This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest in urban policy and planning with a broad background on why housing matters and how its unique attributes a) give rise to certain policy and planning challenges and b) should shape how practitioners respond to these challenges. A major theme of the course is that consequences of previous policy and planning interventions have had lasting effects. These are reflected today in continued residential segregation by race and income, the persistence of barriers to affordable and healthy housing, and gaps in homeownership rates and housing wealth by race and ethnicity. The theme of structural racism as shaping access to housing over US history will be examined at some length.

The course first lays out a framework for understanding the roles housing plays in individuals’ lives, neighborhoods, and the metropolis. Class sessions examine the unique attributes and roles of housing, including the role of homes as constitutive of the private and domestic realms, housing as an icon and encoder of social status, and housing as a commodity. This section of the course also explores housing as a driver of urbanization and shaper of neighborhoods, as well as theories of neighborhood change.

The next several sessions of the course focus on government interventions into housing in the United States from the beginning of urbanization up to the 1960s. Classes cover early efforts to eradicate slums and improve housing for the poor; systematic efforts to enforce segregation by race in the early 20th century including the practice of redlining; federal involvement in homeownership and suburbanization; the policy motivations and design of early public housing and urban renewal programs; and local interventions to regulate the development of housing and access to it, particularly in suburbs. We then focus on a second wave of interventions arising in the 1960s in response to unanticipated consequences of earlier interventions, including public housing and urban renewal, as well as responses to demographic and economic shifts and the Civil Rights and citizen participation movements. This section of the course examines policy interventions aimed at affordability, including rental subsidy programs and community development programs, and new ideas about who should be in charge of revitalization plans and where federal assistance should be targeted.

We next explore recent trends shaping housing and planning and policy interventions. Sessions will focus on housing tenure, looking at homeownership today and in the wake of the foreclosure crisis; rentership and housing instability; and alternative forms of tenure such as community land trusts. We also examine neighborhood change and stasis in today’s cities, looking at trends in gentrification as well as continued concentrated poverty. In this portion of the course, we will engage with a number of local housing developers, finance professionals, and city and state leaders working to lower the cost of housing. Given the slow departure from the housing sphere by the federal government, these sessions will necessarily focus more on local responses to housing issues.

In the final section of the course we will take a close look at meeting the nation’s evolving housing needs in the face of climate change, demographic shifts like population aging, and growing awareness of the connections between health and housing, and engage in discussion about future directions for planning and policy.

 

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 9th.