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1930s — Acts

1932 — Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

1932 — Federal Home Loan Bank Board established to make advances on the security of home mortgages and establish a Home Loan Bank System.

1934 — National Housing Act of 1934 was passed to relieve unemployment and stimulate the release of private credit for home repairs and construction.

1937 — Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, was chartered by the FHA as a subsidiary of the RFC.

1937 — United States Housing Act of 1937 established the public housing program and authorized loans to local public housing agencies for lower-rent public housing construction expenses.

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1930s National Housing Act of 1934

Proposed a new plan to boost the depression economy and solve the housing shortage.

The new American house was created to mobilize banks, workers and material suppliers for a profit-making project.

Logistics formed the template for new suburban development.

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1930s National Housing Act of 1934

Set up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that was to inspect and evaluate a project's eligibility for FHA insurance.

Insured the lending institution, not the homeowner, against the risk of default.

Insurance premiums paid to the FHA would make it self-supporting.

For the home buyer, the long-term low-interest mortgage made monthly payments that were often cheaper than rent.

The FHA became the leader of a massive public and private cooperation in home-building.

Suburbia was reshaped from the template of banking structures and new home-building techniques and how not only home-building, but the entire idea of suburbia became a major U.S. industry.

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1930s National Housing Act of 1934Federal Home Loan Bank Board

The agency solicited designs for exemplary small houses from architects around the country .

Each design was submitted on a single standard page typically showing a plan and elevation of the house.

The designs were coded according to number of rooms, climatic conditions and regional considerations and then compiled in a "Home Selector Portfolio."

Potential home buyers visiting a lending institution could review a Home Selector Portfolio containing "approved" designs suitable to the area and more likely to receive an FHA mortgage.

Though very few home buyers used this service, the Home Selector portfolio was typical of the efforts of the period to identify home designs in the form of standard models.

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1940s-50s — Acts

1949 — Housing Act of 1949 (1949 Act). Title I of the 1949 Act authorized funds to localities to assist in slum clearance and urban redevelopment. This program, as earlier programs, once again emphasized new construction.

1954 — Housing Act of 1954 amended the 1949 Act to provide funding, not only for new construction and demolition, but for the rehabilitation and conservation of deteriorating areas.

1956 — Housing Act of 1956 added special provisions under Sections 203 and 207 and the public housing programs to give preference to the elderly, and amended the 1949 Act to authorize relocation payments to persons displaced by urban renewal.

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Land Use Laws1950s

The total exclusion of uses from zones and their isolation by vast distances had to await the prosperity that followed the Second World War.

Virtually every American problem, real, imagined, or socio-psychopathic, was "solved" by physical isolation and segregation;

• from race relationships, • to illness, • to illegal behavior, • to undesired contact with persons of lower income,

spatial segregation was the answer — an answer embodied in and enforced by local zoning ordinances.

In the 1950s, the "purity" of zones became the operative concept ("not-in-my-backyard") for the legitimization of segregation and social isolation at the very time it was being successfully attacked in the courts, viz.:

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954

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Land Use Laws1950s

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954

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Land Use Laws1950s

This increased exclusion of uses from zones, coupled with a penchant for low-development density (low-density-is-best-density) resulted in vast spread cities of huge zones of developmental uniformity and life-style conformity.

Most commonly, this meant the exclusion of all but the more affluent from participation in the new modern suburban-American society.

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Land Use Laws1950s

Mass ownership of the automobile allowed land uses to become spread over much wider distances.

As a result, zones became larger.

They also became more exclusive.

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Land Use Laws1950s

Land use exclusion was often justified on municipal economics and the efficient provision of municipal services (i.e., police, fire, garbage pickup) through the grouping of like uses generating like service needs.

The courts, in the 1920s, also found that assuring single-family-only areas would lead to the promotion and protection of home ownership, which they equated with good citizenship — or so they said.