""An excellent contribution. Beard adroitly summarizes and evaluates nearly two centuries of US housing policy."—Jeremy B. Johnson, Carroll College

Why are some people in the United States securely housed, while others struggle to obtain and maintain stable homes? What beliefs, and their consequent policies, have led to these disparities? Why have decades of government intervention failed to foster affordable housing and end homelessness?

To answer these questions, Virginia Parish Beard traces some two centuries of US federal housing policy—from the nineteenth century incorporation of the English Poor Laws through the second Trump administration’s funding cuts. Showing how a widespread tendency to blame people for their poverty has worked against the development of effective policies, Beard unpacks the ideas that have undermined an understanding of the actual causes of housing insecurity in the United States.