Housing Act of 1937 - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Housing Act of 1937, sometimes called the Wagner-Steagall Act, provided for subsidies to be paid from the U.S. government to local public housing agencies

Public housing

Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...

(LHA's) to improve living conditions for low-income families.

The act builds on the National Housing Act of 1934

National Housing Act of 1934

The National Housing Act of 1934, , also called the Capehart Act, was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. It created the Federal Housing Administration and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.It was...

, which created the Federal Housing Administration

Federal Housing Administration

The Federal Housing Administration is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying...

. Both the 1934 Act and the 1937 Act were influenced by American housing reformers of the period, with Catherine Bauer

Catherine Bauer Wurster

Catherine Krause Bauer Wurster was a leading member of a small group of idealists who called themselves "housers" because of their commitment to improving housing for low-income families...

chief among them. Bauer drafted much of this legislation and served as a Director in the United States Housing Authority

United States Housing Authority

The United States Housing Authority, or USHA, was an agency created during 1937 as part of the New Deal.It was designed to lend money to the states or communities for low-cost construction. Units for about 650,000 low-income people but mostly homeless were started...

, the agency created by the 1937 Act to control the payment of subsidies, for two years.

The sponsoring legislators were Representative Henry B. Steagall

Henry B. Steagall

Henry Bascom Steagall was a United States Representative from Alabama. He was chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency and in 1933 co-sponsored the Glass–Steagall Act with Carter Glass, an act that introduced banking reforms and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ....

, Democrat of Alabama, and Senator Robert F. Wagner

Robert F. Wagner

Robert Ferdinand Wagner I was an American politician. He was a Democratic U.S. Senator from New York from 1927 to 1949.-Origin and early life:...

, Democrat of New York.

Although initially controversial, it gained acceptance and provisions of the Act have remained, but in amended form. The Housing Act of 1949

Housing Act of 1949

The American Housing Act of 1949 was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing...

, enacted during the Truman administration set new post-war national goals for decent living environments; it also funded "slum clearance" and the urban renewal

Urban renewal

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...

projects, and created many national public housing

Public housing

programs. In 1965 the Public Housing Administration, the U.S. Housing Authority, and the House and Home Financing Agency were all swept into the newly formed and re-organized United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, is a Cabinet department in the Executive branch of the United States federal government...

(HUD).

Sources

Hunt, Bradford D., “Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?” Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 195-221.
Radford, Gail, "Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Vale, Lawrence J., "From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Press, 2000).
Vale, Lawrence J., “Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Press, 2002).
Wurster, Catherine Bauer
Catherine Bauer Wurster
Catherine Krause Bauer Wurster was a leading member of a small group of idealists who called themselves "housers" because of their commitment to improving housing for low-income families...

, "Modern Housing," (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934).

Sources

Further reading