Recovery politics, not housing ideals, drove New Deal housing policy

Evidence

Roosevelt did not care deeply about the rate of homeownership or the quality of the housing available to the working class, although his administration acted to improve both. He was not much interested in the structure of the homebuilding industry. His great goal was to lift the nation out of the misery of the Depression, and he viewed the housing problem as a small part of the all-important challenge of economic recovery. Yet the New Deal ultimately did much to encourage tract-house methods of construction. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 101