This course will explore the institutional, political, and economic context for the making of housing policy in the United States. We will examine competing ideas about solving the nation's housing problems through public intervention in the market focusing on the shift from social welfare to neoliberal policy approaches. In so doing, we will evaluate federal and local public sector responses to housing problems in this country, the different approaches taken by successive federal administrations in the U.S., and regional approaches to affordable housing. Special emphasis will be given to recent initiatives to increase the residential mobility of subsidized housing residents and to deconcentrate poverty by dispersing subsidized housing throughout metropolitan regions, and to the foreclosure crisis.