant rents." As a result, public housing in its earliest decades was usually much more working-class and middle-class and white than it was by the 1970s. Many Americans associate large, multi-story towers with public housing, but early projects were actually low-rise, though Le Corbusier superblocks caught on before World War II.

A unique US public housing initiative was the development of subsidized middle-class housing during the late New Deal (1940–42) under the auspices of the Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division of the Federal Works Agency under the direction of Colonel Lawrence Westbrook. These eight projects were purchased by the residents after the Second World War and as of 2009 seven of the projects continue to operate as mutual housing corporations owned by their residents. These projects are among the very few definitive success stories in the history of the US public housing effort.

Public housing was only built with the blessing of the local government, and projects were almost never built on suburban greenfields, but through regeneration of older neighborhoods. The destruction of tenements and eviction of their low-income residents consistently created problems in nearby neighborhoods with "soft" real estate markets. Houses, apartments or other residential units are usually subsidized on a rent-geared-to-income (RGI) basis. Some communities have now embraced a mixed income, with both assisted and market rents, when allocating homes as they become available.

A significant change in the program took place in 1969, with the passage of the Brooke Amendment. Rents now became set at 25% of a tenant's income with the result that the program began serving the "poorest tenants."

The federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department's 1993 HOPE VI program addressed concerns of distressed properties and blighted superblocks with revitalization and funding projects for the renewal of public housing to decrease its density and allow for tenants with mixed income levels. Projects continue to have a reputation for violence, drug use, and prostitution, especially in New Orleans