In the early 1930s, the United States stood deep in the Depression. In her book, Gwendolyn Wright paints a bleak economic picture of the times: "by 1933, at the peak of the depression, there were one thousand foreclosures per week. Residential construction had plummeted [sic] to 93,000 units, down from 937,000 in 1925." President Roosevelt, elected in 1932, moved quickly to pass sweeping legislation to help pull the country out of its downward spiral. Although extremely conservative prior to the desperation of the early 1930s, Congress approved Roosevelt's New Deal programs and helped America move forward into policies enabling greater government assistance.

Two important pieces of New Deal legislation helped stimulate construction and the increased employment that came with it and helped families obtain decent housing. "In slum clearance and housing policies, New Dealers essentially fashioned two distinct federal programs: rental public housing in minority and slum areas for low- to moderate-income groups; and home ownership (especially suburban) for white, middle- to upper-middle income groups. Together these policies reinforced rather than loosened the segmented socioeconomic character of American habitat and attendant problems of racism, poverty and central city decay."

Our research over the past year focused on this Depression / WW II legislation which enacted housing programs such as the Federal Housing Administration, the United States Housing Act of 1937, the Lanham Act, authorizing war-time defense worker housing, and subsequent modifications of these laws.

Baldwin Hills Village, constructed in 1941 and today known as Village Green, is a fine example of the embodiment of FHA regulations, progressive thought on nurturing multi-family environments and a manifestation of Garden City planning concepts. Compared and contrasted with other contemporary projects in Los Angeles, we hope to draw solid conclusions on which aspects were effective, which were detrimental, and how these determinations can be applied to future projects.

web resources:

Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1981), 213.

John Hancock, "The New Deal and American Planning: the 1930s." In Two Centuries of American Planning, edited by Daniel Schaffer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.), 208.