After the war, when the nation faced an enormous shortage of homes, Congress approved programs aimed at subsidizing the cost of housing for low- and moderate-income Americans. These programs never went as far as many “housers” — those committed to a European-style social housing agenda — would have liked, and were always constrained in scale by a vigilant real estate industry. But they still expanded the housing options available to those with limited incomes.

Labeled “urban redevelopment” in the Housing Act of 1949 and “urban renewal” in its successor, the Housing Act of 1954, these programs have been derided by many historians. Too much demolition took place, particularly in the early years, and city planners too often sought to replicate their suburban counterparts’ car-oriented schemes.

But there were also mortgage subsidies for nonprofit organizations and private developers constructing subsidized housing, rent subsidies to tenants, and funding to create housing for the elderly. Much attention has been paid to how the federal government created the postwar suburbanized metropolis, with its expansive highways and mortgage supports that favored suburban communities while redlining urban ones. But federal programs also helped cities stay viable from 1950 to 1975. Mistakes were made, but lessons were learned. And over time, redevelopers increasingly engaged local communities in planning.

What has particularly been forgotten are the progressive steps that federal subsidies made possible. For example, in 1968 New York State created the Urban Development Corporation, with a mandate to build thousands of units of subsidized housing and reinvigorate declining industrial cities. Under the direction of the veteran urban redeveloper Edward J. Logue, this authority relied on funding from state appropriations and private bond sales, but the real engine was robust federal backing, both in funds and political support.

During its seven-year run, it built 33,000 units of housing, developed three new towns — including the intentionally mixed-income, mixed-race and mixed-age Roosevelt Island in New York City — and fostered a spirit of architectural and technological innovation to find ways of delivering housing more efficiently, more aesthetically, and more affordably. Marcus Garvey Park Village in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood was a successful prototype of low-rise, high-density subsidized housing.

The Urban Development Corporation ran into trouble when it took a progressive step too far, using its statewide authority to tackle inequities between city and suburbs. In 1972, it began a project to build 100 affordable housing units in nine towns in wealthy Westchester County, provoking a fierce suburban backlash. That, combined with a 1973 moratorium by President Richard Nixon on all congressionally approved spending on housing and cities, spelled doom for the corporation — and a steady decline in federal responsibility for housing and cities.

Since the 1980s, the United States has primarily depended on private, market-oriented solutions to its housing and urban problems — strategies like using corporate tax credits to construct low-income housing, Section 8 vouchers and fees squeezed out of developers of luxury projects. But they aren’t enough to meet today’s crisis.