| Federal housing policy originated before the Great Depression, but prevailing arguments on the origins of housing policy ignore the predepression years. Using evidence from 1917 to 1929, this study argues that housing policy originated in independent efforts of appointed federal elites to use housing as a macroeconomic stabilizer. Four alternative arguments find the origin of housing policy in developments outside the state, either in public consensus, pressure from the housing industry, class conflict, or conflicts between housing and nonhousing capitalists.;The study examines five cases of federal involvement with housing, along with two brief periods of withdrawal from housing, between 1917 and 1929. Three of the cases and both periods of withdrawal originated in federal concerns about national economic stability. The two remaining cases, from World War One, responded to outside class conflict, but without the homeownership promotion stressed in the class-conflict argument. None of the cases or periods of withdrawal responded to public consensus, housing-industry pressure, or intracapitalist conflicts. Most evidence comes from qualitative sources (e.g., government documents and trade and professional periodicals) that are listed in a separate appendix. An additional appendix shows quantitative economic and institutional trends for the period.;As a major policy area with origins endogenous to the state, housing policy shows that the state itself is a source of political change. Yet most theories of the state do not acknowledge such independence, and instead treat the state as a dependent variable. Only Block (1980) and Skocpol (1980) acknowledge that political elites can pursue their own agendas within broad, historical constraints. Yet the origins of housing policy show that the state can even loosen these constraints and increase opportunities for political action. Business-government conflicts over antitrust policy created such an opportunity during the nineteen twenties, when political elites--including Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt--cast housing in a macroeconomic role. |
