Left Urbanism

(Speaking from a USA perspective) How do we start to convince people that building and maintaining housing should be funded through public funds and the decisions should be made by the public? It's hard to educate the well-meaning general public to be skeptical of the developers that roll into town and claim to be able to build affordable housing. The programs our cities often rely on aren't meeting the reality of what our communities need in terms of long-term pricing, quality of housing, and related resources. What do we do?