Social Housing in the U.S. Oksana Mironova Thomas J. Waters February 18th, 2020

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is increasingly including housing in its broader progressive vision nationally. In November 2019, for example, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar introduced the Homes for All Act, which would commit a trillion dollars of federal funding to the development of 12 million permanently affordable homes over 10 years. The U.S. has not seen a federal commitment to housing of this scale since the 1968 Housing Act, which aimed to produce 6 million affordable homes. Omar’s announcement coincided with the first Democratic presidential debate in decades to feature a question about the affordable housing crisis. And top Democratic presidential contenders are paying unprecedented attention to affordable housing—a majority have put forward their own detailed proposals.

This move toward sweeping federal policy isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is informed by ambitious local organizing on housing issues. While new housing production is central to these campaigns, groups like People’s Action are not advocating for traditional, market-driven increases in housing supply. Rather, they are calling for a major public investment in social housing.

The term social housing is commonly used to describe a range of housing ownership, subsidy, and regulation models in Europe, South America and elsewhere around the globe. These models often go far beyond what’s known as “affordable housing” in the U.S. to promote permanent affordability, democratic resident control, and social equality. First popularized in the U.S. by the People’s Policy Project, the term is gaining currency thanks to the Homes Guarantee campaign, a grassroots effort aiming to provide every person in the U.S. with safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing.

As New York State housing advocates launch a new #NYHomesGuarantee campaign that calls for a long-term commitment to 600,000 units of social housing statewide, we break down social housing’s main elements and explore the policies that can support its growth.

What is social housing?

Based on our interviews with housing advocates and a review of existing typologies, we define social housing models as those that strive to achieve permanent affordability, social equality, and democratic resident control. These goals are reflected, to varying degrees, in existing U.S. affordable housing programs, including public housing, nonprofit-managed rentals, and privately-run, limited-equity cooperatives on land stewarded by community land trusts. But these existing programs don’t all live up to the three main social housing goals equally. Just how “social” each model is depends less on ownership structures than on how well it shields the housing from market pressures, promotes racial and economic integration, and allows for robust resident governance.

The first key goal of social housing policy is to create “housing in the public interest,” or, to redefine housing as a public good, like mass transit, libraries, or schools. Functionally, this means that the public and/or nonprofit sector assume stewardship responsibilities over the housing in perpetuity. While guaranteeing a level of affordability is central to social housing, it also insulates housing from market pressures. Through a commitment to permanent affordability, owners do not face either the financial incentive to raise rents and sale prices or the financial need to do so, to borrow money for repairs. This also reduces the financial risk of property ownership and the potential for property speculation, which is driven by investors using projections of quickly increasing rent rolls and/or underlying property values to take on risky debt. The social science term for diminishing the impact of market pressure on housing is decommodification.

The second goal is social equality through the reduction of segregation by race and income, and the diminished impact of policies that bestow privileges on different members of the public based on tenure (ranking homeowners above renters and the unhoused). According to the Homes Guarantee platform, “social housing is based on the fundamental principle that everyone—no matter their income, background, or their conformity to social or legal norms—has the right to a home.” In Nordic countries social housing models often employ a “universalist” approach, providing housing for people across income levels, not just those poorly served by the private market. . And as Tara Raghuveer of Kansas City Eviction Project/People’s Policy Project explained to us , accessibility, including Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) modifications and wraparound supportive services, are a key component of ensuring social housing is truly available to everyone.

The third and perhaps most ambitious goal of social housing is democratic resident control. Real control means that residents can and do meaningfully participate in building governance. This is only possible if residents have very strong rights and the resources to organize, formulate their policy preferences, and use their rights effectively.

Does social housing differ from affordable housing?

The goals of social housing—decommodification, social equality, and democratic resident control—are not central to affordable housing policy in the U.S. Many existing programs do address the need for affordable housing, and often include social housing elements, but fall far short of the ideal of truly social housing.

Most contemporary affordable housing production programs are designed to combine public and private efforts. They minimize the government’s role and rely on large public incentives to stimulate private development. In order to appeal to investors, affordable housing programs generally require only temporary affordability. This results in market pressure at the time of contract expiration. For example, in New York City, the availability of cheap credit and growing real estate values in the mid-2000s coincided with a round of contract expirations in two important affordable housing types—Mitchell-Lama and project-based Section 8 rentals. Many owners, especially those in gentrifying neighborhoods, chose to opt out of subsidy programs, often selling their buildings for a hefty profit. The result was a 31 percent loss of subsidized rental units between 1990 and 2008.

