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The past:
United States Housing Act of 1937 |
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Political compromise shapes public housing |
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Lenwood Johnson,
public housing resident,
Allen Parkway Village, Houston
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Dr. Stephen Fox
professor
Rice University, Houston
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When they set up the 1937 Housing Act during the New Deal era
I'm wondering if Roosevelt didn't have to cut a deal to find some
way to get some of these programs passed and he had to give some
local control to businesses just to get them passed.
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The reinforced concrete structure of public housing buildings
is visible in the construction photograph of a public housing
project in Houston. (photo: Houston Public Library)
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| San Antonio's Apache-Alazan housing project under construction. (photo: Institute of Texan Cultures) |
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Public housing, from its inception, was extremely controversial.
The passage of the Wagner - Stegal Act creating the United States
Housing Authority in 1937 entailed political compromises. One
of them had to do with the issue of local control. Another effected
the construction of public housing. In order to placate the private
housing market and to reassure it that public housing would be
so expensive that it could not really compete economically without
subsidies as well to ensure that it provided large scale construction
firms with construction work, very high standards of construction
were mandated for public housing.
Therefore all of these initial four public housing projects in
Houston and like all of the public housing built under the auspices
of the United States Housing Authority they were built of reinforced
concrete frame construction, concrete piers, foundations, concrete
floor and roof slabs, concrete columns, in filled with tile block,
exterior and party walls with plaster on metal lath interior partitions.
This would have been sort of office building construction in the
1930's and 1940's periods.
It meant that they were expensive to build but it also meant that
they were extremely durable. And so have often withstood the rigors
of time, particularly, even though, as in the case of Allen Parkway
Village where they have been for their entire duration very poorly
maintained. |
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Despite these concessions, the real estate industry still opposed
public housing.
The National Association of Real Estate Boards newsletter in 1939
stated, "United States Housing Authority projects now underway
are undiluted socialism..."
The principal of public responsibility for housing, even at the
state and local level was not yet established. That principal
is still debated by some today. |
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