In Cleveland, 1969, a young white teenage blues enthusiast, at work at a summer factory job in the polluted Cuyahoga River Valley, meets a fellow shop floor worker named Fred Davis--who turns out to be an authentic Kansas City blues singer just-released from prison. Young Jon Levine dreams of addressing racial injustice and helping to revive Fred's career. The effort proves tragically complicated, as he finds himself drawn into the world of the Cleveland black ghetto, the conflicting desir...

Billions of American tax dollars go into a vast array of programs targeting various social issues: the opioid epidemic, criminal violence, chronic unemployment, and so on. Yet the problems persist and even grow. Howard Husock argues that we have lost sight of a more powerful strategy—a preventive strategy, based on positive social norms.In the past, individuals and institutions of civil society actively promoted what may be called “bourgeois norms,” to nurture healthy habits so tha...

This book combines a critique of more than a century of housing reform policies, including public and other subsidized housing as well as exclusionary zoning, with the idea that simple low-cost housing—a poor side of town—helps those of modest means build financial assets and join in the local democratic process. It is more of a historical narrative than a straight policy book, however—telling stories of Jacob Riis, zoning reformer Lawrence Veiller, anti-reformer Jane Jacobs, housing devel...

How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help — and how to fix itAs the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In The Projects, Howard A. Husock explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group ...

In Philanthropy Under Fire, author Howard Husock defends the American tradition of independent philanthropy from significant political and intellectual challenges which threaten it today. Although the U.S. continues to be the most charitable nation in the world, serious efforts seek to discourage traditional, personal charitable giving by changing the tax code, and directing philanthropy toward causes chosen by government. Some voices seek to narrow the very definition of philanth...