An interesting article over at JSTOR by Manisha Claire It reminds me that that the reality we live today were conscious choices that were made by people in the past. Part of the American zeitgeist is a strong emphasis on personal responsibility and ‘rugged individualism’. These qualities did not mysteriously poof out of the ether, they were constructed and promoted for a reason. It is interesting see how the the historical seeds planted in society have come to fruition.
” instead of addressing housing inequality or the shortage of affordable units, political leaders were presenting home ownership as an attainable choice for all Americans, implying that an inability to live the BHA way was a matter of personal, rather than institutional, failing.”
“The ideology behind BHA ultimately privileged a white, middle-class version of home ownership. In 1922, The Delineator began to devote multiple pages to BHA and its mission, including suggestions for home furnishing and contributions from the organizers. In the October 1922 issue, Herbert Hoover wrote an article called “The Home as an Investment,” declaring that urban overcrowding and poverty “means a large increase in rents, a throw-back in human efficiency, and that unrest which inevitably results from inhibition of the primal instinct in us all for home ownership.”
In Agricultural History, Hutchison writes:
The homes put forth by the national leaders varied somewhat in design but included new household technology that stressed convenience and room layouts that emphasized both family interaction and privacy… In front of the ideal house lay a green, well-tended yard, while behind it might be a small garden. In short, the prescription endorsed by the Better Homes leaders at the national level was that of a suburban dwelling replete with new technological amenities and private space.
Meloney ran “The Ideal Small House,” a column by the architect Donn Barber, which stressed modernity, thrift, and American design for the entire home. There was also a “Rooms for Boys and Girls” column by Mrs. Charles Brady Sanders, dictating “dainty, bright and frivolous” furnishings for girls’ rooms. In boys’ rooms, “masculinity must be foremost.” These columns reinforced the ideals of BHA and made it clear that, despite any structural or financial barriers, readers could and should pursue them.
However, while this ideal was encouraged in literature disseminated to Americans across class and race lines, the realities of achieving this goal were not addressed. Segregationist housing policies, discrimination by banks, and poverty among racialized Americans prevented many people from buying and maintaining homes the BHA way. But BHA rhetoric made it clear that, instead of addressing housing inequality or the shortage of affordable units, political leaders were presenting home ownership as an attainable choice for all Americans, implying that an inability to live the BHA way was a matter of personal, rather than institutional, failing.”
“On display at the national exhibition in D.C., the National Better Home included modern amenities like indoor plumbing and electricity, reflecting an attempt to encourage homeowners to purchase new appliances and embrace scientific thinking at home. Hutchison writes that the living spaces in the house were designed to “evoke sentimental images of family unity” while “the kitchen conveyed efficiency and cleanliness.” That approach to home design was emulated in cities and towns around the country, as local communities vied for the title of Best American Home. These exhibitions were written up in newspapers across the country, and the movement’s leaders emphasized thrift and sensibility over “commercialism.”
For Black and immigrant homeowners (or would-be homeowners), BHA offered a kind of aspirational modeling that decried their current living conditions, but offered no substantial way out of their circumstances.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
2 comments
March 3, 2020 at 6:25 am
tildeb
One of the quoted authors within the article, historian Janet Hutchison, describes the Better Homes in America as a response to the lack of affordable housing after WWI but “lays the foundation for later government-funded housing programs.” This is interesting. Not noted in the article you reference is the idea that the social cohesion and stability of communities are strengthened when individuals become financially invested in it – especially with home ownership – and that only when this is accomplished can we then create the conditions for stable and lasting community-based volunteer groups. I think this is both interesting and astute because I’ve noticed a tremendous decline in volunteer membership to long standing volunteer organizations as today’s private homer ownership becomes out of reach for most younger people… much to the detriment of these communities able to respond to various social challenges… and, as importantly, to where subsidized and rental units are the most plentiful.
I’ve also noticed a significant decline in the quality of local amenities like parks and sporting fields, playgrounds and community centers, higher crime rates especially regarding property crime, family breakdown, vastly lower academic achievement rates from local public schools whose student catchment areas include these publicly subsidized mass units, and so on. And before you presume this is a result of a LACK of public funding, remember to compare and contrast these results fairly with the same economic cohort that owns housing. Night and day.
