Are Homeowners Better Citizens? Community Engagement, Civic Participation, and the American Dream

Author: Brian McCabe

Dissertation School: New York University

Pages: 283

Publication Date: May 2011

Availability:
Available from the HUD USER Helpdesk P.O. Box 23268 Washington, DC 20026-3268 Toll Free: 1-800-245-2691 Fax: 1-202-708-9981 Email: oup@oup.org

Access Number: 10972

Abstract:

On September 15, 1931, President Herbert Hoover announced his plan to hold a national conference on homebuilding and homeownership in the United States. The conference would investigate the obstacles to homeownership, according to Hoover, “with the hope of … inspiring better organization and the removal of influences which seriously limit the spread of homeownership, both town and country.” Hoover used the announcement of the President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership to remind the country of the benefits of homeownership, both to communities nationwide and to the country at-large. Homeownership made for better family life, greater social stability and improved citizenship, according to the President’s announcement.

The President’s conference culminated more than a decade of advocacy for homeownership by Herbert Hoover. In 1920, he accepted an invitation by President Harding to serve as the first Secretary of Commerce. The position provided Hoover with a national platform to advance his vision for a nation of homeowners. As Commerce Secretary, Hoover focused on promoting homeownership through the reorganization of the Division of Building and Housing. He worked to lower the cost of construction and standardize homebuilding practices in the United States, ensuring the resources of the federal government aided private industries in the construction of owner-occupied homes. To educate potential homebuyers, the Department published a booklet entitled, “How to Own Your Own Home,” detailing many of the intricacies of homeownership in early twentieth-century America. The booklet sold more than 300,000 copies.

Hoover’s efforts to standardize construction practices and provide households with information helped expand opportunities for homeownership throughout the 1920s. However, a handful of obstacles stood in the way of Hoover’s vision for a nation of homeowners. Rapid urbanization in the previous decades had transformed the United States from a predominantly agricultural country into an increasingly urban one. Urban industrialization uprooted millions of Americans, detaching them from their rural communities in search of work opportunities in growing industrial cities. Although many found new employment opportunities in industrial cities, fewer were able to secure property rights in housing (Garb 2005).

The First World War substantially worsened the housing situation. The country experienced an acute housing shortage by the end of the War, having redirected building resources towards the War efforts and away from the homebuilding industry. In 1920, as Hoover took Hoover also served as the chairman and chief spokesman of the Better Homes in America movement during his tenure as Secretary of Commerce. With Hoover at the helm, the group organized annual demonstration weeks to promote homeownership and proper homemaking techniques in local communities nationwide.

In 1920, as Hoover took the helms of the Department of Commerce, the United States Census reported that the national homeownership rate had fallen to its lowest point in the nation’s history. The 1920 Census also reported that, for the first time in the nation’s history, the majority of Americans lived in cities.

The challenges Hoover faced in realizing his vision for a nation of homeowners during his eight-year stint as Commerce Secretary paled in comparison to those he would face upon winning the presidency. Less than a year after his election in 1928, the United States fell into the worst housing crisis in the nation’s history. The collapse of the stock market on October 29, 1929, sent the country into the Great Depression. For the next couple years, unemployment rates soared and communities across the country experienced an unprecedented wrath of foreclosures. New housing construction virtually ceased as the effects of the economic slowdown gripped the United States. Hoover recognized stagnant homeownership rates and a sluggish homebuilding industry as twin threats endangering the welfare of the country. Wiping away many of the gains in homeownership from the previous decade, the Great Depression led to the emergence of shantytowns symbolizing the plight of American households. It was no small irony that these shantytowns bore the name of the country’s foremost advocate for homeownership - Hoovervilles.

