This book interrogates eleven myths about public housing in the United States contributing to the conventional wisdom, ‘shared by American urbanists and politicians, that public housing has failed in every possible dimension’ (p.1). Joseph Heathcott explores myth one, ‘public Housing stands alone’, operating in isolation from the city and neighbourhoods. Using Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri as his principal example, Heathcott argues that ‘the challenges faced at Pruitt-Igoe signalled massive seismic shifts under way in northeastern and midwestern cities through capital flight, disinvestment, suburbanization and population decline’ (p.45). These changes were felt first in Pruitt-Igoe because job loss in St Louis was severe and the ability of city officials to mitigate the impact was limited by the city's fixed boundaries. Myth two relates to perceptions that public housing's problems relate to its design: ‘modern architecture failed public housing’. Not so, argues D. Bradford Hunt; the problems relate to the ‘youth density’ in the schemes. Fritz Umbach and Alexander Gerould examine myth three, ‘public housing breeds crime’. Their detailed evidence exploration for this claim leads to the conclusion ‘. . . the frequently invoked idea that “public housing increases crime” is demonstrably false as both an analytic conclusion and causal model’ (p.89). Using New York City Housing Authority as his primary example, Nicholas Dagen Bloom demonstrates that myth four — ‘high rise public housing is unmanageable’— is also false. Yonah Freemark explores fabrication five, that ‘public housing ended in failure during the 1970s’, arguing that, despite the Nixon administration's attempt to eliminate funding for the constructing of new public housing, Congressional resistance preserved funding albeit in new forms, partially as a result of successful attempts in the 1960s to rectify some of the flaws of public housing. Myth six, ‘mixed income development is the only way to fix failed public housing’, is scrutinised by Lawrence J. Vale. Using the experience of Boston's Commonwealth programme, Vale claims that ‘fixing without mixing’ is achievable by resident participation supported by a community organiser and neighbourhood, city and state involvement.

Myths nine, ten and eleven relate how public housing tenants behave. Myth nine – ‘public housing residents hate the police’ – is phoney, argues Fritz Umbach. Residents simply demand their fair share of policing services. Myth ten, ‘public sector tenants are powerless’, and myth eleven, ‘tenants do not invest in public housing’, are investigated by Lisa Levenstein and Rhonda Y. Williams. They conclude that, in the past, black women activists achieved considerable change in the way their homes were managed and that black women have invested in their homes.

Myths seven and eight relate to the international experience of public housing. Nancy Kwak uses Singapore to explore myth eight that ‘public housing is only for poor people’. In Singapore, private sector savings were compulsorily mobilised through the Central Provident Fund to finance public housing on a large scale. Later, Singaporeans were allowed to allocate part of their savings to buy a public housing flat. These initiatives blurred the public/private divide, so entrenched in the United States. As part of his analysis of myth seven, ‘only immigrants still live in European public housing’, Florian Urban claims that that ‘the massive investment by the Berlin government in renovating these buildings [former East German housing estates] enabled them to remain socioeconomically integrated’ (p. 168). Moreover, in the former West Berlin tower blocks ‘there is no sign of the development of ethnic enclaves’ – an outcome he attributes to the long-term state and municipal intervention in the housing market.

This is a very good book. All the chapters are well written, informed and refreshingly prepared to draw robust conclusions albeit that the examples Germany and Singapore provide an insufficient base on which to make generalisations about ‘public housing’ outside the United States that, under the ‘social housing’ label, takes myriad forms.

Given that the trajectory of ‘social housing’ in Europe, especially in the UK, is following the United States’ ‘welfare model’, the issues explored in Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality and Social Policy might form the basis for a similar book related to Europe and/or the United Kingdom. Several of the identified United States myths are pertinent especially the notion that public housing operates in isolation from its local, regional and national contexts. Others, such as ‘social housing is subsidised because the price of private rental stock is the real price, reached by logic of the market’ (Osborne, Reference Osborne2015), and ‘the levels of dependency among social housing renters is quite staggering’ (Duncan Smith, Reference Duncan Smith2008), could be added.