The act came on the heels of major riots across cities throughout the U.S. in 1967, the assassination of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and the publication of the report of the Kerner Commission, which recommended major expansions in public funding and support of urban areas.

President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to the legislation as one of the most significant laws ever passed in the U.S., due to its scale and ambition.

But it also marked a shift in federal programs, increasingly focusing on using private developers as a strategy to encourage housing production of affordable units.

The Act established Ginnie Mae to expand availability of mortgage funds for moderate income families using government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities.

The Rouse Company used Section 235 to resell hundreds of homes that had been condemned and abandoned for a cancelled highway project in Baltimore, Maryland.

The legislation provided hundreds of millions of dollars for the public housing, Model Cities, and Urban Renewal programs, all intended to aid low-income communities.

The legislation encouraged new forms for public housing, discouraging the towers-in-the-park that had characterized previous designs in many large U.S. cities.

[12] (Several communities also applied as Title VII new towns with the follow-on National Urban Policy and New Community Development Act of 1970)[13] In early 1973, President Richard Nixon placed a moratorium on new federal housing subsidies, making the 1968 Act's goals impossible to achieve.