Urban Renewal

The Housing Act of 1949 provided loans to cities to acquire and clear slums for redevelopment through private developers.  The Act also provided millions of dollars for the construction of affordable housing.

The main parts of the legislation included:1

  1. Federal financing for slum clearance. Those displaced from slum clearance were prioritized for new construction of public housing.
  2. Set aside federal funds to construct 800,000 units of public housing over a six year period, however construction was slow. By the end of 1957, only about 210,000 of the 810,000 units authorized had been completed.2
  3. Expanded Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program.
  4. Reduced the income limit for those who qualified for public housing.3

The Housing Act of 1954 reduced the public housing goals of the 1949 Housing Act, focusing only on replacing the units lost due to slum clearance and not necessarily in the same neighborhood that was cleared of low-income housing. Although technically race neutral, communities with high levels of people of color were disproportionately chosen for redevelopment.

The change in income levels changed the composition of those living in public housing. From 1952 to 1962, the number of families in public housing receiving some form of income assistance rose from 29% to 46%.3 Due to the fact public housing development was tied to Urban Renewal policy in the Housing Act of 1949, which disproportionately displaced minority neighborhoods, public housing began to house more families of color, especially African-American families.

For more on the displacement created from these urban renewal policies, please see the University of Richmond’s called Family Displacements and Urban Renewal, 1950-1966.

For more information on public housing, see here.

For the full text of the bill, see here.

Endnotes

1. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogram

2. Robert Moore Fisher, Twenty Years of Public Housing (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1959), Table 1, pg. 14

3. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41654.pdf