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How Did Public Housing Survive the 1950s?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

D. Bradford Hunt
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Within two years of the triumphal, if belated, passage of the 1949 Housing Act, America's public housing program was on the defensive, reeling from an onslaught of local opposition. Progressives had hoped to build 135,000 units of public housing a year, but were soon met with a furious backlash. Afraid of government competition, the National Association of Home Builders and the U.S. Savings and Loan League mobilized local opposition by sending out “kits” to their members with prepackaged ads for local newspapers reading “Can you afford to pay somebody else's rent?” The result was an avalanche of local referenda, and voters across the country blocked new construction. In California, Proposition 10 made all new projects contingent on local referenda, and Los Angeles voters threw out their mayor over his support for public housing. In other cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, race played a major role in thwarting local housing authority plans. Despite a massive postwar housing shortage and a well-argued set of progressive ideals, public housing supporters struggled to keep their program alive in the early 1950s. The election of 1952—with Republicans capturing the presidency, the House, and the Senate for the first time since 1930—meant the prospects for the survival of public housing looked bleak at best.

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Articles
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 193 - 216
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Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. “Grass Roots Opposition to Public Housing Has ‘Canned’ Flavor,” Journal of Housing (May 1950): 158–60; “Canned Campaign to Kill Public Housing Continues,” Journal of Housing (January 1951): 9–10. Interestingly, despite a time of rampant McCarthyism, the 1950 U.S. Savings and Loan “kit” to members suggested downplaying the “socialism” theme that had been part of its earlier anti-public housing campaigns, “inasmuch as it is hard for the average citizen to grasp” and had “not been spectacularly effective” in mobilizing opposition. Instead, the kit urges “continual emphasis” on the “paying someone else's rent” theme. See “‘Canned’ Campaign News Is Bad and Good,” Journal of Housing (August 1950): 265–67.

2. Freedman, Leonard, Public Housing: The Politics of Poverty (New York, 1969), 45–53, 66–75Google Scholar.

3. Hirsch, Arnold, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago (New York, 1983), 212–258Google Scholar; Sugrue, Thomas, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996), 57–88Google Scholar; Baumann, John F., Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar.

4. Gelfand, Mark, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1975 (New York, 1975), 169Google Scholar; Freedman, Public Housing: The Politics of Poverty, 27; Biles, Roger, “Public Housing Policy in the Eisenhower Administration,” Mid-America 81, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 5–26Google Scholar; Flanagan, Richard M., “The Housing Act of 1954: The Sea Change in National Urban Policy,” Urban Affairs Review 33 (11 1997): 265–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Biles, Roger, “Nathan Straus and the Failure of U.S. Public Housing, 1937–1942,” The Historian 53 (Autumn 1990): 37–41Google Scholar; Radford, Gail, Modern Housing for America (Chicago, 1996), 191–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Defense Housing Program, see Funigiello, Philip J., The Challenge to Urban Liberalism (Knoxville, 1978), 105–106Google Scholar.

6. Davies, Richard O., Housing Reform During the Truman Administration (Columbia, Mo., 1966), 47–49, 65–68, 73–111Google Scholar; Arnold, Joseph L., The New Deal in the Suburbs: A History of the Greenbelt Town Program, 1935–1954 (Columbus, 1971), 229–242Google Scholar. For congressional action to sell war housing, see Public Law 80–239, 25 July 1947; Public Law 80–689, 19 June 1948, and Public Law 81–65, 19 May 1949, summarized in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, “A Chronology of Housing Legislation and Selected Executive Actions, 1892–1992,” Committee Print 103–2 (Washington, D.C., 1994), 25–27.

7. Freedman, Public Housing, chap. 2. Congressional Quarterly Almanac 6 (1951): 115–119Google Scholar; Congressional Quarterly Almanac 7 (1952): 106Google Scholar. On Taft's support, see Patterson, James T., Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston, 1972), 318Google Scholar. Patterson explains that Taft believed “government aid for housing … was necessary because there was no other way.”

8. Freedman, Public Housing, 45–53; Johnson, Marilynn S., The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), 213–233Google Scholar; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, chap. 7.

9. Press Release, Albert M. Cole, 24 March 1953, General File 145-H, Box 1157, Folder “1952–1953 (2),” Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas; Journal of Housing (March 1953): 114; Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 9–14. For Eisenhower's speeches mentioning housing during the campaign, see “The Washington Scene,” Journal of Housing (December 1952): 430.

10. Sherman Adams to Joseph Dodge, 23 March 1953, in Ann Whitman File, Dwight Eisenhower Diary Series, Box 3, Folder “Diary October 1953–2,” Eisenhower Library.

