ABSTRACT
The federal government did not get into the housing business until the depression of the 1930s. During that period housing was defined and politcally ‘agendised’ primarily as an economic issue rather than a social welfare issue. The object was to prime the economic pump by boosting residential construction and hence employment in the building industry. The first of the home-owner programmes was passed before the New Deal, when Hoover was still President, and followed the recommendations of the Conference on Home Building and Home-ownership which met with his blessing in December 1931. During World War II defence housing was built on a large scale by the federal government. The 1949 Act began a sequence of omnibus, pork barrel (diffuse costs, diffuse benefits) measures in which urban redevelopment and urban renewal programmes were yoked both to FHA mortgage insurance programmes for groups with special needs and to public housing.
