Welfeld painstakingly tracks the pillaging of a good idea: federally subsidized housing. The scams are here--tax write-offs, depreciation, pork barrels, inflated prices, windfall profits and a postwar history that lead to the S&L scam. Although Welfeld, a senior analyst at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, attempts to make the book readable with light touches, he nonetheless leaves one puzzled over the welter of housing regulations that enable so many to plunder HUD funds. Instead of starting wth scandals of recent memory, at the outset he plops one into a muddle of regulations from the 1940s. When Welfeld tackles the current situation, though, he offers a seemingly sound plan to salvage HUD.
Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
"Irving Welfeld has brought his enormous knowledge of our housing programs to the analysis of HUD scandals... He shows that our basic problem has been badly designed programs which cannot... be effectively administered so as to direct subsidies to those who need them most... Welfeld tells us not only what has gone wrong... but how we can set it right… This is a book for everyone who deals with and is concerned with housing policy."
—Nathan Glaer, Harvard University
"Irving Welfeld, an experienced analyst of housing policy, has undertaken the difficult job of finding out what went wrong in federal housing programs since World War II. Though housing has undeniably improved, the writer is discouraged about everything except the ingenuity some Americans have demonstrated in exploiting housing legislation for their private benefit. Mr. Welfeld concludes on the happy note that he has designed a better housing program and he may be right."
—Roger Starr, former head New York Housing Authority
"Welfeld skillfully roasts a herd of sacred cows and serves up a tasty barbecue of good intentions badly legislated, inept program management, and chicanery, misfeasance and malfeasance by a colorfully drawn cast of characters. Each course is served with balance and entertaining garnishes. His recipe for change offers a provocative bromo for the indigestion and heartburn that these tales should cause among housing advocates, legislators and professionals. Must reading for anyone who cares about the housing crisis in our country."
—Barry Zigas, president, National Low Income Housing Coalition
"Irving Welfeld knows more about government housing programs than anyone in America. Fortunately, he also knows how to write. HUD Scandals is accurate and well documented, but nevertheless reads like a novel.... [It] should be required reading for every informed voter who wants to know not only about housing policy but also about how government policy is made and carried out, that is, how his tax dollars are spent.... But Welfeld is not content merely to relate the shortcomings of the past. He has a better mousetrap. Undaunted by the fact that the world has not beaten a path to his door since he first constructed the mousetrap some twenty years ago, he once again offers his ... programs for consideration, while exercising a dignified restraint in not saying in so many words 'I told you so.'"
—Sheldon L. Baskin, developer and attorney at law
"Irving Welfeld's HUD Scandals enlightens, entertains, teaches, and challenges; a formidable combination! The book is a joy to read. Only a bemused observer and critic like Welfeld would have the patience and insight to pierce the complex and labyrinthine character of U. S. Housing policy. His lesson is both clear and correct—where policy is complex and dominated by powerful interests, rely on simple arrangements that get the incentives right, that further consumer choice, that aid those that need it the most, and that rely on markets and not on bureaucratic discretion. It demonstrates that scholarship does not have to be dull to be revealing, and to deal in the abstract to be insightful."
—Robert Haveman, John Bascom Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Welfeld is a provocatively original and shrewdly knowledgable housing policy analyst. His readers. . . will have to confront fresh viewpoints that may well become their own."
—Hilbert Fefferman, consultant on HUD legislation
