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1. Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President Outlining the Housing Program for 1947,” 14 December 1946, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12560; Harry S. Truman, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” 6 January 1947, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12762. For anticipation, “Builders Awaiting Sweeping Changes in Housing Policy,” New York Times, 8 December 1946, 1.
2. Raymond Foley to John Steelman, 24 January 1947, box 41, Office of the Commissioner Memoranda, 1945–54, Record Group 31 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
3. Raymond Foley Memorandum to “Directors and Chief Underwriters of All Field Offices,” 9 January 1947 [emphasis in original], ibid.; “Rental Housing Under FHA,” c. January 1947, ibid.; “Meetings Promote FHA Rental Housing,” New York Times, 16 February 1947, 1; “FHA Allots Billion for Rental Homes,” New York Times, 15 April 1947, 43.
4. Hollyday , Guy , “A New Look at FHA,” Insured Mortgage Portfolio 18 (Winter 1953–54 ): 3 .Google Scholar
5. Jackson , Kenneth T. , Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States ( New York , 1985 ), 206 Google Scholar . The relevant chapter was titled “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How Washington Changed the American Housing Market.” Jackson also noted that the FHA was “remarkably independent” of other federal agencies at the time (ibid., 366). Jackson first articulated his theory in an almost identical article, Kenneth T. Jackson,” Race, Ethnicity, and Real Estate Appraisal: The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration,” Journal of Urban History 6 (August 1980): 419–52: An earlier, less noted and less systematic, version of this story was told in Gelfand , Mark , A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965 ( New York , 1975 ), 216 –22.Google Scholar
6. Cohen , Lizabeth , A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America ( New York , 2004 ), 199 Google Scholar .
7. Jacqueline Jones et al., Created Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States, Combined Volume, 2nd ed. (New York, 2005), 839. Other works that discuss this theme are too numerous to elaborate. See, e.g., Sugrue , Thomas J. , The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit ( Princeton , 1996 ), 60 – 63 Google Scholar ; Duany , Andres et al. , Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream ( New York , 2000 ), 7 – 8 .Google Scholar
8. For two notable exceptions, see Matthew Gordon Lasner, High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century (New Haven, 2012); Bobeczko , Laura and Longstreth , Richard , “Housing Reform Meets the Marketplace: Washington and the Federal Housing Administration’s Contribution to Apartment Building Design, 1935–1940,” in Housing Washington: Two Centuries of Residential Development and Planning in the Nation’s Capital Area , ed. Longstreth , Richard ( Chicago , 2010 ), 159 –80.Google Scholar
9. Congressional Record, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 12 June 1934, 11179–80, 11182–85, 11189. Inside the administration, the feeling about the amendments was similar. A report made in the Better Housing Division stated that “the bill which has been reported by the housing committee . . . would for all practical purposes nullify the carefully devised housing program which has been sponsored by the administration.” Guy Greer, “The Housing Program and the Housing Committee Bill,” 12 June 1934, box 562, Records of the Better Housing Division, RG 44 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
10. The amendment restoring low-cost rental-housing provisions passed with 102 ayes, 76 noes, Congressional Record, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 12 June 1934, 11223. The final bill passed the House with 176 ayes, 19 noes, in ibid., 13 June 1934, 11394. Often in debate, and in the act itself, these projects were referred to as either “low-cost,” “large-scale,” or “slum-clearance” projects, though there was no requirement that any slums be cleared to receive these funds and no money was provided to do so. The conference committee extended the maximum limits on the cost of individual multifamily housing projects to $10 million from $5 million. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Banking and Currency, Amend the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, Etc., 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 18 June 1934, 23.
11. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on Legislation for Private Construction of Housing,” 27 November 1937. The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15333.
12. Colean , Miles , A Backward Glance: An Oral History ( New York , 1975 ), 40 Google Scholar . For a succinct McDonald biography, see Federal Housing Administration, The FHA Story in Summary (Washington, D.C., 1959), 10. Saint Louis was one of five major cities to have begun losing population in the 1930s. Teaford , Jon , Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America ( Baltimore , 1990 ), 10 .Google Scholar
13. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, To Amend the National Housing Act: Hearings on S. 9620, 75th Cong., 2nd sess., 1 December 1937, 14, 20.
