 THE PUBLIC HOUSING DEBATE CONTENTS:
Public Works Administration builds public housing Special interest, race and local control
copyright 1998 Texas Low Income Housing Information Service |
| The past: special interests, race and local control | |||||||||||||||||
| Joseph McCarthy and Harry Truman battle over public housing | |||||||||||||||||
| As a result of the furor over the post World War II housing shortage Congress set out again to look at the need for public housingin 1948. President Truman asked Congress to increase rapidly the number of public housing units. A "Joint Committee on Housing" was appointed by Congress. The leading committee member opposed to public housing, and willing to adopt the most extreme views of the anti-housing lobby, was Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Working with Senator McCarthy the anti-housing lobby adopted the dual tactics of arguing that public housing was socialistic and communistic and that public housing would eventually lead to compulsory racial integration. |
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| US Senator Joseph McCarthy led the fight against public housing as chair of the Congressional Joint Committee on Housing. (Photo: Dallas Public Library) | |||||||||||||||||
| President Truman blasted the tactics of the anti-housing lobby, "The attempts to mislead and frighten the people and their representatives in the Congress -- these false claims designed to prejudice some groups of people against others -- these malicious and willful appeals to ignorance and selfishness -- are examples of selfish propaganda at its worst." |
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| President Harry Truman was a supporter of public housing. (Photo: LBJ Library) | |||||||||||||||||
| Anti-public housing advertisement from Dallas newspaper,1962. | |||||||||||||||||
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| Housing Act of 1949: bipartisan support for public housing | |||||||||||||||||