Housing Policy in the Great Society, Part Two
Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University Into the Wild Blue Yonder: The Urban Crisis, Rocket Science, and the Pursuit of Transformation Housing Policy in the Great Society, Part Two Alexander von Hoffman March 2011 W11-3 The research for this working paper was conducted with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the Fannie Mae Foundation. © by Alexander von Hoffman. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Climbing high into the sun Introduction Of the several large and important domestic housing and urban programs produced by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society administration, the best-known is Model Cities. Although it lasted only from 1966 to 1974, its advocates believed Model Cities had promised a better tomorrow for America’s cities and bitterly lamented its termination—blaming Richard Nixon’s policies, diversion of funds for the Vietnam war, and the nation’s lack of commitment to social progress. Yet the legislation that created Model Cities was ambitious, contradictory, and vague. As such, it vividly expressed the idealistic impulses, currents of thought, and reactions to events that converged, however incoherently, in national urban policy of the 1960s. At the center of the fervor for domestic policy was the president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, who hungered for dramatic new programs that would transform the country the way New Deal policies had reshaped America in his youth.
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