The same impulse toward public-private partnerships is skewing the income targeting of today’s affordable housing. Mayor de Blasio’s housing plan has been repeatedly criticized for failing to reach the depth of affordability necessary to serve extremely low-income and homeless people. A central barrier to deep affordability is the lack of ongoing operating subsidies, which are necessary to provide housing to the poorest households and to keep deeply affordable housing from operating at a loss. But this requires an ongoing government commitment to housing stewardship—not just an initial capital subsidy like those provided under the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the main tool used in de Blasio’s housing plan.

Another prominent feature of today’s housing policy is fragmentation, with many different programs targeted to different parts of the public. Status differences between programs increase social inequality. Homeownership, which is generously subsidized through the mortgage interest deduction on income taxes, confers a high status on residents. More visibly (and modestly) subsidized housing types, such as public housing and project-based Section 8, are stigmatized.

Market-dependent subsidies like LIHTC and Section 8 vouchers also tend to replicate, if not reinforce, racial barriers that exist in the private real estate market, which intricately ties land values to race. This is visible in the detrimental impact of the subprime mortgage crisis on black and Latinx neighborhoods and the continuing, systematic usage of steering and other racist practices by the real estate industry.

Some present-day affordable housing programs do promote a degree of social integration though “mixed-income” development. These programs have attracted criticism because they often work by adding higher-income people to low-income places rather than the other way around, and thus threaten to displace people and because they do not necessarily confer the same status on all residents. New York City’s “poor door” controversy is one example of this problem.

Affordable housing programs generally produce traditional rental buildings, without a strong commitment to democratic residential control. While public and subsidized housing residents often have well-defined rights and access to technical support, the above-described stigmatization and systematic underfunding limit their ability to exercise real control over their housing. The best example of resident control in affordable housing is to be found in limited-equity cooperatives, such as New York’s Mitchell-Lama coops, where residents elect the boards of directors that hire the management companies that run their properties.

What federal, state, and local policies can support social housing?

To create and grow a social housing sector, the federal, state, and local governments should develop policies that prioritize permanent affordability, treat all residents equally, and incorporate resident control. Policies should not only support new social housing, but preserve and improve existing developments that could fall under the social housing umbrella, like public housing.

On the federal level, this can include adequate funding for the National Housing Trust Fund (a tool for deep affordability), supported by the majority of Democratic presidential candidates, or direct funding for community land trust development, proposed by Senator Sanders. In New York State, a statewide right of first refusal law and targeted funding for permanent affordability could create a social housing pipeline, by allowing tenants to purchase their buildings when they go up for sale. Many other local policy innovations could also promote social housing, including tax lien sale reform, better-targeted public land and land bank disposition, and investment from mission-driven financial institutions.

A long-term public commitment to social housing could relieve real estate market pressure and improve income targeting. Some recent progressive federal housing proposals move in this direction. The Green New Deal for Public Housing commits to deep and ongoing investment in existing public housing, including investments toward deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Homes for All Act re-classifies federal public housing capital and operating funds as entitlement spending, like Social Security and Medicare, rather than as discretionary spending that is vulnerable to cuts in each budget cycle. Several Democratic presidential candidates have proposed expanding federal rental assistance, from making Section 8 vouchers an entitlement to creating a new renter tax credit, which would lower rent burdens and ensure access for extremely low income and homeless households. In New York State, a program that expands rental assistance could serve a similar role.

While a broad effort toward decommodification may help curb some of the worst practices in the real estate industry that link value to race; it will not address discrimination and racial exclusion on its own. Policies that minimize fragmentation and directly address racial and economic segregation would work in tandem with a government commitment to social housing. New social housing production should be tied to a strong Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule across the housing market, as well as enforcement of other fair housing tools. For example, the Homes Guarantee campaigns proposes a new federal “social housing zoning law”, which would preempt states and municipalities from blocking social housing development. The campaign also proposed tying infrastructure and transit funding (not just housing funding) to social housing production goals.

Policies that promote resident governance would bolster the development of social housing, including legally defined resident rights and dedicated funding for education, technical assistance, and organizing. While needs will vary depending on housing type, residents may need support with tenant association formation, cooperative governance, housing finance and management.

A major commitment to social housing is a long-term goal that requires a re-definition of the public sector’s role in housing provision and stewardship. While the U.S. is today politically and economically far from this re-definition, local and national groups are organizing for, and coalescing around, a transformative housing vision. The quick ascendance of Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, and the Green New Deal in local and national policy debates illustrate the potential of bold proposals for the housing sector.

Next Up: How Social is that Housing? Read our analysis of how existing affordable housing programs meet the goals of social housing.

The authors thank Ryan Acuff, Celeste Hornbach, Karen Narefsky, Tara Raghuveer, and Cea Weaver for speaking to us for this piece.