I often think about what we do that our children will think is so obviously stupid. The way we treat our planet: that's a given. But what do we miss in our plans for neighborhood re-development? What do we not see as we sweat through a complicated closing to finance a new affordable housing development?  

Sheryll Cashin's "The Failures Of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream" is a tremendous summary of the various governmental programs - affordable housing programs at heart - that contributed to the housing crisis and the struggles we face today. Here are 3 examples (I skip over her first example, zoning, because we all blame zoning all the time already):

1. We used to think homogeneity stabilized housing values:

2. We destroyed ethnic neighborhoods in building a highway system:

3. We uprooted communities and concentrated them in public housing:

FHA, the highway system, Urban Renewal... these were all governmental programs intended to improve our cities, or at least improve our cities for some.   

Sheryll's book is well worth the read. And before you get the book, vote.