President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership 1931 Washington, D.C.

United States government conference on housing called by President Herbert Hoover.

From the description of President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership records, 1931-1932. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 754867222

Historical Note.

The Conference on Home Building and Home ownership was announced by President Hoover on August 30, 1930. It followed the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection as the second in the series of social studies to be undertaken by the administration. Its primary purpose was to bring together facts concerning housing throughout the United States; to determine the factors that influence housing, favorably or unfavorably, and how they are inter-related in cities, in smaller communities, and in rural areas; to focus attention upon the problems of home ownership and to suggest means of meeting them.

The President named Secretary of Commerce Robert P. Lamont and Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur as co-chairmen of the Conference. Dr. John M. Gries, who had organized and for several years headed the Division of Building and Housing in the Department of Commerce, was appointed Executive Secretary. A planning Committee was set up to advise and help with the organization.

The President and his advisers believed that the best way to get at the facts was to organize into study committees outstanding individuals engaged in one way or another in activities affecting housing. Thirty-one committees were formed and set to work in the course of 1931; of the 31, twenty-five were fact-finding committees, and six were correlating committees assigned the task of drawing from the 25 main committee reports recommendations related to: Technological Development; Legislation and Administration; Standards and Objectives; Research; Organizations Programs; Education and Service.

More than 540 individuals served as volunteers on the study committees. Funds for research in preparation for the Conference and for publication of final reports were privately provided. The data collected by each committee and checked against the combined experience of committee members and the recommendations drawn from the reports by the correlating committees were incorporated in tentative reports which were presented to a general Conference held on December 2-5, 1931.

Some 3600 people from every state in the Union as well as Hawaii and Puerto Rico were invited to Washington by the President to consider the reports and recommendations of the committees. These delegates included a wide range of individuals whose activities affected housing. In addition to the land and construction interests -realtors, sub-dividers, architects, and builders, there were manufacturers and dealers in lumber, brick, stone, concrete, tile, and what-not in the materials field; there were manufacturers of equipment and furnishings; carpenters, masons, plasterers, plumbers, and other trades; there were also the financing interests, including bankers, building and loan executives, and insurance officials; there were landscape architects, home economists, and decorators; city planners, utilities men, traffic authorities, tax experts, building inspectors, and other Government officials -State and municipal; there were, in addition, sociologists, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, educators, and editors; and there were a few -because only a few had the wide experience to be designated -housing experts. The pooling of so much experience to discuss and evaluate fact and opinion is without precedent in the history of housing. It revealed for the first time the immense scope of the subject as well as its organic unity.

To ease the serious conditions throughout the country affecting home mortgages, the President had asked the Committee on Finance and Taxation for advice on his proposal for the creation of a system of home loan discount banks. In his talk to the Conference at its first general session he explained that the proposal had been "brought forward partially to meet the situation presented by the present emergency, to alleviate the hardships that exist among home owners today, and to revitalize the building of homes as a factor of economic recovery,...in its long distance view it was put forward in the confidence that through the creation of an institution of this character we could gradually work out the problem of systematically promoted home ownership on such terms of sound finance as people who have the home-owning aspiration deserve in our country."

The Conference by unanimous resolution expressed its support of the legislation proposed by the President to create a Home Loan Bank System and to establish regional Home Loan Banks under a Federal Home Loan Bank Board. The Home Loan Bank Act (H.R. 12280) was passed by the 72nd Congress and signed by the President on July 22, 1932. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board was named on August 5. On August 9 came formal organization of the Board which promptly went to work to put the new system of banks into operations. Its major purpose was to do for institutions which lend on mortgage what the Federal Reserve system does for commercial banks. The plan was not the result of the depression but it was hurried into action by the emergencies of the depression.

The Conference provided much practical information for the whole field of housing, and Committee reports, combining the various studies, were published promptly in eleven volumes.

In addition to its specific recommendation for favorable action on the Home Loan Bank System, the Conference urged that the work of the Conference be carried on by a Constitution Committee. To some extent this follow through was handled by Better Homes in America, the staff of which could be pressed into service to handle publication of the reports. The nation-wide volunteer organization of Better Homes in America could and did make considerable effort to stimulate the utilization of the findings of the Conference.

From the guide to the President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (1931 : Washington, D.C.) Records, 1931-1932, (Hoover Institution Archives)