[1] Under pressure by entrenched real estate interests and intense and competing resource needs caused by World War II, the Division lasted for only two years.
[3] By the middle of the 1930s the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration began to bring attention to the housing plight of lower-income groups in the United States.
Affordable housing plans were developed but were unable to garner the necessary support within government circles, and they were filed away to await a time when the environment would be right for implementation.
One of the Authority's first efforts was the implementation of a public relations campaign to establish popular support for the housing program that would help blunt attacks from the construction industry and other enemies.
Housing was simply too important a concern to be left only to private industry, labor, or even individual citizens; they believed it was the responsibility of the government to take the lead.
But the government creation of middle-income housing projects was viewed by many members of the nation's building and real estate industry to be a much larger threat to their livelihood than that designed for the lower-income group.
The corresponding expansion of defense industries, especially those located along coastal areas, and the massive migration of workers into these booming regions, created a serious housing shortage that demanded immediate government intervention.
The Act also empowered the Federal Works Agency (FWA) to overrule local governmental resistance and regulations in order to expedite construction.
From the conception of the Division; through the development of its eight projects;, and to its demise at the hands of inept management, wartime limitations and shortages, and attacks from powerful enemies was only a short few years.
This corporation would be responsible for amortizing the government backed mortgage over a 45-year period through monthly payments that included a 3% interest charge on the unpaid balance.
These demographics made the community less vulnerable to economic crisis, while the differing family sizes and space needs allowed for flexibility in housing requirements.
"[20] Another very important and powerful supporter of mutual housing was Senator Lanham himself, who stated the following during a March 1941 hearing before Congress: "My understanding of the original (Lanham Act) was that it was not the purpose to make (homes) ideal, but it was the purpose to build them in areas where they could be used permanently and of a standard that would be suitable for permanent residence, because in that way the Government has the best chance of recouping its investment by the sale of the homes, and, of course, this (mutual ownership plan) is different in that respect from many of these housing projects, because these are built from the standpoint of sale and recouping the expenditure insofar as possible, at the same time affording an opportunity to these industrial workers to get a home where they are permanently engaged.
Palmer went so far as to declare the program itself to be illegal—although never specifying how it was so—and made himself readily accessible and helpful to organizations protesting the siting of mutual housing projects within their communities.
Senator Bell asked: "I am just wondering ... if people earning between $160 and $200 a month or less regularly and are permanently employed, (could have their housing needs) handled through channels of private industry?
The New Jersey Realtors' Board President wrote an editorial published in local newspapers stating, " ..The USHA no longer can attempt to justify subsidized, socialized housing ... with defense activity providing new employment at good wages, and financiers alert to the rising home market, there can be no justification for another such (mutual housing) project in New Jersey.
Congress began reacting to the financial fears of potential defense housing host communities early in 1941 by passing an amendment to the Lanham Act that provided additional resources for the expansion of public facilities (i.e. schools, government offices, libraries, feeder roads, sewers, etc.)
Residents of host communities would continue to be fearful that their new neighbors would be a lower class of people (no matter how similar to themselves they actually may have been), while also feeling resentful that others seemed to be getting a tax supported subsidy for housing when they themselves had worked "long and hard" to obtain their homes.
On November 30, 1941, just eight days prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the start of direct United States involvement in the Second World War, tenants of the last mutual ownership project (Winfield Park, New Jersey) began to move into their new homes.
Supporters of this new direction strongly believed that private industry was far more efficient, and ".. could utilize a few lots here and a favorably located site there, wholly unsuitable for large-scale Government projects."
[33] During its short period of existence neither financial nor personnel resources were provided at the necessary levels to effectively support and operate the Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division.
Claims and investigations of mismanagement of the Division were partially related to Westbrook's weak supervisory abilities, but they were also due to oversights and mistakes made by a small, overworked staff trying to do more than it could efficiently do, in an unsupportive environment.
Some money was made available to the Farm Security Administration, to the Tennessee Valley Authority, and within the FWA itself another unit was set up, the Mutual Ownership Division of Defense Housing, under Col. Westbrook.
But the question itself, posed by the Defense Housing Coordinator, created a number of doubts among influential individuals who could have protected and encouraged the program, rather than watch it be dismantled.
In March 1942, a CIO representative presented to Congress a copy of his organization's resolution on war workers' housing in the United States, that included the following demand: "We demand not only that there be a return to a sane program of building planned housing communities, but insist further that war workers as tenants, through the labor organizations which represent them, be given an opportunity to participate in planning the layout and construction of such communities and in their cooperative management after construction, and renew our endorsement of the Mutual Home Ownership Plan..."[36] These protests were ignored by Congress, and the mutual housing program never revived.
By the conclusion of World War II, the eight completed mutual housing projects built in 1941 were doing exceedingly well, though federal, state and local governmental support had been and continued to be severely lacking.
According to mutual housing supports, the vested interest of corporation members inspired demands for efficient low cost operations.
Reports from residents indicate that individuals had actually turned down other employment opportunities because they did not wish to leave the cooperative, neighborly, low-cost environment of their mutual housing project.
The Act provided only limited resources to promote the program as a private initiative model for groups of returning veterans seeking housing.
The National Housing Agency informed Congress that research on the program would continue, and that: "Records on the projects are being maintained for future analysis and study.
As late as 1952 Westbrook was looking for ways to resurrect this middle-class public housing effort but this plan was abandoned with the election of the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower.