Cooper Hewitt says...
The United States Housing Authority was a New Deal agency established by the Housing Act of 1937 housed within the United States Department of the Interior. Its purpose was to lend money to states of communities for low-cost construction projects. Under the initiative approximately 650,000 units for both low-income and homeless citizens were begun. The period’s progressive school of political thought conceived environmental improvements as foundation to improved quality of life for poorer demographics. Previously, New York State had undertaken public housing programs for low-income workers, and between 1933–37 the Public Works Administration razed slums and erected new units, both providing construction jobs and updating living accommodations for those in need; led by US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, special consideration was given to African-American citizens. After judicial rulings curtailed the PWA’s authority, the Housing Act of 1937 established the USHA as a long-term solution for federal housing initiatives. The private sector also truncated the USHA’s authority, perceiving it as a threat to enterprise and insisting upon the delineation between the general housing industry and welfare programs. The distinction was legislated—in the form of respective income limits— as was racial segregation, further limiting the USHA’s progressive potential for housing reform in America.
When the USHA was established in 1937, it subsumed the Housing Division of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. In 1939 the organization became part of the Federal Works Agency, and in 1942 was renamed the Federal Public Housing Authority and incorporated the responsibilities of the Public Buildings Administration. The FPHA was replaced by the Public Housing Administration in 1947; the latter was dissolved in 1967 when it was replaced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” program, and remains an Executive Cabinet department to this day.