11. Public Papers of the President of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953, “President's News Conference of April 23, 1953” (Washington, D.C., 1960), 203Google Scholar; “House Cuts Housing,” Journal of Housing (May 1953): 150. The press conference generated numerous telegrams to the White House asking for clarification of the president's position. The written response of the White House was more muted: “I believe that we should maintain [public housing] at its current rate through fiscal year 1954. Its future, as far as I am concerned, will depend in large measure on the Commission on Governmental Functions and Fiscal Resources which I expect Congress to authorize soon.” (This commission was replaced by the President's Advisory Committee on Housing Programs.) See Gabriel Hague to Ann Whitman, 25 April 1953, Official File 120, Box 612, “Housing 1953 (1),” Eisenhower Library.

12. Congressional Record, 20 May 1953, 5195–97; Patterson, Mr. Republican, 612. Taft died on 31 July 1953.

13. Congressional Record, 28 July 1953, 10137–40.

14. Congressional Record, 21 July 1953, 9418, 9420, 9423; Eisenhower to Democratic Minority Whip John W. McCormack, 19 July 1953, Official File 120, Box 613, “Housing 1953 (2),” Eisenhower Library; Reichard, Gary W., The Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Eisenhower and the 83rd Congress (Knoxville, 1975), 120–122Google Scholar.

15. Congressional Record, 24 July 1953, 9780–82; Congressional Record, 28 July 1953, 10139–40; Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1954, 198–205; Public Law 83–176, 31 July 1953.

16. The only exception is Gary Reichard's political study of the 83d Congress. Reichard, The Reaffirmation of Republicanism, 120–22.

17. Journal of Housing (June 1953): 187; Journal of Housing (October 1953): 364.

18. For a scathing look at Cole's record, see National Housing Council, Inc., “Membership Newsletter” 6:1, 6 February 1953 in Official File 25, Box 201, Folder “HHFA 1953,” Eisenhower Library. According to Miles Colean, an Eisenhower adviser on housing, Cole was told during his interview for the job that one of his principal tasks might be to liquidate the agency. Cole did not object, saying he “understood perfectly.” See Miles L. Colean, Oral History Project 175, Columbia University, Oral History Research Office, 1975, 203–4. See also Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 11–13.

19. Freedman, Public Housing, 29.

20. Previous histories are puzzled by the shift. Nathaniel Keith cannot explain Cole's change of heart but describes it as decisive in saving public housing. See Keith, Nathaniel, The Housing Crisis Since 1930 (New York, 1973), 96–109Google Scholar. Cole claimed that Taft had “elicited a promise from [him] that the public housing law would be administered fully in fact and in spirit.” See Cole, Albert M., “Federal Housing Programs,” in Fish, Gertrude S., The Story of Housing (New York, 1979), 278Google Scholar.

21. Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 14.

22. For example, see “Shirtsleeve Conference, Chicago, August 6, 1953,” minutes of meetings in Box 765, Series 56UD (undescribed), “HUD Program File, 1940–1965, Policies and Programs,” Record Group 207, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland. (Hereafter referred to as “HUD Program File”.) See also Vinton to Slusser, 12 October 1953, and Bloomberg to Slusser, 12 August 1953, both in Box 3, Series 66, “Correspondence of the Commissioner of PHA,” Record Group 196, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland. (Hereafter referred to as “Correspondence of the Commissioner”); Journal of Housing (November 1953): 367; Cole, “Federal Housing Programs,” 279.

23. Albert M. Cole to Sherman Adams, Official File 120, Box 613, “Housing 1953 (2),” 21 October 1953; “Monday, October 26, 1953,” in Ann Whitman Files, Dwight Eisenhower Diary Series, Box 3, Folder “DDE Diary October 1953–52,” Eisenhower Library.

24. For the original memo, see Eisenhower to Director of the Bureau of the Budget (Joseph Dodge), 5 November 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Box 3, Folder “DDE Diary–November 1953 (3),” Eisenhower Library. Also quoted in Greenstein, Fred, The Hidden Hand Presidency (New York, 1982), 51Google Scholar.

25. Greenstein, Hidden Hand Presidency, 46–54.

26. James Sundquist arrived at a similar conclusion in his study of Eisenhower's ideology: “His reluctance to battle equally hard for the measures that embodied his ‘liberal’ position on ‘human’ issues suggests the absence of any deep conviction about them.” Sundquist, James L., Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C., 1968), 420Google Scholar.

27. Journal of Housing (October 1953): 363; Colean, Oral History, 1975, 204. Colean claims: “Nielson and Cole and I were the ones concerned in selecting the personnel for this commission with only the instruction that it was to represent the broadest area of interest that could be assembled.”

28. Journal of Housing (October 1953): 363; on the Baltimore Plan, see Journal of Housing (April 1953): 118–19.

29. The other four included: James G. Thimmes, chairman of the CIO Housing Committee; Richard J. Gray, AFL leader; Ralph T. Walker, past president of the American Institute of Architects; Paul R. Williams, an African American architect who had designed a wartime housing project in Los Angeles. See Report of the President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, 14 12 1953 (Washington, D.C., 1954)Google Scholar.

