Shelter and Housing
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term includes which not only housebuilding itself, but the production of housebuilding materials, plumbing , ventilation, gas and electrical fittings , house decoration and sanitation. During and after the World War, however , it suddenly began to acquire a social significance which hitherto had not been appreciated. Labor being diverted into war industries, housebuilding practically ceased in all the civilized countries, including those not involved in the war, and rents leaped to such heights as had never been attained before, rising proportionately higher than the prices of any other necessities . The problem became still more acute after the war, when it became obvious that capital was not being invested in housing while the prices of land and building materials continued at exorbitant rates. Many plans for the promotion of housebuilding were proposed and put into practice. Among these were state subsidies, loans to build ing and loan associations, exemption from taxation , municipal and co-operative housing. The United States Government had been compelled to enter the field of housebuilding during the war, through the United States Housing Corporation, and completed a large part of its program for the erection of 21,000 individual houses. The first state to take direct hold of housing enterprises was Massachusetts, whose Homestead Commission received a large ap purchase and building of homes. Oklaappropriation for the homa also passed a law which authorized the investment of certain state funds in loans for building homes, and North Dakota, in 1919 , created a State Housing Association, which acted as a building and loan association , on a state-wide basis and with the financial backing of the state. Relief from the situation was in sight at the end of 1920, when the investigations of the Lockwood Committee of New York demonstrated the fact that the manufacturers and dealers in housing materials had formed a national combine to hold up their prices, which were then 150 per cent higher than they had been before the war. Almost immediately after the beginning of the prices began falling, and, though they soon investigation rose again, by the end was a considerable renewal of activity în of the year there the housing industry.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 at the peak of a post-war building famine, when the young U.S. Housing Corporation had put up war-worker houses and states like Massachusetts, Oklahoma and North Dakota were experimenting with public loans. Those emergency measures were wound down, but the principle they tested became permanent federal policy in the 1930s: the Federal Housing Administration of 1934 and the long-term insured mortgage turned home purchase from a short-term, high-deposit affair into the 30-year loan most Americans still use, and the Housing Act of 1937 began federally funded public housing. The suburban boom after 1945, aided by the GI Bill and mass builders such as Levitt, pushed U.S. homeownership from under half to roughly two-thirds, while much of the mid-century public housing stock was later demolished as it fell into disrepair. The price problem Collier's blamed on a building-materials combine has never gone away: rent burdens, mortgage crises like that of 2008, and street homelessness are now the standing form of the housing question rather than a post-war emergency.
Written for this edition, 2026.