Hoover was instrumental in starting the “Own Your Own Home” suburban advocacy movement, which lasted through the twenties. The government and business leaders of the “Own Your Own Home” movement described the single family home as a “symbol that could build consensus” and a “hallmark of the middle-class arrival in society.” To encourage home building, Hoover created the division of Building and Housing within the Commerce Department to coordinate the activity of builders, real estate developers, social workers, and homemakers as he worked closely with banks and savings and loans industry to promote long term mortgages (a new concept at the time - sound familiar?). Hoover’s promotion of home ownership as an investment of the 20’s remains a concept embedded in the American psyche, and may have helped contribute to our current financial mess. (Read the whole thing here.)
20 hours ago
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While it may not seem nefarious, since it was not legislative, Hoover had a history of working with business leaders in this cartel-like way to get what he wanted. Although not coercive seeming, when you get a bunch of bankers in a room and the Commerce Secretary says, "I'd like you guys to try this...", they'll do it to please to government.
Hoover did something similar as President, which many economists attribute to worsening the depression - he sat down with the leaders of industry to ask them not to lower wages during the deflationary period, and they complied. He thought higher wages would stall deflation - we now know that it was a monetary phenomenon...
Also, I'd like to point out there's much blame to go around for sprawl beyond Hoover. Hopefully, I'll shed some more light on historical matters in future posts....
I must not have started reading your blog thoroughly enough early enough, because I can't get my head around your antipathy toward suburban living. I'm not sure what's wrong with having a lawn without sheep, where kids can play on grass and on in the streets, or having your own home, even with your own garage.
Are you only oppose to this when it happens in proper suburbs or do you dislike small towns as well?
Instead of owning our own homes, should we all rent from a few hereditary landowners?
Hi, Sol.
I like small towns. They are the necessary service hubs of rural communities. I think they are excellent, unless they sprawl and destroy farm land. Perhaps the ideal such community is Flavigny-sur-Ozerain in France (google it to see how beautiful it is), but there are countless villages of the like all over the world. The key is to keep them small, with narrow streets, and dense. Once they start to spread out farm land is destroyed and we get strip malls and tract houses in place of fruit trees, vineyards and waving amber grain.
I can not state too strongly that beauty is important. Winston Churchill said a lot of things, but I do not think he was ever more truthful than when he said, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." I've never seen a beautiful strip mall. I've never seen an inspiring parking lot. I've never seen a quaint snout house development. As Orthodox we should bemoan this lack of beauty.
The main problem I see with most suburban development is that it kills community. Every house is is own little sealed off compound, with a lawn as a no mans land. Single family detached houses (together with television and air conditioning) have ruined neighborliness.
Oh, the sheep thing. The lawns in American subdivisions are planted in imitation of the lawns around British manor houses. But those lawns existed because sheep kept the the grass short. The lawns existed because of the sheep. Form follows function.
And about ownership. I am a capitalist. I'm not opposed to people owning the buildings they live in. I'm not sure it is a wise use of capital to put it into the house you live in (unless that property is also income producing) but I totally stand behind the individual's (or partnership's, or corporation's) right to own land.
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