Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968

Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968
Long title	An act to assist in the provision of housing for low and moderate income families, and to extend and amend laws relating to housing and urban development.
Enacted by	the 90th United States Congress
Effective	August 1, 1968
Citations
Public law	90-448
Codification
Titles amended	Title 12—Banks and Banking; Title 42—Public Health and Welfare;
Legislative history
	Introduced in the Senate as S. 3497 by John Sparkman (D–AL) on March, 1968; Committee consideration by Banking; Passed the Senate on May 28, 1968 (67–4); Passed the House on July 26, 1968 (228-135); Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 1, 1968;

The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 90–448, 82 Stat. 476, enacted August 1, 1968, was passed during the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. The act came on the heels of major riots across cities throughout the U.S. in 1967, the assassination of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and the publication of the report of the Kerner Commission, which recommended major expansions in public funding and support of urban areas. President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to the legislation as one of the most significant laws ever passed in the U.S., due to its scale and ambition.^[1] The act's declared intention was constructing or rehabilitating 26 million housing units, 6 million of these for low- and moderate-income families, over the next 10 years.^[2]

The act authorized $5.3 billion in spending over its first three years, designed to fund 1.7 million units over that time.^[3] In the longer term, the act was designed to cost $50 billion over 10 years, had it ever been fully implemented. Its policies were to be implemented by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had been created in 1965.

The legislation provided a significant expansion in funding for public programs, such as Public Housing. But it also marked a shift in federal programs, increasingly focusing on using private developers as a strategy to encourage housing production of affordable units.^[4] Though the program's 10-year ambitions were not achieved, in some ways it set the tone for future U.S. approaches to policy because of this focus on public-private joint initiatives in achieving public ends.

^ Coan, Carl A.S. (1969). "The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968: Landmark Legislation for the Urban Crisis". The Urban Lawyer. 1 (1): 1–33.
^ McGhee, Fred (September 5, 2018). "The Most Important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn't the Fair Housing Act". Shelterforce. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
^ "Summary of '68 Session". The New York Times. October 14, 1968.
^ von Hoffman, Alexander (2013). "Calling upon the Genius of Private Enterprise: The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and the Liberal Turn to Public-Private Partnerships". Studies in American Political Development. 27 (2): 165–194. doi:10.1017/S0898588X13000102. S2CID 233362362.

[1] Coan, Carl A.S. (1969). "The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968: Landmark Legislation for the Urban Crisis". The Urban Lawyer. 1 (1): 1–33.

[2] McGhee, Fred (September 5, 2018). "The Most Important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn't the Fair Housing Act". Shelterforce. Retrieved August 30, 2019.

[3] "Summary of '68 Session". The New York Times. October 14, 1968.

[4] von Hoffman, Alexander (2013). "Calling upon the Genius of Private Enterprise: The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and the Liberal Turn to Public-Private Partnerships". Studies in American Political Development. 27 (2): 165–194. doi:10.1017/S0898588X13000102. S2CID 233362362.

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