President Reagan's Proposed Policy for Federal Housing

Upon entering office, president Reagan cited theme house shortages and accommodate blight as evidence of what he termed as the failure of past national social programs ( learngressional Quarterly, 1986). He said further that the policy of his administration would be to (1) trim down the federal role in solving lodgment businesss, eyepatch (2) increasing incentives for private sector entities to provide solutions to these problems.

The President was impressive in persuading Congress to accept substantial reductions in federal lodging programs (Congressional Quarterly, 1986). Reagan's sharpest cuts in federal housing funding were in the area of housing subsidies, "particularly for programs to construct housing for the poor" (Congressional Quarterly, 1986). During the 19811984 era conclusion 3(Reagan's first term), federal funding from subsidized housing was reduced from approximately $30 billion per year to approximately $10 billion per year (Congressional Quarterly, 1986).

President Carter had proposed 254,500 federally subsidized housing units for fiscal 1981, and 260,000 for fiscal 1982. The President persuaded Congress to reduce these levels to 210,000 and 153,000, respectively. By 1984, the number of federally subsidized housing units was down to 100,000.

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President Reagan as well as vetoed a bill which would cede provided following prise subsidies for buyers of new houses, during the highinterest rate period of the early1980s (Congressional Quarterly, 1986). This bill was intended to stimulate housing construction in an economy where new housing starts had locomote below the 1.1 million annual rate from the 1.7 million rate in the late1970s (Council of Economic Advisers, 1989).

Advocacy groups for the unsettled look for larger numbers, because larger numbers create a greater political impact. A greater political impact, they hope, buns be translated into effective action to relieve the plight of the homeless. Conversely, the Reagan governing's political agenda had no room for the homeless.

Acknowledging their existence would have created both budgetary and policy problems (Ehrlich, 1988). As a consequence, the Reagan Administration attempted to define the homeless out of existence, by contending that some of the homeless are simply persons temporarily between 7permanent residences. The incision of Housing and Urban Development attempted to minimize the circumstance of the problem (Ehrlich, 1988)an approach eagerly endorsed by many in the nation's business community, who worried that an acknowledgement of a major homelessness problem will translate into higher federal taxes (Magnet, 1987).

The Administration also persuaded Congress to enact a program which provided an incentive for landlords, developers, and builders to rehabilitate existing decaying housing. These incentives were provided in the form of federal incometax exemptions, as opposed to actual federal disbursements in the forms of subsidies. The Reagan Administration claimed that the refilling program would result in an increase in the 4usable housing stock of a magnitude that would enable lowincome families to be able to find housing which would be affordable with the protrude of federal hosuing vouchers.

Glazer, N. "The Social
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