Could a bold anti-poverty experiment from the 1960s inspire a new era in housing justice?

Model Cities staff in front of a Baltimore field office in 1971. Robert Breck Chapman Collection, Langsdale Library Special Collections, University of Baltimore, CC BY-NC-ND

by Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Michigan State University

In cities across the U.S., the housing crisis has reached a breaking point. Rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is rising and working-class neighborhoods are threatened by displacement.

These challenges might feel unprecedented. But they echo a moment more than half a century ago.

In the 1950s and 1960s, housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics. American cities were grappling with rapid urban decline, segregated and substandard housing, and the fallout of highway construction and urban renewal projects that displaced hundreds of th