Above: The Williamsburg Houses, Brooklyn, New York, a public housing project financed by the New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA), 1936-1938. This was one of at least 51 housing communities built with PWA funding, and also one of the largest, most successful, and enduring ones. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: The description for this photograph--taken in Brooklyn, 1937--reads in part, "Here is a family looking over the living room of one of the ultra-modern [Williamsburg Houses], a far cry from the crowded and outmoded tenements they will replace." Associated Press photo, scanned from a personal copy and used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.
Above: This 1937 photo shows one of the first tenants of Williamsburg Houses and reads, "Mrs. P. Berkowitz as she [cooks] the first meal to be prepared in their new home on one of the electric stoves with which the apartments are furnished. She says she is 'very much tickled' with her new home and the stove in particular." Photo is credited "Ref. Dept., 10-5-37, N.E.A.," scanned from a personal copy and used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.
Above: A house at Tygart Valley Homesteads, West Virginia, one of about 34 communities created by the New Deal's Subsistence Homesteads Division, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1933-1935. Photo by Carol Denney, 2019.
Above: A history marker at Tygart Valley Homesteads, West Virginia. Photo by Brent McKee, 2019.
Above: A house at Dyess Colony, Arkansas, one of 28 communities created by the New Deal's Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), ca. 1934-1935. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: New Deal-created communities often included health clinics, schools, grocery stores, farm buildings, and more. The building above is a trading post at Dyess Colony, Arkansas. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: A WPA poster advertising Valleyview Homes in Ohio, a public housing community created by the New Deal's United States Housing Authority (USHA), ca. 1940. The Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority was one of many local housing authorities set up to administer USHA funding. By the end of fiscal year 1941, USHA had financed 399 public housing projects. Many of these projects, along with public housing projects constructed after the New Deal, fell into disrepair, economic hopelessness, and crime. But there were many success stories too: "The legacy of public housing in the United States is a complex one. Its failures have been terrible and widely heralded; its successes, which are much more the norm, are mostly overlooked" (Edward G. Goetz, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, & Public Housing Policy, Cornell University, 2013, p. 189.) Image from the Library of Congress.
Above: Children cooling off at the Jane Addams Homes, Chicago, ca. 1939. This public housing project was financed by PWA but later administered by USHA. Photo by Peter Sekaer, USHA, and provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Above: Willert Park Courts, an African American public housing community in Buffalo, New York, financed by USHA and completed in 1939. New Deal housing projects are frequently evaluated and reflected upon by modern critics as tools for displacing African Americans, discriminating against them, and promoting segregation. However, while there is certainly plenty of blame to go around for America's apartheid history, the criticism leveled at the New Deal is overblown and the history more complex. For example, the program guide for the 1940 American Negro Exposition reported that "Survey after survey has indicated that great masses of Negroes are living in substandard dwellings for which they are compelled to pay high rents. They have not been able to get out of these slums and blighted areas, because decent, safe and sanitary homes have not been available to them at rentals within their reach. Throughout the Nation, local housing authorities are trying to meet this problem with the cooperation and financial assistance of the USHA... Of the 400 [USHA] projects, at least 177 will be wholly or partially occupied by Negro families." Photo from the Library of Congress.
Above: Workers constructing Greenbelt, Maryland, under supervision of the New Deal's Resettlement Administration (RA), 1936. Across the country, there were about 37 new communities built by the RA. Photo by Carl Mydans, RA and Farm Security Administration, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Above: A history display at the Greenbelt Community Center, 2011. New Deal communities were frequently criticized as hideous attempts at communism, but many residents appreciated the affordable housing and ended up having great memories of living in their respective communities. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.
Above: The remarkable El Falansterio, constructed by the New Deal's Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) in 1937. It was one of many New Deal housing and homestead projects in Puerto Rico, and included "a completely staffed social service center with recreation rooms, reading rooms, a kindergarten, an auditorium and a first grade school room. There is also a full-time nurse and a part-time doctor available to the tenants." Quote and photo from the PRRA publication, Rehabilitation in Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR: Imprenta Venezuela, 1939.
Above: The beautifully-designed balconies on the El Falansterio. The housing development was "a group of three-story art deco buildings in Puerta de Tierra comprising 216 apartments of reinforced concrete designed to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires... Apartments included two bedrooms, an indoor bathroom with a shower, an indoor kitchen, and clean drinking water" (Geoff G. Burrows, The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration: New Deal Public Works, Modernization, and Colonial Reform, University of Florida Press, 2024, p. 96). Today, the El Falansterio is on the National Register of Historic Places. Photo by Ian Poellet, provided by Wikimedia Commons, and used here under the CCA-SA 4.0 International License.
Above: The Community Center Building of the El Falansterio. "Falansterio" comes from the French word "Phalanstery," which means "building or buildings occupied by a community living together and having goods and property in common." Photo credited to the "Office of Resident Commissioner," and taken from the Falansterio's National Register of Historic Places material.
Above: WPA workers putting together a pre-fabricated home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, ca. 1938, part of a larger WPA low-cost housing project sponsored by the Fort Wayne Housing Authority (but probably not funded through USHA). The homes were based on a model created by Frank Watson and J. Stanley Young, "The material for each house cost about $900 [about $21,000 in 2025 dollars]... The new, four-room, low-cost house is simplicity itself. One room (20 x 12 ft.) serves as living room, dining room, and kitchen; is equipped with a porcelain sink and a coal--and wood--fired stove for cooking and heating purposes. A 4 x 8 1/2 ft. bathroom contains a wash basin, water closet, 30 gal. hot water heater and stubby tub. Two 12 x 7 ft., 8 in. bedrooms complete with living accommodations for a family of four. Well-studied fenestration [design and placement] and room arrangement afford adequate light and cross ventilation in each major room" ("The WPA Made This... To Replace This," The Hancock Democrat (Greenfield, Indiana), December 8, 1938). Photo from the National Archives.
The New Deal Affordable Housing Foundation
"Within 3 short years more was accomplished by PWA to establish good public housing for the underprivileged in the United States than had been brought about in the preceding three centuries."
(Public Works Administration, America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, p. 208).
The New Deal built at least 550 communities for Americans in need of housing assistance (see captions above). The construction of these new communities reflected FDR's belief that every family should have the right "to a decent home."
Do our current policymakers share FDR's belief? Have they adequately built upon the New Deal's affordable housing foundation - both physically and philosophically?
(Note: For an analysis and list of New Deal commuities see (1) Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal, The University of South Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 118-169, and (2) the Annual Report of the United States Housing Authority, 1941, pp. 70-96.)
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