Abstract

Can We Do It? II. A Business Man's Prescription

All the new housing built this year will be beyond the means of half of the population, whether it is housing for sale or housing for rent in the United States. If one disregards a little trickle of public housing built by local authorities during U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration for the poorest third of the population, the same thing could have been said in any year of the past half-century, in good times or bad. This fact must be the starting-point of any useful discussion of housing. Under their influence government policies today are aiding speculative builders of houses for sale. This is wrong, for there is no shortage of credit for that purpose. The federal government should stop aiding speculative builders to peddle houses on the installment plan and should start aiding communities to build large-scale rental-housing projects.