America's public housing crisis may worsen with Trump budget

Heavily subsidised govt-owned housing peaked in the early 1990s at about 1.4 million apartments

The loss of more than 80 lives in London’s Grenfell Tower fire on June 14 was tragic and wholly preventable.

It is no coincidence, though, that it happened in subsidized low-income housing.

As someone who has spent 25 years researching and writing about the travails of public housing in the U.S., I had this immediate thought: Could the same thing happen here?

Various commentators have pointed out that American regulations require sprinklers and do not permit the use of cladding materials with combustible plastic cores in high-rise structures.

Yet while the facades of American public