To frame the history of housing as a racial thing or presented as a subject that is somehow guided by race-based policies is a huge disservice to understanding how things have come to be as they are today (history). The temptation is to teach the subject from today’s presumably morally superior social context in order to frame what has come before as somehow less than or found wanting in ways that can be ideologically used to promote the teacher’s preferred social ideology… usually very heavily biased in favour of a socialist agenda. What I have found singularly lacking are teachers who are able to present historical events framed by the context in which they occurred. This teaches an ideological narrative to students rather than a better understanding of history.
We serve the agenda of today’s misguided ‘Woke’ to frame the Better Housing of America – a smashing success, by the way – as an intentional race-based program when it was in fact no such thing. Every city in the USA and Canada has been deeply affected in very positive ways by this BHA approach and has helped create local home building economies into greater prosperity for every community – a prosperity, it should be remembered, from which every social program draws its funding while, hand in glove, damning its supposedly biased moral component. Today’s prosperity and across-the-board social improvements is directly the result of yesterday’s programs so something must have been done then that wasn’t morally corrupt, biased, discriminatory, and abhorrent but it is very difficult to find what went right in today’s ideologically driven history classes.
The context is the mass migration from rural to urban during a time of great economic upheaval from industrialization and all encompassing war. This is where ‘suburbs’ have their founding. Compare and contrast the BHA results with the European response to massive government housing in rings around older cities and one will find very stark differences in social results… almost all of which measure out very favourably in all categories to the BHA model of single home ownership. Funny, that. Damn reality for interfering yet again in the ideological Left wing narrative.
Social urban cohesion (what we might call Peace, Order, and Good Government in action) seems to be better achieved when individuals invest themselves into community ownership. Who knew? The race card being played here is a non sequitur even if an inevitable result from those times but entirely misrepresents the historical reasons for and resulting effects from the philosophical approach this program represents.
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March 3, 2020 at 10:46 am
The Arbourist
@tildeb
Wouldn’t be difficult to be in the same economic cohort if one of the distinguishing factors of said cohort is single detached home ownership? I would think that if one had the means to own a home, one would not live in publically subsidized mass units.
I put forward that tenement housing residents are generally not in the same economic cohort as those who can afford a home, and thus offer a less of a tax base in which to build public spaces and areas that are so important for healthy living.
I would like to think that we have learned a few notions and good ideas from the past and can make morally superior decisions. Certainly within this historical context decisions were made that were of great value to white American society. But to ignore the fact that these policies were successful only for a certain segment of society is also an unjust treatment of history. For instance (from the article):
“The enormous black-white wealth gap, for example, responsible for so much of today’s racial inequality, is in large part a product of black exclusion from homes whose appreciation generated substantial equity for white working-class families with F.H.A. and V.A. mortgages that propelled them into the middle class.”
I think it important to examine the precursor events that have set the stage for racial divisions and tension that still run very deep in American society.
Yet, many of the policies were, in fact morally questionable –
“State-licensed real estate agents subscribed to a code of ethics that prohibited sales to black families in white neighborhoods. Nationwide, regulators closed their eyes to real estate boards that prohibited agents from using multiple-listing services if they dared violate this code.
In many hundreds of instances nationwide, mob violence, frequently led or encouraged by police, drove black families out of homes they had purchased or rented in previously all-white neighborhoods. Campaigns, even violent ones, to exclude African-Americans from all but a few inner-city neighborhoods were often led by churches, universities and other nonprofit groups determined to maintain their neighborhoods’ ethnic homogeneity. The Internal Revenue Service failed to lift tax exemptions from these institutions, even as they openly promoted and enforced racial exclusion.”
I’m all for contextual historical analysis, but that must include the less savory parts – especially those aspects that clearly delineate the managed divide of power in society. If we can fairly look into these cleavages, then perhaps we can move toward a more just distribution in society in terms of social and economic power.