"...the most original--and profoundly disturbing--work on the critical issue of housing affordability...." --Chester Hartman, President, Poverty and Race Research Action Council In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome? Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous.

Blatant tenant hostility towards landlords, widespread neglect and wholesale abandonment of properties, and a critical shortage of housing accommodations for low- and moderate-income tenants for all symptoms, in Professor Rose's view, of the current legal relationship between landlords and tenants—an unworkable anachronism dangerously maladjusted to social, economic, and political realities. This book describes in detail the patterns by which myriad inequities have been woven into the law, and suggests some remedies. It provides, in plain language, a comprehensive and up-to-date manual of the rights and liabilities of landlords and tenants. A basic reference work for anyone concerned with landlord-tenant relations.