Postwar housing’s appeal rested on ideas of homeownership dating to the 1920s

Evidence

When Levitt set production records at Levittown, therefore, the news had obvious appeal. Almost all the pieces about Levittown mentioned residents grateful just to have a place to call home. But the postwar housing crisis explains only a small part of Levitt’s aura in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Like Henry Ford, Levitt had found a way to offer “the great multitude” a piece of the good life once reserved for the well-to-do, and the achievement promised to transform the country. Indeed, the mass-produced house fulfilled a set of needs first articulated almost 30 years before, when a handful of political and business leaders began to ponder the importance of affordable housing to the nation’s economic, social, and political order. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 82

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Herbert Hoover made housing a national issue rooted in promoting homeownership — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 84