One of the welfare state's favorite areas of intervention is housing construction and assistance for people on lower incomes. This is the subject of Howard A. Husock's book “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing” (New York University Press). Today, 1.6 million Americans live in 886,000 public housing units. Between 1937 and the mid-1980s, 1.5 million units were built in the “Projects,” most of them between 1950 and 1976.

Hundreds of thousands of these units have since been demolished. Today, the Projects are socially troubled areas with high levels of crime. An analysis of New York police data found that although public housing residents make up only four percent of the city's population, approximately 20 percent of violent crimes occur within 100 feet of public housing.

Yet it had all begun very differently. The Projects were intended to realize utopian concepts of better housing – it was no longer the market but government planning and administration that would determine how people lived.

According to Husock, it began in 1934 with the “Modern Housing Exhibition” at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The accompanying publication argued that radical changes in social philosophy and public policy were necessary to improve housing conditions.

The central thesis was that the market had failed when it came to housing. The exhibition's proponents maintained that laissez-faire had failed particularly badly in providing housing for low-income groups and that such housing could never be produced profitably.

One of the most important initiators, Catharine Bauer, was affectionately referred to as “Communist Catherine,” while another, Philip Johnson, admired Adolf Hitler, attended the National Socialist Party rally in Nuremberg and supported the antisemitic radio preacher Father Coughlin.

Bauer argued that modern housing required entirely new communities, comprehensively planned for long-term usefulness rather than speculative profits. Rents should reflect tenants' ability to pay rather than market conditions. Her book........

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