Abstract

The Politics of Housing: II. A Plank in a Platform

Fourteen years after the first public-housing experiment Americans are no nearer solving the housing problem than when they started. In the years between 1934 and the present they have dashed from one emergency program to another. In 1935 they tore down slums to provide employment, in 1937 to give decent homes to a "third of the nation," in 1940 to build houses for defense. A year later they put up trailers, mudvilles, and makeshifts to house war workers. Today a whole nation is immobilized by a housing shortage; 45 per cent of the veterans between twenty-one and twenty-four years of age vainly hunt places to live; only 165,000 homes have been built for slum dwellers; and new slums crop up from coast to coast. With the adoption of a truly comprehensive housing program, Americans can have sound homes as well as sound communities. They can check the drain on municipal revenues, stabilize real-estate values for the long run, help to maintain full employment, prevent the foreclosures that periodically threaten home owners, give the veterans and slum-dwellers and aged decent homes.