It was nearly two years into the Depression that President Hoover announced his intention to bring together businessmen, civic leaders and government officials to discuss the state of homebuilding and homeownership in the United States. He entrusted two members of his cabinet – Robert P. Lamont, the Secretary of Commerce and Ray Lyman Wilbur, the Secretary of the Interior – to oversee the conference. The men drew widely from business circles, civic organizations and political groups to organize the conference. They selected architects, builders, city planners and civic leaders to hold key posts as members of the planning committee. The group included representatives of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, the U.S. Building and Loan League, the American Civic Association and the National Conference of Parents and Teachers, underscoring the broad group of stakeholders interested in the promotion of home building and homeownership in the United States.

On December 2, 1931, Hoover convened hundreds of citizens at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. to participate in the President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. Radio networks carried the proceedings of the four-day conference into living rooms nationwide. From the onset, President Hoover impressed upon conference participants the urgency of their discussions. “You have come from every State in the Union to consider a matter of basic national interest,” Hoover told the participants. In the short-term, Hoover hoped the revitalization of the homebuilding industry would lead the country out of the Great Depression. Federal efforts to stimulate home construction would simultaneously stimulate employment in the construction trades and improve the housing situation for millions of American households. His efforts commenced a series of housing policies that, through the 1930s, would transform homeownership into a tool to jumpstart the American economy.

But as Hoover stood before the crowds assembled at Constitution Hall, he encouraged them to take the long-view of their participation in the historic conference. To underscore the breadth of expertise involved in planning the President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, I include the complete list of members of the planning committee in Appendix 1.

He underscored the importance of building a nation of homeowners to the long-term viability and health of the American republic. The recommendations of conference participations could ensure that homeownership remained a realistic, achievable aspiration for millions of citizens. “This aspiration [for homeownership] penetrates the heart of our national well-being,” Hoover assured conference attendees. “It makes for happier married life, it makes for better children, it makes for confidence and security, it makes for courage to meet the battle of life, it makes for better citizenship. There can be no fear for a democracy or self-government or for liberty or freedom from home owners no matter how humble they may be.” (Hoover 1931) To hear the President tell it, the very future of the American experiment with democratic self-governance rested on the promotion of homeownership (Hoover [1922] 1989).

The four-day conference concluded with a ten-volume report addressing the challenges of homeownership and homebuilding in the tumultuous years of the Great Depression. The report addressed everything from the minutia of housing layouts and kitchen designs to macro concerns about finance and taxation. It offered recommendations for clearing urban slums and planning residential districts (Ford and Gries 1932). In each section, the report emphasized the importance of homeownership to the wellbeing of communities and the long-term viability of the country. In one memorable passage, Secretary Lamont echoed the President’s focus on democracy, citizenship and civic responsibility as the core stakes in the promotion of homeownership. “It is doubtful whether democracy is possible where tenants overwhelmingly outnumber home owners,” Lamont wrote. “For democracy is not a privilege; it is a responsibility, and human nature rarely volunteers to shoulder responsibility, but has to be driven by the whip of necessity. The need to protect and guard the home is the whip that has proved, beyond all others, efficacious in driving men to discharge the duties of self-government, and from the landed barons of King John, down through the Squirearchy and Yeomanry of England to the makers of the American Revolution, the men who have preserved the civil liberties of the English-speaking peoples have been the men with a stake in society. We have concerned ourselves too little with the effect of homeownership on citizenship.” (Ford and Gries 1932: Vol. IV, pp. vii)

The focus on democratic citizenship by Hoover, Lamont and other participants in the President’s conference drew to the surface century-old ideas about property ownership and the practices of citizenship in the United States. Since the founding of the American republic, the Jeffersonian vision of propertied citizens as the guarantors of liberty and the protectors of democracy guided the development of nation (Bender 1982). The founders conditioned the right to vote on property ownership, believing that property owners could participate in the political process without considering outside influences (Keyssar 2000). Although the property requirements for membership in the political community had been dropped and the franchise extended by the time of President Hoover’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, century-old beliefs linking property ownership to membership in the political community continued to inform discussion of citizenship in the early twentieth century.

Back to Search Result of DDRG Dissertations