The National Housing Act of 1934, H.R. 9620, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 73–479, 48 Stat. 1246, enacted June 27, 1934, also called the Better Housing Program,[1] was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable.[2] It created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)[3] and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC).[4]
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| Long title | AN ACT To encourage improvement in housing standards and conditions, to provide a system of mutual mortgage insurance, and for other purposes |
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| Enacted by | the 73rd United States Congress |
| Citations | |
| Public law | Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 73–479 |
| Statutes at Large | 48 Stat. 1246 |
| Legislative history | |
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The Act was designed to stop the tide of bank foreclosures on family homes during the Great Depression. Both the FHA and the FSLIC worked to create the backbone of the mortgage and home building industries, until the 1980s.[5] (See Savings and loan crisis and Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 that ended the FSLIC, whose activities were moved to the FDIC.)
These policies had disparate impacts on Americans along segregated lines (see Redlining):
Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."
The government's efforts were "primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families," he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.[6][7]
The Housing Act of 1937 built on this legislation.
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