(Image Credit: HISTORY)
The Federal Housing Administration, which originated from the New Deal, was created with the intention to repair the damage the Great Depression caused to American housing, a conflict that affected millions. However, it was a failed compromise because it segregated previously integrated neighborhoods and refused homes to people of color, creating conflict for black Americans that still remains unresolved today.
“If FDR’s New Deal policies weren’t conceived with racist intent, they certainly had racist consequences.”
-Jim Powell, author of FDR's Folly
In 1933, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented a series of federal programs called the New Deal in order to assist the United States’ recovery from the Great Depression. The subsequent years commenced rigorous changes through administrations, institutions, and acts. Among them was the National Housing Act of 1934, created to make housing readily available for working-class citizens.
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“[The National Housing Act of 1934 and the Federal Housing Administration were created] to encourage improvement in housing standards and conditions, to provide a system of mutual mortgage insurance, and for other purposes.” |
Established with the National Housing Act, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was formed to make homes more easily accessible for Americans by insuring mortgages and stabilizing the housing market. Despite what FDR promised, the FHA exacerbated the separation between homeowners of different races, and denied mortgages and houses to black Americans by implementing deed restrictions and redlining neighborhoods. The effects of these practices, which include a racial wealth gap, have lowered black Americans’ chances of owning property.
“It was a state-sponsored system of segregation.” |