Locally, regionally, and nationally, the lack of affordable housing is an urgent and ongoing issue. As elected officials rush to ramp up aid for the construction of affordable apartments, scholars and policymakers are asking how our present system of housing subsidies—both its strengths and its shortcomings—came into being. In this book, Tom Hanchett takes a case-study approach, tracking low-rent housing in the growing city of Charlotte, North Carolina, from the beginnings of public housing circa 1940 to the present.

Looking beyond policy battles in Washington, Hanchett tells an intimate history of how federal initiatives played out on the ground, making clear connections between the creation of federal housing programs and how agencies interacted with local and state forces to actually produce housing. Using Charlotte as a lens, Hanchett shows in detail how power brokers have clashed on all levels of government and yet have the ability to empower both citizens and elected officials to take action toward better housing for all, in North Carolina’s most populous city and beyond.