Recent Trends in Housing Activity of Local Health Departments *

The growing awareness of housing problems Ten years ago it was possible, and even fashionable, for local officials and civic leaders in American cities to deny the existence of slums or other basic housing problems in their communities. Today the shortage of housing is known to every school child, and most cities possess both emergency and long-term machinery for housing betterment. The past decade has brought not only recognition of housing needs, but it has witnessed the evolution of a national housing policy. Although the implementation of this policy is not, as in Great Britain, lodged primarily with official public health agencies, many health departments have played a significant part in housing programs within their jurisdiction. There are definite indications that local, state, and national public health agencies will share increasingly in the leadership of housing programs. The purpose of the present paper is to interpret new forces at work in progressive local health departments which give promise of such leadership. The United States Housing Act, passed by Congress in 1937, was the first national recognition that it is sound public policy to supply governmental assistance (with subsidy when necessary) in the production of decent homes for poorly housed families of low income. Under this legislation, a program carried out by local housing authorities had re-housed 160,000 low-income urban families before the outbreak of World War II. Mobilization for the War interrupted the low-rent housing program, but housing facilities were recognized in all war planning as an essential part of the nation's productive plant. Consolidation of many federal housing bodies into a single National Housing Agency was the central feature of a temporary housing program which produced the dwellings needed to support the war production. Demobilization has revealed an unprecedented shortage of housing, and