Federal public housing, which makes government-owned units available to low-income tenants for nominal rents, became the subject of major political conflict after World War II. The program, which originated with the Housing Act of 1937, had widespread public support during the Great Depression because of the crisis in housing and high unemployment rates. But World War II diverted building material away from the program, and public housing became used mainly for war industry workers instead of poverty-stricken families. Once the war ended and the New Deal coalition lost momentum, political conflicts ensued. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman proposed major funding for the public housing program, but his proposals proved to be very unpopular with Republicans who believed in limited government intervention in local affairs. Nevertheless, funding for continuing the program was included in the Housing Act of 1949, with subsequent legislation in 1954, 1959, 1964, and 1965 establishing more funds for the program.
In order to accommodate large numbers of people, many public housing developments were constructed as high-rises. Cities like St. Louis and Chicago were just two of the metropolitan areas that built large public housing complexes with federal funds. In 1955, the Pruitt-Igoe complex opened in St. Louis, providing 31 high-rise buildings that would accommodate approximately 3,000 residents. In Chicago, most of the high-rise projects occupied city blocks and were typically 15 to 19 stories high. Several of the public housing projects there included Cabrini-Green, Stateway Gardens, and Robert Taylor homes. When it opened in 1962, Robert Taylor was the largest public housing complex in the country with 4,415 units in 28 identical 16-story buildings.
Many cities had separate complexes for white and black families throughout the 1950s. There were also serious design flaws in many of the high-rise buildings, while the complexes were subject to hard use and poor upkeep. Other problems with the federal public housing program included determining which population to serve, site selection for housing, and financial issues. For example, in many other industrialized countries, public housing served a large segment of the population. The United States, however, decided from the beginning that the program was to serve only those who had no chance of obtaining real estate on the private market. The first 20 years of the program had established limits on income, but by 1959, the federal government removed them and left it to the discretion of the local authorities to decide who should receive public housing. As a result, many families who earned slightly better incomes than public housing tenants ended up occupying worse housing because of income limits. Strict income ceilings also contributed to a negative public perception of those families that occupied public housing.
Site selection for public housing created tension between the federal and local governments over who would control decisions about the locations of the housing. During the 1950s and 1960s, states established local housing authorities to administer the federally financed projects. However, local governments faced tough opposition from middle-class families who did not welcome the thought of housing for the poor in their neighborhoods. Legislation in many states even required that local participation in the program be approved by voters. Local housing authorities did manage to build homes in dilapidated areas that were already labeled as slums. However, many families who might have benefited from the low rent of public housing avoided the stigma of such housing developments, which became known as “the projects.”
Finances were a problem as Congress consistently appropriated money for far fewer housings units than had been authorized under legislation. The largest gap took place in the 1950s, when the Housing Act of 1959 appropriated approximately 135,000 units per year over six years. As a result, by 1960, less than one-quarter of the allocated 810,000 new units had been built. On September 9, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act, part of his Great Society program to help the lower classes of American society. Two major policy shifts created by the Housing and Urban Development Act were the provision of subsidies to the people who rented public housing and the creation of Section 235. Section 235 reduced interest rates for home buyers depending on their income, while the provision of subsidies meant that buyers would not have to pay insurance premiums and market interest out of their own pockets. However, lax lending practices led to foreclosures, high defaults, and blocks of boarded-up public homes in cities like Detroit and Chicago throughout the late 1960s.
Further reading: R. Allen Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing: Ideology and Change in Public Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006).
—Hilary Styer
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