15. Colean also noted McDonald’s political astuteness in that he “readily accepted political appointees.” Colean, Backward Glance, 35, 37.
16. Huthmacher , J. Joseph , Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism ( New York , 1968 )Google Scholar ; “An Act to Amend the National Housing Act,” Sec. 207(c) and 301(a)(1), 52 Stat. 18, 23 (1938).
17. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stewart McDonald, 20 May 1940, box 3, Official Files 1091 (Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.).
18. Address reprinted in Congressional Record, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 11 June 1934, 11061–62.
19. McDonald , Stewart , “The Significance of FHA Operations,” Insured Mortgage Portfolio 1 (August 1936 ): 3 .Google Scholar
20. E. P. Curl, “Large-Scale Housing as an Investment,” in ibid., 5.
21. Don K. Price to Frederic Delano, 22 January 1937, box 8, Records of the Central Housing Committee, RG 207 (National Archives, College Park, Md.); “Large Dwelling Projects Offer New Field for Institutional Investors,” New York Sun, 2 January 1937, 39. This author has so far found no evidence that multiple-project bonds were actually created.
22. Colean , Miles , “Bond Issues for Large-Scale Housing,” Insured Mortgage Portfolio 1 (October 1936 ), 9 – 11 .Google Scholar
23. Federal Housing Administration , Rental Housing as Investment ( Washington, D.C. , 1938 )Google Scholar .
24. “Memorandum on National Mortgage Associations,” 9 May 1934, box 560, Records of the Better Housing Division, RG 44 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
25. In this speech, Sisson was paraphrasing the memo cited in the note above, which the administration had clearly handed to him to counter the arguments against rental housing. Congressional Record, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 13 June 1934, 11202–203.
26. “National Housing Act Amendments of 1938,” Federal Home Loan Bank Review 4 (March 1938): 198; Federal Housing Administration, Seventh Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the Year Ending December 31, 1940 (Washington, D.C., 1941), 13; “Loan Authorizations,” 31 December 1938, box 8, RFC Mortgage Company, General Records, 1935–48, RG 234 (National Archives, College Park, Md.). For Fannie Mae and the RFC Mortgage Company’s later histories, where they tended to move more toward single-family homes, see Leo Jones and Leo Grebler, The Secondary Mortgage Market: Its Purpose, Performance, and Potential (Los Angeles, 1961), 36, 118–27.
27. Federal Housing Administration, 27th Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1960 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 5.
28. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1960, 3.
29. Federal Housing Administration, 25th Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1958 (Washington, D.C., 1959), 3. The Annual Report of 1960 noted that by that year, 7,154 of these units were already constructed, with another 16,000 in process. FHA, Annual Report 1960, 4.
30. Federal Housing Administration , 28th Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1961 ( Washington, D.C. , 1961 ), 10 Google Scholar . Only Hawaii and Arkansas had created enabling legislation for this type of ownership by 1961, though many others would do so in the wake of the FHA’s guarantee. See Banner , Stuart , American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own ( Cambridge, Mass. , 2011 ), 176 –79Google Scholar . See also Lasner, High Life, 181–85.
31. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1961, 10.
32. Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, Millennial ed. (New York, 2006). To arrive at these numbers, the author used Part D–Economic Sectors, Chapter Dc–Construction Housing and Mortgages, Table Group Dc903–1288–Residential Mortgages. In this, Table Dc1105–21—Home mortgage insurance and guarantee activity: 1935–99 and Table Dc1122–28—Multifamily mortgage insurance by the Federal Housing Administration: 1935–79 (specifically Dc1119 and Dc1124) were used for FHA guarantees. Table Group Dc510-902 Housing (specifically Dc511–Dc513): Housing units started and authorized by permit, by metropolitan location, region, and number of units in structure: 1889–1958 [BLS; privately owned, nonfarm] were used for total single and multifamily housing starts. Single-family was defined by the FHA as one- to four-unit structures, but the total “housing units started” in the Historical Statistics, including private and government insured, separates out only one, two, and three or more unit structures. Thus the calculations would tend to overemphasize the ratio of the single-family market built with FHA insurance. These numbers are based on units “started” under FHA inspection, which also tend to overemphasize single-family insurance, since those were more likely to be started but not finished under FHA insurance than multifamily units (compare Dc1119 to Dc1107). A switch to single-family homes completed under FHA insurance drops the single-family ratio down to 17.7 percent but keeps the multifamily ratio basically unchanged. The multifamily units also cost more on average than single-family units, demonstrating more FHA support. This analysis ends in 1958 because the Historical Statistics numbers for housing starts change in that year. If one carries the same analysis from 1958 through 1979, at which date the multifamily calculation changes again, one gets 13.5 percent of single-family homes (this time including four-unit structures) created with FHA insurance and 16.4 percent of multifamily units. See Table Dc1105–21, Table Dc1122–28 and Table Dc531–53, Historical Statistics. Numbers are rounded to nearest 100,000. For more information on the nature of these statistics, see Wilkerson , Marvin and Newman , Dorothy K. , “FHA-VA Series and the Housing Market,” Construction Review 3 (June 1957 ): 4 – 13 .Google Scholar
33. If one includes Veterans Administration (VA) funded housing starts, which went almost exclusively to single-family homes, and compare the sum of FHA and VA starts over the period from 1945 to 1958 with total single-family starts, the ratio of federal involvement in the single-family market rises to 40.8 percent. Yet, since this period also constitutes the height of FHA involvement with the multifamily market, the federal involvement in multifamily starts over this period remains higher, at 47.2 percent. So even with the inclusion of VA loans, often the second-most cited reason for the rise of suburbia, the federal government is shown to be relatively more involved in the multifamily market. This also, of course, does not include federally supported public housing, which was almost exclusively multifamily and rental. See tables from Historical Statistics of the United States above. For the argument that federal rent control led to a significant increase in homeownership in World War II and a decline in rental housing (though the FHA was given some leeway on rents in its own projects), see Daniel K. Fetter, “The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership,” NBER Working Paper No. 19604, October 2013.
34. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1960, 46–48, 83, For earlier five-year averages, which have about the same proportion of single-family to multifamily defaults, see Federal Housing Administration, 21st Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1954 (Washington, D.C., 1956), 83, 93.
35. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1960, 103. For an explanation of these reserve requirements, see Kaplan , Mortimer and Miller , Samuel A. , “Government Insurance and Economic Risk,” Kyklos: Internationale Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenchaften 8 , no. 3 ( 1955 ): 252 –76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These estimates did not unduly burden the multifamily sector, since the agency held 2.52 percent of their outstanding single-family housing balance in reserve in 1960 as against Housing Insurance Fund Reserve of 0.93 percent. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1960, 103.
36. The first time the FHA made this actuarial calculation, in its 1955 Annual Report, the Mutual Mortgage Insurance fund actually showed a surplus of estimated reserves (107.2 percent funded), while the Housing Insurance Fund had a significant deficit (21.8 percent funded). Federal Housing Administration , 22nd Annual Repot of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1955 ( Washington, D.C. , 1957 ), 190 –93.Google Scholar
37. Quoted in Irving Welfeld, HUD Scandals (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992), 10.
38. Leo Grebler, Experience in Urban Real-Estate Investment (New York, 1955), 25–27. The increase in defaults, as well as a scandal about overly generous Section 608 loans, caused the drop in multifamily housing insurance evident post-1950 in Figure 1. “How FHA Loans Became Profits,” New York Times, 2 May 1954, E6. See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, FHA Investigation Pursuant to S. Res. 229, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., 12 July 1954, part I, 395–400.
39. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 203, 206.
40. Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York, 2010), 372; Heim , Carol E. , “Structural Changes: Regional and Urban,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Volume 3, the Twentieth Century , ed. Engerman , Stanley and Gallman , Robert ( Cambridge , 2000 ), 150 .Google Scholar For other typical statements, see, e.g., Katz , Alyssa , Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us ( New York , 2009 ), 5 – 7 Google Scholar . This article does not argue that other governmental forces, such as zoning or highway programs, did not have an important impact on the growth in suburbia and the housing market.
