permanent supportive housing provider in the Tenderloin told me, “It’s absolutely undisputed that the homeless crisis in America began after severe cuts to federal affordable housing funds.”62 And an ACLU expert said, “The Reagan administration slashed the budget for our federal affordable housing programs by eighty percent.”63 But public spending on housing barely changed under Reagan, going from $41.8 billion to $40.6 billion between 1981 and 1989, in constant 2019 dollars.64 Reagan did oversee the end of public housing construction, but this was in the context of a shift away from federal
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