30. Journal of Housing (October 1953): 363.

31. See “President's Advisory Committee on Housing, Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, September 21, 1953,” Box 764, “HUD Program File.” The Executive Committee minutes are not verbatim transcripts and actual quotations are selective.

32. Cole, “Federal Housing Programs,” 282. Savage would later be appointed head of the Public Housing Administration in the last year of the Eisenhower administration.

33. “President's Advisory Committee on Housing, Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, October 17, 1953,” Box 764, “HUD Program File”; phone call, Bohn to Slusser, 19 October 1953, “Diary and Telephone Conversations, 1953,” Box 3, “Correspondence of the Commissioner.” Slusser's diary suggests he received Bohn's news positively.

34. See “Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, Saturday, October 17, 1953,” Box 764, “HUD Program File.” For the final report, see Report of the President's Advisory Committee, 14 December 1953.

35. See “Progress Report, Sub-Committee on Housing for Low-Income Families, October 29, 1953,” in Box 764, “HUD Program File”; Report of the President's Advisory Committee, 254–74, esp. p. 261. On the influence of urban redevelopment supporters on the need for public housing, see Journal of Housing (May 1953): 155.

36. See “Minutes, December 1–3, 1953, Meeting, President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs,” 30, Box 763, “HUD Program File.” These full committee minutes were not recorded in chronological order and are instead ordered by subcommittee; at times, they make confusing chronological leaps. As with the Executive Committee minutes, they are not verbatim transcripts and quotations are selective.

37. “Minutes, December 1–3,” 30–31.

38. Bohn's subcommittee also called for a new FHA program to serve low-income families, and the advisory committee's report included both Bohn's and Lockwood's ideas. See Report of the President's Advisory Committee, 42–48 and 258–60.

39. “Minutes, December 1–3,” 31–33.

40. Ibid., 33–36.

41. Evidence of the real estate industry's moderation in its views can be seen in a House and Home roundtable discussion on housing policy, published in January 1953. See “An Eisenhower Program for Better Homes,” House and Home, January 1953. Catherine Bauer perceptively recognized the subtle moderation in a 1953 review of two homebuilder publications, saying real estate interests had “assumed civic responsibility.” See Bauer, Catherine, “The Home Builders take a ‘new look’ at slums—and raise some questions,” Journal of Housing (11 1953): 371–373Google Scholar. See also Journal of Housing (February 1954): 54.

42. “Minutes, December 1–3,” 11–14, 16–19, 37.

43. “Notes on the Legislative Leadership Conference, December 17–19, 1953,” in Legislative Meetings Series, Ann Whitman File, Box 1, Folder “Legislative Meetings 1953 (6),” Eisenhower Library; Cole, “Federal Housing Programs,” 282–83.

44. Journal of Housing (January 1954): 10; Flanagan, “The Housing Act of 1954,” 273; Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 16. Public housing supporters were not entirely happy. Ira Robbins, the head of the progressive National Housing Conference, called the report “pretentious but ill-considered,” especially for its gifts to builders, and labor groups continued their demands for 200,000 public housing units per year.

45. U.S. House of Representatives, 83d Cong., 2d sess., House Document 306, “Message from the President of the United States, transmitting Measures Designed to Promote the Efforts of Our People to Acquire Good Homes, etc.,” 25 January 1954. For HHFA and PHA influence on the legislation, see John D. Currie to B. T. Fitzpatrick, “Proposed Housing Act of 1954” in Box 3, “Correspondence of the Commissioner.”

46. L. A. Minnich to Joseph M. Dodge, 30 March 1954, Legislative Meeting Series, Ann Whitman File, Box 1, Folder “Legislative Meetings 1954 (2),” Eisenhower Library; U.S. House of Representatives, Banking and Currency Committee, “Hearings on H.R. 7839,” 8 March 1954, 134. For a summary of the testimony, see Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1954, 198–200; Congressional Record, 2 April 1954, 4489–90.

47. Congressional Record, 3 June 1954, 7622; Reichard, Reaffirmation of Republicanism, 125–26.

48. Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1954, 204. Reichard, Reaffirmation of Republicanism, 127. On Eisenhower's pressure on legislative leaders, see “Cabinet Meeting of June 14, 1954”; Minnich to Hughes, 7 June 1954; “Legislative Meeting, July 14, 1954,” all in Legislative Meetings, Ann Whitman File, Box 1, Folder “Legislative Meetings 1954 (3),” Eisenhower Library.

