Constructing Economic and Civic Values through Public Policy Debate: The Case of the National Housing Act of 1934

Abstract

This article situates the entrenchment of an American commitment to home ownership at a critical moment in U.S. history—the passage of the National Housing Act of 1934 (NHA). An examination of the introduction, deliberation, and promotion of the legislation reveals how policymakers concretized the value and civic import of residential property. The analysis shows how policymakers, housing advocates, and NHA skeptics collectively framed borrowing for home ownership to be a progressive, secure, and patriotic investment. The NHA discourse illustrates the power of policy rhetoric to define American experiences and prescribe American values.

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy

“…In the context of democratic deliberation, rhetoricians have shown how symbolic choices invite specific trajectories in policy debate. Pamela Conners (2017) explains that public policy is 'fundamentally symbolic' in that 'the language that analysts, policymakers, and the media use to define problems and name solutions shapes the nature and extent of the public's concern and understanding of social issues' (423). David Zarefsky (2005), for example, highlights strategic definitions and how they prime policy discourse on poverty to take some directions and not others.…”

Public Service Values and Disparate Performance: The Case of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program

“…Adopting a benign view of politics, the technician believes that sound technical work will prevail on its own merits". Nevertheless, the literature stresses the public sphere as a well-defined field of power where non-neutral public administrators make decisions according to determined interests (Young, 1990: 112 (Lenz, 1981in March & Sutton, 1997Staw, 1975 Like any other policy, public housing policy in the U.S is a discursive act (Conners, 2017). Originated in the turbulent times of the Great Depression, the American housing policy built itself on the paradigmatic premise that housing ownership and housing security signify "American progress, wealth, and citizenship" (Conners, 2017: 423).…”

“…Policymakers articulated the act of owning and having a home as "a maker and marker of individual welfare, collective well-being, and civic virtue" (Conners, 2017: 423). Such a symbolic representation of housing, in times of financial crisis, foreclosures, and unemployment (Conners, 2017) allowed the congressional approval of the "first comprehensive federal housing legislation" (Conners, 2017: 422): the National Housing Act of 1934. A child of the New Deal, the NHA favored housing and home ownership affordability while normalizing the acceptance of governmental intervention in the housing market and real estate regulation (Conners, 2017: 426).…”

“…Environmental circumstances of a given policy determine the openness of those who implement it. The discursive trends (Conners, 2017) that legitimized housing policy have changed from positive to negative within the last three decades (Garshick Kleit & Page, 2008). Public housing programs stopped receiving reputational, financial and political support from legislators (Garshick Kleit & Page, 2008: 34), the federal government (Cunningham, 2003: 97), the media (Semuels, 2015), and the population (Cunningham, 2003: 96).…”

“…Not too many years ago, Public Housing Authorities were able to assist Section 8 and public housing recipients in a more holistic fashion (Bingham & Kirkpatrick, 1975: 68). Nonetheless, when the discursive approach (Conners, 2017) Initiatives such as HUD-VASH, and the Family Self-Sufficiency Program function under the assumption that an integral service is an anomaly. The commitment to help vulnerable recipients to return from whichever hardship they are facing entails more than issuing a voucher.…”