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President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (1931 : Washington, D.C.) records
XX396
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Title: President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (1931 : Washington, D.C.) records
Date (inclusive): 1931-1932
Collection Number: XX396
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
51 manuscript boxes, 2 oversize boxes, 1 oversize photograph
(22.8 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Memoranda, reports, correspondence, pamphlets, clippings, press releases, and expense statements, relating to housing conditions
in the United States, and to proposals for improving them, and especially for promoting home ownership through home loan banks.
Creator:
Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964
Creator:
President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (Location of meeting: Washington, D.C. Date of meeting or treaty
signing: 1931.)
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Originals closed; microfilm use only. Materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
[Identification of item], President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (1931 : Washington, D.C.) Records, [Box
no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Also available on microfilm (49 reels).
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.
The records in this collection span the years 1926-1947, although the majority falls within the years 1931-1932, and are arranged
in five series.
Most of the collection consists of COMMITTEE files, which deal with the work of the twenty-five fact-finding committees and
of the six correlating committees (assigned to draw recommendations for the main committee reports).
Also important is the OFFICE FILE, related to the organization of the Conference. The areas of particular interest are the
speeches of Herbert Hoover at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Conference, and his statements.
It is important to note that the REPORTS series does not include the reports themselves, but rather correspondence and memoranda
related to them, as well as typescripts, galleys, forewords, lists of possible titles, and reviews of the eleven volumes put
out by the Conference.
The PUBLICITY FILE covers the most extensive time-period of 1922-1947. Of special interest are the press releases which reflect
the work of the Conference on a daily basis.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
United States -- Social conditions
Home ownership -- United States
Housing -- United States
Housing, Rural -- United States
Urban policy -- United States
African Americans -- Housing
Federal home loan banks