49. See Congressional Record, 20 July 1954, 11071–98.

50. New York Times, 21 July 1954; Reichard, Reaffirmation of Republicanism, 128; Congressional Record, 20 July 1954, 11106; Congressional Record, 28 July 12364, 12381, 12392; Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1954, 205; Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 17.

51. Flanagan, “The 1954 Housing Act,” 274. Flanagan argues that the 1954 Housing Act “forged a new consensus that emphasized commercial redevelopment instead of public housing as the answer to central city decline” and “served to redefine the very essence of urban liberalism.” This argument is reasonable, but it misses the extent to which public housing barely survived in 1953 and 1954. See also Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 6; Mitchell, J. Paul, “The Housing Act of 1954: A 40-Year Retrospective,” Planning History Present 8:1 (1994): 1–3Google Scholar; Reichard, Reaffirmation of Republicanism, 128.

52. Chicago Housing Authority, “Annual Report,” 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1952, Municipal Reference Collection, Chicago Public Library. See also Alderman Robert E. Merriam, Chicago City Council, to Bohn, 12 November 1953, in Box 768, “HUD Program File.” The existing historical literature also assumes an insatiable demand for relocation housing. See Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 124, and Meyerson, Martin and Banfield, Edward, Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest: The Case of Public Housing in Chicago (Glencoe, Ill., 1955)Google Scholar.

53. Chicago Housing Authority, “Annual Statistical Report,” 1954, Municipal Reference Collection, Chicago Public Library.

54. Charles Slusser to Albert Cole, 18 November 1954, Box 11, “Correspondence of the Commissioner.” Slusser to Cole, 25 January 1955, Box 11, “Correspondence of the Commissioner”; Lawrence Bloomberg drafted both memos, and a notation on the 18 November draft indicates its rejection by Slusser.

55. Without Bloomberg's interpretation, most cites would have been ineligible for more public housing, and the PHA would have been unable to allocate the 35,000 units authorized by the 1954 Housing Act. In the first eleven months of the fiscal year, the PHA entered into contracts for only 142 units but then signed large contracts in the last week of June 1955 with New York City (8,230), Chicago (3,516), and Puerto Rico (5,004), among others. Journal of Housing (July 1955): 227.

56. Eisenhower registered his objections to the repeal when he signed the 1955 Housing Act, but public housing's congressional opponents never investigated whether the housing agencies were following the letter of the 1954 law. See Public Papers of the President of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Volume 3, 1955 (Washington, D.C., 1960), 777–778Google Scholar; Housing Act of 1955, Public Law 84–345.

57. Public Papers of the President of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Volume 3, 1955, 174; see also “Legislative Leaders Meeting, December 12, 1955,” Ann Whitman File, Legislative Meeting Series, Box 2, Legislative Meeting 1955 (3), 7, Eisenhower Library.

58. “Statement on Necessity for Additional Low-Rent Public Housing,” in Morgan Files, Accession A67–19, Box 4, “Housing,” Eisenhower Library; “Cabinet Minutes, November 15, 1957,” Ann Whitman File, Cabinet Series, Box 10, 3, Eisenhower Library; Biles, “Public Housing Policy,” 18–20.

59. Fisher, Robert M., Twenty Years of Public Housing (New York, 1959), 102Google Scholar. On burnout of New Dealers, see Bauer, Catherine, “The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing,” Architectural Forum 106 (05 1957): 140–142Google Scholar; Oberlander, H. Peter and Newbrun, Eva, Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer (Vancouver, 1999)Google Scholar.

60. “Address by John Taylor Egan, Commissioner, Public Housing Administration, at the 17th Annual Conference of the National Association of Housing Officials, Detroit, Michigan, October 16–19, 1950,” Entry 69, Box 10, Record Group 196, National Archives II.

61. Importantly, this cost limit was an administrative one, not the limit included in law. The CHA's plans easily met the cost limits in the 1949 Housing Act, which were “per-room” limits excluding the cost of land. It should also be noted that Slusser's decisions came during a period when Eisenhower demanded that his administrators hold down overall spending. In 1959, Eisenhower vetoed two housing bills over the issue of excessive spending.

62. CHA to Charles Slusser, 5 February 1959, in U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, “President's Message Disapproving S. 57,” 23–31 July 1959, 610. See Hunt, D. Bradford, “Understanding Chicago's High-Rise Public Housing Disaster,” in Ray, Katerina Reudi and Waldheim, Charles, eds., Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives (Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar.

63. In the same period, 1955–59, the FHA subsidized 844,535 traditional single-family homes. By 1979, a total of 141,557 Section 221 apartments and 6,500 Section 220 homes had been built. The most productive years were 1960–64. HUD, Annual Statistical Yearbook for 1979 (Washington, D.C., 1980), 63Google Scholar. See also Mitchell, “The Housing Act of 1954,” 3.

64. “President's Advisory Committee on Housing,” 269–70.