41. See Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 207.
42. Federal Housing Administration, Rental Housing Manual, Form 2440 (Washington, D.C., 1940), section 2318. Here “central city” does not refer generally to the core city of a Metropolitan Statistical Area, but to the business center of such a city.
43. “Administrative Rules and Regulations Under Section 207, Title II of the National Housing Act,” 2 Federal Register 222 (16 November 1937), 2480–81.
44. Frederic Delano to Stewart McDonald, 12 June 1936. box 8, Records of the Central Housing Committee, RG 207 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
45. Federal Housing Administration, A Survey of Apartment Dwelling Operating Experience in Large American Cities (Washington, D.C., 1940), 131.
46. For contemporary concerns about “decentralization,” see Robert Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (New Haven, 2001), 218–48.
47. Federal Housing Administration , A Handbook on Urban Redevelopment for Cities in the United States ( Washington, D.C. , 1941 ), ii–iii, 101 –2Google Scholar .
48. Ernest Fisher and Chester Rapkin, The Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund: A Study of the Adequacy of Its Reserves and Resources (New York, 1956), 17; The President’s Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, Recommendations on Government Housing Policies and Programs (Washington, D.C., 1953), 40; Foley , Raymond M. , Address Before Mortgage Bankers Association Convention, November 15, 1945 ( Washington, D.C. , 1945 ), 8Google Scholar ; see also “Experts Expect Jump in Apartment House Construction: Government Plans Help on Building,” New Journal and Guide, 7 November 1953, 7.
49. “Apartment Boom Changes Atlanta,” New York Times, 28 January 1962, 6R. See also “Bronx Apartment in New Ownership; 96-Suite ‘608’ Development on Broadway Acquired Through Purchase of Stock,” New York Times, 20 April 1951, 43; “Planning More Rental Housing in City Areas,” Chicago Tribune, 9 May 1948, p. SWC; “Hike in Rental Building Here Seen by FHA Aid,” Chicago Tribune, 3 April 1949, 2.
50. U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Housing, Committee on Banking and Currency, Investigation of Housing, 1955: Pursuant to H. Res. 203, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 5 October 1955, 26–27. Murray complained, however, that recent investigations of excessive loan guarantees in the Section 608 program had hampered multifamily building. He argued that the supposed “scandal” surrounding the program was a red herring and that Section 608 “did produce a lot of fairly decent and much needed housing for many thousands of families in New York City,” about 100,000 units. It was complaints such as these that led Congress to once again loosen multifamily standards after the scandal.
51. Compare National Housing Act, S. 3603, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 14 May 1934, 6–7, with ibid., 14 June 1934, 5.
52. Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (Washington, D.C., 1936), part II, paragraphs 234–36. See discussion in Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: A History of America in Red Ink (Princeton, 2011), 64–65.
53. “FHA Plan of Homeownership,” box 41, Office of the Commissioner Interoffice Policy Memoranda 1945–54, RG 31 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
54. Federal Housing Administration, 3rd Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1936 (Washington, D.C., 1936), 10–11. See, for instance, Massachusetts’s office at 100 Boylston Street, Boston, just off Boston Common; or Michigan’s at 1249 Washington Boulevard, Detroit, just off the Grand Circus. For addresses, see Federal Housing Administration, “Estimating Ability to Pay for a Home: A Guide to FHA Mortgage Credit Analysis,” Pamphlet, FHA no. 201, November 1962.
55. They were at 10 Commerce Court in Newark and 519 Federal Street in Camden. “State Locations of Insuring Offices for Prompt and Efficient Handling of Applications,” 23 February 1954; James Neville, “Establishment and Maintenance of Field Offices,” 3 February 1954, box 1, Program Correspondence of the Assistant Commissioner of Operations, 1935–56, RG 31 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
56. President’s Advisory Committee, Recommendations, 67.
57. Bureau , Census , U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960: Volume V: Residential Finance, Part 1—Homeowner Properties ( Washington, D.C. , 1963 ), 8 Google Scholar . The 1960 census was the first to break down these units by urban or suburban location. The definition of single-family housing here is even more restrictive than those used previously, and it features only one-unit housing. This would seem to bias the numbers further against central cities.
