South Australian Housing Trust

Playford supported the expansion of the SAHT as a major state enterprise and as a key instrument in the economic policies initiated by his predecessor as premier, Richard Layton Butler.

A role as urban developer was implicit in the trust's founding purpose of constructing workers' cottages on a scale sufficient to restrain rents in Adelaide generally and stimulate the private building industry.

These inadvertent urban planning roles became more self-conscious and more extensive from the late 1940s as Playford supported industrial development by creating or greatly expanding state enterprises such as the Electricity Trust of South Australia and the SAHT.

The undertaking of explicitly urban development roles was also due to the restructuring of the SAHT during the mid-1940s, with additional staff and responsibilities, a new chairman (Jack Cartledge) and general manager (Alex Ramsay).

Cartledge and Ramsay were highly intelligent and capable men who created the post-war organisation with its pervasive powers and directed the SAHT for the remaining years of the Playford government.

[4] The Housing Trust built a great number of basic homes to 15 different plans for purchase by qualifying families, and were targeted at self-reliant young couples filling the new jobs in manufacturing created by Playford's policies.