Housing & the democratic ideal : the life and thought of Charles Abrams / A. Scott Henderson.

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Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• 1 Immigration and Community in the Expanding Metropolis
• 2 Law, Real Estate, and Praxis
• 3 From Tenement Laws to Housing Authorities: Social Provision and the New Deal State
• 4 Vision and Reality: Implementing Policy on the Local Level
• 5 The Practitioner as Scholar: Urban Studies and the Conflict Between "Land" and "Industry"
• 6 Federal Housing Policies and the Problem of a "Business Welfare State"
• 7 "The Walls of Stuyvesant Town": Urban Redevelopment and the Struggle Between Public and Private Power
• 8 The Quest for Open Housing: Racial Discrimination and the Role of the State
• 9 Cold War, the United Nations, and "Technical Assistance"
• 10 Urban Renewal, the "Perversion" of Social Reform, and Home Ownership for the Poor
• 11 "When the Grey Mist Subsides"

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Charles Abrams is remembered as the foremost advocate of public housing policies from the New Deal to his death in 1970. He was one of the principal authors of New York State's Municipal Housing Authorities Act, and first counsel to the New York City Housing Authority. It was in this role that he established that the power of eminent domain could be used to clear slums. The author documents this period of Abrams's career and his subsequent role as a critic of the movement of urban renewal policy away from providing housing for the poor. As a liberal, he became appalled by the government's de facto collaboration in segregated housing as the price of involving the private sector. He then emerged as a civil rights advocate serving as chair of the New York State Commission against Discrimination. The description of Abrams's career as a teacher and leading scholar in the field of public housing is quite good. The only shortcoming of the book is that it leaves many tantalizing questions about his early career unanswered. All collections. I. Cohen emeritus, Illinois State University