World War I Housing Reform Effort
Historical Essay
by John Baranski
This excerpt originally appeared in "Progressive Era Housing Reform," Chapter One of Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco (see below for copyright and book information)
Mayor Rolph and French diplomats inspect WWI troops parading in Civic Center, May 14, 1918.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp36.01869
World War I provided another opportunity for expanding the role of government, though this expansion happened more at the federal level. During the war, U.S. government officials sought industrial peace and increased production across the nation. To avoid labor unrest, especially in the defense and other critical industries, they took social policy cues from progressive reformers and labor leaders by regulating wages and hours and supporting collective bargaining agreements between the American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions and employers.
The housing shortage, especially in war-production areas, posed another challenge. Without decent homes, workers were less productive and more likely to strike or leave the area. AFL President Samuel Gompers, who chaired the Health and Welfare Committee on the Council of National Defense, appointed a committee to investigate national housing conditions. While Gompers’s committee found shortages across the nation, housing reformers lobbied Congress for programs modeled on Europe’s experiments in public, limited-dividend, and cooperative housing. Congress responded with two major housing appropriations: $75 million to the U.S. Shipping Board and $100 million to the Department of Labor. The Shipping Board lent money to private real estate and ship companies to build company housing. In contrast, the Department of Labor’s United States Housing Corporation, under the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted, built and administered dozens of quality public housing developments modeled on the garden cities in England.(38)
Residents and housing experts praised Olmsted’s villages, but real estate representatives launched a vigorous campaign against the public housing program, chastising officials for, as housing expert Edith Wood put it, “building better houses than workers were accustomed to, for wasting time on town planning.” Tellingly, the finished and unfinished federal housing units were sold after the war. But the program revealed, on one hand, the capacity of government, if given a chance, to build high-quality housing and communities, and on the other, the opposition to government involvement in the housing sector.(39)
Welcome Home Parade for the 363rd and 347th regiments, World War I, seen here on Market Street near Turk, April 22, 1919.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp30.0284
Although World War I expanded federal housing programs, at least temporarily, the war slowed down housing reform in San Francisco. The city did not receive federal war housing even though from 1910 to 1920 its population increased 20 percent (from 416,912 to 506,676), and new and old residents strained the housing supply.40 Many members of the San Francisco Housing Association abandoned housing work in favor of war service, either locally or in Europe, through organizations such as the Red Cross. Regular meetings stopped, though Alice Griffith remained active on the National Housing Association (NHA) board. Some San Francisco Housing Association members worked with the CCIH, which continued its education and regulatory efforts. The California government passed three regulatory housing laws in 1917, though without the funding for more inspectors, but rejected CCIH recommendations for limited-dividend housing and low-interest government home loans. CCIH staff did improve some rural labor camp housing, mostly because employers wanted to prevent labor disruptions and more state regulations. By the war’s end, housing reform in California had slowed to a trickle, following national trends. NHA members put their faith in planning commissions and zoning laws, building codes, and state housing commissions to stamp out substandard housing. To keep alive housing alternatives, the NHA’s education program championed European large-scale housing models.(41)
Housing reformers, in and out of San Francisco, failed to accomplish more because they failed to articulate a compelling alternative to private housing that would mobilize the public. In San Francisco, a city noted for its politically active residents, that failure was especially important. Without popular support, broader housing and urban reforms did not stand much of a chance against the power of the landlords, the real estate industry, and a political culture and legal system that supported private property rights over the economic rights of citizens.(42)
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Notes
38. Dubofsky, We Shall Be All; Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, chapter 7; Edith Elmer Wood, Recent Trends in American Housing (New York: Macmillan Company, 1931), chapter 1; Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 170–74; Eric Karolak, “‘No Idea of Doing Anything Wonderful’: The Labor-Crisis Origins of National Housing Policy and the Reconstruction of the Working-Class Community, 1917–1919,” in John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000).
39. Karolak, “‘No Idea of Doing Anything Wonderful’”; quote in Wood, Recent Trends, 77.
40. Elizabeth H. Ashe, Intimate Letters from France and Extracts from the Diary of Eliza- beth Ashe, 1917–1919 (San Francisco: Bruce Brough Press, 1931); Burton, Katherine Felton; Oscar Lewis, San Francisco: Mission to Metropolis (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1966), 227; Howard A. DeWitt, Images of Ethnic and Radical Violence in California Politics, 1917–1930: A Survey (San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1975), chapter 3; Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California 1910–1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Issel and Cherny, San Francisco.
41. CCIH, A Report on Relief of Destitute Unemployed, 1914–15, and Americanization: A Program for California; Robert Porter to Simon Lubin (May 16, 1919), Folder “Misc. I–P,” Box 1, Simon Julius Lubin Papers, BANC; Dorothy Shaffter, State Housing Agencies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), 94–105; NHA publications in Folder “Housing (1–3),” Box 76 “Housing,” John Randolph Haynes Papers Collection 1241, UCLA/DSC.
42. San Francisco Housing Association, Minutes (November 10, 1933), Folder 16, Box 3, SPUR, CU; Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders; Fairbanks, “From Better Dwellings to Better Neighborhoods”; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 42–44. For San Francisco’s politically active residents, see Kazin, Barons of Labor; Issel and Cherny, San Francisco; Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Barbara Berglund, Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846–1906 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).
Excerpted from Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco by John Baranski, published by Stanford University Press. Used by permission. © Copyright 2019 by John Baranski. All rights reserved.