Reforming HUD

THE Department of Housing and Urban Development is not just part of the welfare state; it is an engine that intensifies the social pathologies engendered and sustained by the failed welfare system. HUD does this by concentrating households headed by non-working single mothers in tight geographic locations where the moral norms of society arc observed mostly in the breach and where the rule of law is an oxymoron. This maelstrom of social decay can infect surrounding neighborhoods, creating what one Democratic senator has aptly called “zip codes of pathology.” The congressional Republican leadership realizes that broad welfare reform must address the role of subsidized housing, and in late June it added the abolition of HUD to its welfare-reform agenda.

HUD, the quintessential Great Society department, was created in 1965 with the best of intentions: to create decent housing for the poor. Exactly the opposite has happened. Except for housing for the elderly and handicapped, subsidized housing is often the worst housing available.

RE

About the Author

Robert Stowe England

Featured Tags

THE Department of Housing and Urban Development is not just part of the welfare state; it is an engine that intensifies the social pathologies engendered and sustained by the failed welfare system. HUD does this by concentrating households headed by non-working single mothers in tight geographic locations where the moral norms of society arc observed mostly in the breach and where the rule of law is an oxymoron. This maelstrom of social decay can infect surrounding neighborhoods, creating what one Democratic senator has aptly called “zip codes of pathology.” The congressional Republican leadership realizes that broad welfare reform must address the role of subsidized housing, and in late June it added the abolition of HUD to its welfare-reform agenda.

HUD, the quintessential Great Society department, was created in 1965 with the best of intentions: to create decent housing for the poor. Exactly the opposite has happened. Except for housing for the elderly and handicapped, subsidized housing is often the worst housing available.