Welfare Reform and Housing Assistance: A National Policy Debate

Early in the Carter administration the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was directed to develop a welfare reform plan that would reduce inequities in treatment among individuals, provide an incentive to work, and entail no net additional cost to the federal budget beyond sums spent for existing programs. One suggestion to provide funding was to reduce expenditures on current housing programs and use these resources to help support a general program of cash transfers to poor families. This article argues that exclusive reliance on cash transfers to provide decent housing for the poor would be both unsuccessful and inefficient.