Could a bold anti-poverty experiment from the 1960s inspire a new era in housing justice?

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Michigan State University
(THE CONVERSATION) In cities across the U.S., the housing crisis has reached a breaking point. Rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is rising and working-class neighborhoods are threatened by displacement.
These challenges might feel unprecedented. But they echo a moment more than half a century ago.
In the 1950s and 1960s, housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics. American cities were grappling with rapid urban decline, segregated and substandard housing, and the fallout of highway construction and urban renewal projects that displaced hundreds of thousands of disproportionately low-income and Black residents.
The federal government decided to try to do something about it.
President Lyndon B. Johnson launched one of the most ambitious experiments in urban policy: the Model Cities Program.
As a scholar of housing justice and urban planning, I've studied how this short-lived initiative aimed to move beyond patchwork fixes to poverty and instead tackle its structural causes by empowering communities to shape their own futures.
The Model Cities Program emerged in 1966 as part of Johnson's Great Society agenda, a sweeping effort to eliminate poverty, reduce racial injustice and expand social welfare programs in the United States.
Earlier urban renewal programs had been roundly criticized for displacing communities of color. Much of this displacement occurred through federally funded highway and slum clearance projects that demolished entire neighborhoods and often left residents without decent options for new housing.
So the Johnson administration sought a more holistic approach. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act established a federal framework for cities to coordinate housing, education, employment, health care and social services at the neighborhood level.
To qualify for the program, cities had to apply for planning grants by submitting a detailed proposal that included an analysis of neighborhood conditions, long-term goals and strategies for addressing problems.
Federal funds went directly to city governments, which then distributed them to local agencies and community organizations through contracts. These funds were relatively flexible but had to be tied to locally tailored plans. For example, Kansas City, Missouri, used Model Cities funding to support a loan program that expanded access to capital for local small businesses, helping them secure financing that might otherwise have been out of reach.
Unlike previous programs, Model Cities emphasized what Johnson described as 'comprehensive' and 'concentrated' efforts. It wasn't just about rebuilding streets or erecting public housing. It was about creating new ways for government to work in partnership with the people most affected by poverty and racism.
A revolutionary approach to poverty
What made Model Cities unique wasn't just its scale but its philosophy. At the heart of the program was an insistence on ' widespread citizen participation,' which required cities that received funding to include residents in the planning and oversight of local programs.
The program also drew inspiration from civil rights leaders. One of its early architects, Whitney M. Young Jr., had called for a ' Domestic Marshall Plan ' – a reference to the federal government's efforts to rebuild Europe after World War II – to redress centuries of racial inequality.
Young's vision helped shape the Model Cities framework, which proposed targeted systemic investments in housing, health, education, employment and civic leadership in minority communities. In Atlanta, for example, the Model Cities Program helped fund neighborhood health clinics and job training programs. But the program also funded leadership councils that for the first time gave local low-income residents a direct voice in how city funds were spent.
In other words, neighborhood residents weren't just beneficiaries. They were planners, advisers and, in some cases, staffers.
This commitment to community participation gave rise to a new kind of public servant – what sociologists Martin and Carolyn Needleman famously called ' guerrillas in the bureaucracy.'
These were radical planners – often young, idealistic and deeply embedded in the neighborhoods they served. Many were recruited and hired through new Model Cities funding that allowed local governments to expand their staff with community workers aligned with the program's goals.
Working from within city agencies, these new planners used their positions to challenge top-down decision-making and push for community-driven planning.
Their work was revolutionary not because they dismantled institutions but because they reimagined how institutions could function, prioritizing the voices of residents long excluded from power.
Strengthening community ties
In cities across the country, planners fought to redirect public resources toward locally defined priorities.
In some cities, such as Tucson, the program funded education initiatives such as bilingual cultural programming and college scholarships for local students. In Baltimore, it funded mobile health services and youth sports programs.
In New York City, the program supported new kinds of housing projects called vest-pocket developments, which got their name from their smaller scale: midsize buildings or complexes built on vacant lots or underutilized land. New housing such as the Betances Houses in the South Bronx were designed to add density without major redevelopment taking place – a direct response to midcentury urban renewal projects, which had destroyed and displaced entire neighborhoods populated by the city's poorest residents. Meanwhile, cities such as Seattle used the funds to renovate older apartment buildings instead of tearing them down, which helped preserve the character of local neighborhoods.
The goal was to create affordable housing while keeping communities intact.
What went wrong?
Despite its ambitious vision, Model Cities faced resistance almost from the start. The program was underfunded and politically fragile. While some officials had hoped for US$2 billion in annual funding, the actual allocation was closer to $500 million to $600 million, spread across more than 60 cities.
Then the political winds shifted. Though designed during the optimism of the mid-1960s, the program started being implemented under President Richard Nixon in 1969. His administration pivoted away from 'people programs' and toward capital investment and physical development. Requirements for resident participation were weakened, and local officials often maintained control over the process, effectively marginalizing the everyday citizens the program was meant to empower.
In cities such as San Francisco and Chicago, residents clashed with bureaucrats over control, transparency and decision-making. In some places, participation was reduced to token advisory roles. In others, internal conflict and political pressure made sustained community governance nearly impossible.
Critics, including Black community workers and civil rights activists, warned that the program risked becoming a new form of ' neocolonialism,' one that used the language of empowerment while concentrating control in the hands of white elected officials and federal administrators.
A legacy worth revisiting
Although the program was phased out by 1974, its legacy lived on.
In cities across the country, Model Cities trained a generation of Black and brown civic leaders in what community development leaders and policy advocates John A. Sasso and Priscilla Foley called ' a little noticed revolution.' In their book of the same name, they describe how those involved in the program went on to serve in local government, start nonprofits and advocate for community development.
It also left an imprint on later policies. Efforts such as participatory budgeting, community land trusts and neighborhood planning initiatives owe a debt to Model Cities' insistence that residents should help shape the future of their communities. And even as some criticized the program for failing to meet its lofty goals, others saw its value in creating space for democratic experimentation.
Today's housing crisis demands structural solutions to structural problems. The affordable housing crisis is deeply connected to other intersecting crises, such as climate change, environmental injustice and health disparities, creating compounding risks for the most vulnerable communities. Addressing these issues through a fragmented social safety net – whether through housing vouchers or narrowly targeted benefit programs – has proven ineffective.
Today, as policymakers once again debate how to respond to deepening inequality and a lack of affordable housing, the lost promise of Model Cities offers vital lessons.
Model Cities was far from perfect. But it offered a vision of how democratic, local planning could promote health, security and community.