Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division - Advantages of The Mutual Housing Plan

Advantages of The Mutual Housing Plan

Testifying before Congress in the summer of 1941, Colonel Westbrook outlined the following advantages that he believed would result from the implementation of the Mutual Housing program:

Advantages for Workers

1. Permits the building of substantial financial reserves for bad times through the elimination of down payments and high rents for housing.
2. Allows interchangeability of housing units to account for changing family conditions.
3. Enables a family to maintain a substantial investment in a "facility in which it will always have a personal need."
4. Prevents individual foreclosures through cooperative risk sharing.
5. Group maintenance and repair is possible and can be accomplished at less cost while also maintaining a uniform community appearance.
6. During times of financial stress the program will permit large-scale refinancing and a more effective means for investment protection.

1. Affords a better protection for the Government's investment by reason of the occupants' direct concern and interest in their homes.
2. Eliminates a sudden flood of housing in the real estate market at the conclusion of the emergency, because "occupants in the Mutual Housing program will have been selected on the basis of their probable permanence, high credit ratings.."
3. Improves the chance of recouping original investment by permitting the purchase of the project by its residents.
4. Creates a stable and responsible community with lower defense worker turn-over.
5. Creates a new and valuable pattern for home building.

1. Acquires a group of carefully selected stable new citizens.
2. "Full participation of the residents of the project in community affairs and in the sharing of the community expenses."