When I think of federal funded public housing, my idea of it would be the projects for people to live in. However after reading the article I learn the government didn’t provide public housing to help the poor initially. Rather the first attempt at public housing was to attract people to industrial areas to help create weapons for the war. This surprises me since all my life I never heard a government-sponsored program provide housing for such a reason. It was very interesting to learn this.
The idea that people would buy houses outright seems ridiculous to me unless you were rich. I guess given the values of home ownership back then, buying a house in full payment makes sense. I assume a house was more of a sign of wealth rather than a necessity to people. Although living somewhere is important, a house also symbolized how wealthy. This is true nowadays but the difference is the type of house like if a person has a mansion or not.
After I read about HOLC rating system, it does not surprise me areas African Americans lived were rated the worst. Even though an area was new or if only a few black families lived in a neighborhood, the property values drop. It is sad to know that based on the color of your skin you could devalue an area. Such was the culture of America and still is today but thankfully, to a lower extent.
It is even sadder to know that to avoid losing out in an investment in building areas, the ratio of blacks to whites were carefully looked at by the federal government. The FHA basically promoted segregation with its public policy. The middle class was preferred over the poor and whites over blacks. Some areas were not allowed to get loans.
Although we learned in history the New Deal had policies that saved the country from the Great Depression, which it did, it also promoted racial segregation and was not built on benevolence. It was not to help promote home ownership nor help the poor. Its main purpose was to save the housing and real estate industry. Although I will remember the New Deal as the way to deter the depression, the reading does make me question the aftereffects of important policies.
