IntroductionThe Housing Revolution We Need

Are we on the brink of a revolution in housing policy? In the three-quarters of a century since Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised Americans "the right to a decent home," the housing market has remained both a cause of America's racial and economic inequality and a woefully inadequate solution to it. Today's calls for a "right to housing" echo FDR's language, but promise to overcome the serious limits of the pro-homeownership, anti-renter, bank-friendly policies that are the New Deal's legacy. Thomas J. Sugrue introduces the contributors for this issue's special section "The Right to a Home."