Public Housing Becomes the Latest Progressive Fantasy

For a new generation of urban progressives, sky-high rents in New York, San Francisco, and other prosperous cities have inspired a fresh embrace of an old and seemingly discredited idea: public housing. Last week, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota calling for 9.5 million new public-housing units, at a cost of $800 billion over 10 years. Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, has proposed repealing a federal law limiting the construction of new public-housing projects. The group Data for Progress has called for a “massive new commitment to publicly owned homes.” Advocates have not been discouraged by the fact that violence and neglect led to the demolition of previous generations of public housing. Nor by the rats, leaks, mold, and lead paint that have now brought the New York City Housing Authority, by far the nation’s largest operator of public housing, under the oversight of a federal monitor. Stoked by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Los Angeles Tenants Union, and other groups, a PHIMBY movement—“public housing in my backyard”—has