Housing for the Poor

National Policy on Housing for the Poor

President johnson has renewed a request that Congress vote a supplementary appropriation of $30 million to launch the controversial rent subsidy program which it authorized in July 1965.1 The plan, for which Congress so far has neglected to provide funds, would constitute a far-reaching innovation in the federal government's efforts to help poor people find decent shelter. “In the long run,” the President said when he first proposed the rent subsidy program, “this may prove the most effective instrument of our new housing policy.”2 Opponents as well as supporters of the program, which won the endorsement of House and Senate by only narrow margins, recognize that it may offer a means of making a real dent in the ...