It is a continuation of the British obsession with the housing market, that has scarred public policy throughout the post-war period.

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He said the previous Labour government had "bribed and bullied councils into privatisation" and accused the coalition of pursuing a "neo-liberal policy of running down public sector housing".

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Seth Diamond, the commissioner of the city Department of Homeless Services, said it was "bad public policy" to give people in shelters priority for public housing.

WSJ: Homeless Blame Game

Thus, Mr Tung's biggest policy proposal was an over-ambitious programme to build public housing.

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After graduating with a masters in public policy from Berkeley, she worked for the New York City Housing Preservation Department, underwriting its programs for affordable housing.

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The coalition has blamed Mr. Bloomberg for discontinuing a long-standing policy of giving people in homeless shelters priority for public-housing programs in June 2005.

WSJ: Homeless Blame Game

"Maybe there is a particular stigma attached to public housing, " said Becky Koepnick, the director of the Moelis Institute for Affordable Housing Policy at New York University.

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Again, the recent housing crisis is a perfect example that has been discussed ad nauseam: Lenders were encouraged by public policy grounded in social-engineering to make uneconomic loans, and borrowers, often with the prospects of lax penalties, did the rational thing: They took all the money they could get.

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From a public policy perspective, the plan is at odds with Congress' recent moves to bolster the low-income housing tax credit program.

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