Housing Rights and Inequality in Postwar America

Abstract

In the United States the extension of social rights, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, has been contested and uneven. The politics that have shaped the American welfare state has provided some population groups greater access to these rights than others. By examining the extension of government housing subsidies during the middle decades of the twentieth century era, this paper reveals the dynamics that created social rights for some groups of citizens but not for others.

Keywords: social rights, housing, public policy. political history