Housing reformers argued private markets structurally cannot house the working class

Evidence

Despite the boom in housing construction during the decade, at least a third of the nation still lived in terribly substandard dwellings. In the view of a prominent group of housing reformers, the failure of builders to satisfy the demand for decent and affordable shelter pointed to a fundamental flaw in the market – a flaw that more efficient methods of production would not overcome. In a book published just before the Hoover conference began, reformer Edith Wood argued bluntly that low-and middle-income Americans would never attain adequate housing without direct government action. “Except under pioneer conditions, where land and building materials are practically free, supply and demand, unaided, have never, at any time or at any place, furnished all classes of self-supporting families with a minimum health-and-decency grade of housing,” Wood wrote. “Nor is there any reason to suppose they ever will.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to LGST 1110 questions about law’s relation to justice and whether market allocation ever serves equity — and offers a sharp counterpoint to the property-as-entitlement ideology Hoover pushed.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether the postwar building boom and its environmental protests confirmed or refuted Wood’s market-failure claim — did private enterprise suddenly deliver where she said it never could, and at what environmental cost?