While reading Jackson’s Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream There were three main things that he mentioned that really stuck out to me. The first thing was the concept on whether housing was a problem of the individual or the government. The second thing he mentions which stuck out to me was the mentality of civilians regarding government interaction. Finally the third thing which stuck with me was how socialism and racism still managed to stick their heads into all this.

Now regarding the first point about whether housing is the problem of the government or it’s people, I feel like in order to fully understand this one should turn to the foundation of our government, which is the Declaration of Independence . The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson who was influenced greatly by the writings of John Locke and the Declaration discusses all the natural born rights of all human beings and how it is the government’s duty to protect these rights. The rights written in the Declaration include the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The last right is the right I would like to focus on, when John Locke wrote this instead of pursuit of happiness he wrote the right to property. Now the fact that Jefferson changed the word property might give some insight as to whether or not it is the right of the government to give the citizens land. Since according to the declaration these unalienable rights must be protected by the government and since property isn’t there I feel this kind of takes the government out of the equation and therefore forces this onto the people and makes it their responsibility. But, this is up for discussion since the more popular reason for the removal of property is because some people might say this gives people the right to own slaves.

Regarding the second point about the mentality of the civilians it didn’t surprise me that up until The Great Depression there was this lack of desire for the government to help with housing. The reason for this is because until things get out of hand or into a really bad situation people don’t wake up and realize that something’s wrong. Take Swine Flu for example, there is a flu season every year and every year people get the flu but that one year where a few extra people died the world bugged out. There was a demand for the vaccine. But, the next year when flu season came about not that many people went for the flu shot. For this reason during the Great Depression when not many people had houses there was a demand for the government to help with houses because when people are in a bad situation, that’s when they wake up. Otherwise they don’t usually care as much.

Finally, Jackson’s talk about Socialism and Racism also stuck out a lot to me while reading this chapter. When a housing project was being start up it was started up in the way of a military initiative the reason for this is because subsidizing houses was seen as a sort of socialistic. Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico viewed this as an attempt “to socialize this Government of ours, to overturn the entire Government of the United States. I just found it a little ironic that this dogma of Socialism wormed it’s way into all parts of the US government, it might be a bit naive but I didn’t feel that socialism became such a big deal until later on in the 1900’s. On the other hand the concept of racism didn’t surprise me at all because the Civil rights movement didn’t happen until about 1955. So, when the chapter said that in Detroit in 1941 when someone built a wall in the middle of a neighborhood to separate the whites from the blacks just so that the whites would be able to get mortgage approved by the FHA, although it seemed stupid because society isn’t like this anymore i was able to understand the time-period the article was referencing.

These three points were the points that stuck out to me the most from this chapter by Jackson. I guess the main reason these stuck out to me is because they seemed the most interesting regarding how society interacted with the government and vice versa. It was impressive in my eyes  how strong this connection between the two are.