58. Though FHA multifamily locations were not available in this census, including these, which, as shown above, were largely an urban phenomenon, would even further tilt the agency’s bias toward cities. These proportions are also fairly consistent across regions, but with a slight tendency overall to favor the West over the rest of the country. See ibid., 70, 84, 98. By the 1970 Census (where rental properties are included, although these do not significantly affect the outcome), the FHA insured 25.9 percent of central city mortgages, 19.2 percent of suburban mortgages, and 12.1 percent of rural mortgages. These numbers cannot of course tell one where these homes were insured inside a city, and it may be that they had a tendency to be on the fringes of municipal limits, but this would still absolve the agency of the accusation that it encouraged flight away from the city as a whole and thus exacerbated its fiscal conditions by removing people from its taxing authority. As shown above and below, the issue of municipal fiscal health actually concerned the agency deeply. Some might also argue that the location of loans was influenced by the infamous Home Owners Loan Corporation neighborhood maps, discussed by Kenneth Jackson. In fact, Jackson mentions in a footnote that he found no indication of these maps in the FHA archives, and that in all his interviews with FHA officials they denied using these maps or any similar ones for making loans. He can only suppose that the FHA’s versions of these maps “seem to have disappeared.” This researcher found no evidence for them in the archives, and the existence of or necessity for such maps is cast into further doubt by an analysis of the Underwriting Manual, which gives detailed instructions, and authority, for evaluating neighborhoods to individual appraisers and makes no references to maps. Recent work has also shown that the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps were not broadly distributed or as discriminatory as was earlier believed. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Housing, Volume V: Residential Finance (Washington, D.C., 1973), 7, 9, 13; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 365; Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (Washington, D.C., 1947), sections 1301–35; Hillier , Amy , “Redlining and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation,” Journal of Urban History 29 (May 2003 ): 394 – 420 .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
59. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Banking and Currency, Hearings on the National Housing Act, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., 18 May 1934, 7; Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, National Housing Act, 1934, 217. For involvement of Eccles in drafting, see Eccles , Marriner S. , Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections ( New York , 1951 ), 144 –61.Google Scholar
60. Federal Housing Administration, FHA Title I Lending Operations (Washington, D.C., 1946); Federal Housing Administration, Remodel, Repair, Repay with FHA (Washington, D.C., 1957), 6; Federal Housing Administration, Property Improvement Loans Under Title I of the National Housing Act, Regulations Effective July 1, 1939 (Washington, D.C., 1939).
61. Loans Up to $50,000: To Modernize Apartments, Multiple Family Dwellings (Washington, D.C., c. 1935), 6–9, 11, box 250, Thomas Corcoran Papers (Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.). This pamphlet also noted specifically that older “‘Main Street’” properties needed such support.
62. “Campaign Gains Momentum as More Drives Are Launched,” Better Housing 1, no. 7 (1934): 1–5; “First Home Loans Go to Owners Here,” New York Times, 16 August 1934, 11; “Moffett Predicts Plant Repair Drive,” New York Times, 15 February 1935, 28; “Large Sum Loaned for Home Repairs,” New York Times, 31 July 1938, 1. For the recent increased scholarly attention to this topic, see Harris , Richard , “A New Form of Credit: The State Promotes Home Improvement, 1934–1954,” Journal of Policy History 21 , no. 4 ( 2009 ): 392 – 423 ;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lendol Calder, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit (Princeton, 1999), 282–85, 290; Hyman, Debtor Nation, 58–62. All of these writers emphasize the importance of Title I insurance in the FHA program, but they continue to argue that it, and the FHA more generally, was focused on suburban, single-family homes.
63. Guy Hollyday, “The Attack on Neighborhood Blight,” Insured Mortgage Portfolio 18 (Fall 1953): 3–4. The scandal in overly generous Section 608 veterans loans caused Eisenhower to remove Hollyday from the agency.
64. Federal Housing Administration, Annual Report 1960, 16.
