The End of the Dream: The Political Struggle of America's Public Housers

Public housing in the United States bears little resemblance to the program reformers envisioned in the 1930s. Inspired by European experiments, proponents of public housing dreamed of a decentralized housing program carried out by many entities and aimed at a majority of the population, not the very poor. Before their movement could take root locally, however, the Great Depression created political opportunities for a federal program. Lacking a grassroots constituency, public housers waged a masterful smoke-and-mirrors strategy to stir up support for public housing among nonhousing organizations and, in 1937, won a permanent program. Yet lawmakers used the housers' antislum arguments to justify including provisions to clear slums and to house the poor and then excluded funds for nongovernmental housing entities such as limited-dividend corporations and cooperatives. The public housing projects themselves would never inspire much political enthusiasm. Thus, the public housers built enough political support to create a public housing program but not to realize their dream.