Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division - Critics

Critics

Of course, not everyone was supportive of the mutual housing concept, and many of these critics were especially powerful and influential individuals. First among these critics was Charles Palmer, the federal government's Defense Housing Coordinator. Palmer was frustrated by his lack of control over the highly decentralized defense housing effort, and from his perspective certain housing programs were wasteful, ineffective and unproductive. This was especially true of experimental housing programs like the mutual housing program. Although not directly able to stop the program, Palmer was in a position to hamper the program's progress. Palmer went so far as to declare the program itself to be illegal—although never specifying how it was so—and made himself readily accessible and helpful to organizations protesting the siting of mutual housing projects within their communities.

Evidence supporting Palmer's contention of wastefulness is readily available. Unfortunately, Colonel Westbrook did not possess many of the organizational or management skills necessary to successfully and efficiently supervise his division. On two separate occasions the mutual housing program's projects and efforts were brought before the scrutiny of the Truman Committee investigating waste and corruption in the National Defense Program. Contractors for mutual housing projects in New Jersey did particularly poor jobs and completed the projects substantially over budget. Bids were also badly mishandled by the Mutual Ownership Division. Senator Truman himself became so disgusted by the management of the mutual housing program that in answer to a witness' statement that he did not know exactly what the Mutual Ownership Division did, Truman was recorded as saying that, "They (Mutual Ownership Division) don't either, so proceed."

Other significant contentions expressed by the critics of the program included the following:

1. Temporary short term housing should be destroyed at the end of the emergency period. This was viewed as far more appropriate than attempting to plan for the long term in the midst of a crisis. Senator Kilburn stated that, "It is my contention that they (defense workers) are taking advantage of the situation to feather their own nests."

2. The defense housing problem could more efficiently be handled through the private market. The mutual housing program just competes with, and hurts the private developers. Senator Bell asked: "I am just wondering...if people earning between $160 and $200 a month or less regularly and are permanently employed, (could have their housing needs) handled through channels of private industry? Aren't there plenty of builders and finance available for construction of homes of that character?" The New Jersey Realtors' Board President wrote an editorial published in local newspapers stating, " ..The USHA no longer can attempt to justify subsidized, socialized housing... with defense activity providing new employment at good wages, and financiers alert to the rising home market, there can be no justification for another such (mutual housing) project in New Jersey."

3. The residents of a mutual ownership project will simply leave the project at the end of the emergency, taking their equity with them, and selling the whole project to speculators. Senator Kirman asked a resident of one of the projects "...don't you think you will take the whole thing and hock it off to the highest bidder? Every one of the emergencies in the past shows that this has been done."

4. The mutual housing program is good for city dwellers, but provides no solution for the severe housing needs of rural farmers who were also working for the defense program, but often living in squalid surroundings.

5. The federal government should not have to assume the risk for housing its citizens. According to Senator Johnson, "The thing that alarms me is the philosophy which the entire country seems to be adopting, that if the risk is not good, let the government take it. That is nothing more than a refinement of the old thought that the world owes you a living."

6. There are many hidden costs in a mutual housing project - especially related to the public works being provided by the Federal Works Administration (FWA) - which make each unit far more expensive than indicated, and far in excess of the maximum allowable dollar amount specified by the Lanham Act. Senator Shelton stated that, "..if you put in a public housing job by Lanham funds, and you ask the cost of it, and it comes to $3200 a unit, the public housing sponsors do not count in the FWA that did the excavations and the landscaping and we do not count the sewers that are $8 a running foot, and if it was all counted in and it was properly appraised and capitalized, the structure would cost $5000..."

By far the most persistent critics of the mutual housing program—and many other defense housing programs—were residents of the host communities where the projects were being built, or being planned. The residents feared additional financial burdens to be imposed on them for expanding public facilities. They were also very concerned about the quality and background of the new people moving into their community. Congress began reacting to the financial fears of potential defense housing host communities early in 1941 by passing an amendment to the Lanham Act that provided additional resources for the expansion of public facilities (i.e. schools, government offices, libraries, feeder roads, sewers, etc.) in these communities. Congress also anticipated the fears and concerns host communities would have about defense housing projects and empowered the FWA to overrule local resistance and regulations in order to expedite the provision of defense housing. Residents of host communities would continue to be fearful that their new neighbors would be a lower class of people (no matter how similar to themselves they actually may have been), while also feeling resentful that others seemed to be getting a tax supported subsidy for housing when they themselves had worked "long and hard" to obtain their homes.