Search

The article analyzes residential housing trends in the U.S. from 1890 to 1950 which suggest that there has been a downward shift in consumer preferences for housing. In any economy characterized by substantial long-term increases in the standard of living the production of necessities does not generally keep pace with the total output of goods and services. Residential construction outlays measured as a proportion of either gross national product or gross capital formation have experienced a marked decline since about 1890 in addition to the more familiar major swings. Even the current housing boom has not attained the relative strength of the 1920's and falls considerably short of the relative levels achieved during the 1890's. A moderate rise in per capita value took place between 1890 and 1910 followed by a decline during the World War I decade, a sharp rise resulting from the housing boom of the twenties, and a pronounced drop since 1930.

This article analyzes housing as an index of social class. This paper reports a research problem calling for the development of a technique for delineating social status. The School of Public Health in the University of North Carolina needed an inexpensively derived, easily utilized index of social class in order to continue a research project concerning the levels of nutrition of population groups. A pilot study had been completed using as socio-economic groups farm owners, farm tenants, rural non-farmers, and an urban sample. The first three hypotheses which this research attempts to test may be summarized as follows: the proposed index of social class is reliable, valid, and useful. The acceptance of the first three hypotheses supports the contention of the fourth: that scientists need not forego research in which social class is one variable simply because of the cost of hiring a staff of experts in social class research. The author's reservation about the universal applicability of the idea of a housing index of social class seems valid enough as the idea of constructing and applying a housing index of social class was tested in only one community, it is not possible to state that this idea would work elsewhere also.

The article presents information on housing market discrimination and Black housing consumption. There are several competing hypotheses that seek to explain the concentration of Blacks in certain portions of the city and Blacks' occupancy of older, lower quality housing. At one extreme, analysts have assumed the existence of a perfect housing market. Under this assumption, differences in Black and White housing consumption are attributed to socioeconomic differences. Efforts to prove or disprove these alternative hypotheses have followed two broad approaches. The first has attempted to analyze directly discrimination mechanisms, empirical estimates of the differences in prices that Black and White households pay for comparable housing have been made. The second approach draws inferences about discrimination based on indirect evidence, racial differences in housing consumption independent of income and other life cycle characteristics, estimated by the analysis of variance, are attributed to discrimination.

The article focuses on housing problems in the U.S. Two acts, the National Industrial Recovery Act and the home Owners' Loan Act, passed recently by the administration have increased the interest in the subject. A governmental agency, was set up by the U.S. Congress' passage of the Home Owners' Loan Act, to deal directly with the problem of refinancing home owners who were in distress and about to lose their homes through foreclosure of underlying mortgages. The nation has been committed by a national emergency program to a long-time policy of public housing. This has constituted a major change in public policy in connection with the housing problem and raised immediately a number of questions that are difficult to answer. Studies of housing made in the U.S. consist for the most part of surveys of housing conditions in local communities. The results obtained have portrayed housing conditions among the lowest income groups who live in the most miserable houses. There are two major weaknesses of such surveys, firstly, they are limited in geographical scope, and secondly, they are restricted almost exclusively to the housing of the lowest income group.

A study of Negro housing in Toledo, Ohio tested some common assumptions about race and housing and discovered a post-war transition from renter to owner status for the Negro. The study explored the means by which Negro families had financed purchases of homes, the quality of the homes, comparative prices, and the economic status of the Negro families concerned. Some implications of these findings are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The department of sociology at Morehouse College is sponsoring a series of ten weekly forum meetings which began on November 1, 1939 at Atlanta, Georgia. These meetings were held in the Exhibition Room of the Atlanta University Library. Mrs. Carolyn Dillard, Senior Assistant, State W. P. A. Workers' Education, opened the forum series, which related primarily to Southern Problems, by stressing the value of a program of adult education in helping to preserve the basic values of democracy. The second speaker was Mr. H, B. Mays, director of the Fulton County Department of Public Welfare. Mr. R. L. Cousins, director of the Division of Negro Education in the State Department of Education of Georgia, outlined the program which is designed to improve the status of education for Negroes in the state of Georgia. Attorney Philip Weitner, former chancellor of the University of Georgia System discussed the extensive low cost housing program in Atlanta which includes Negro and white residents on an equitable basis. The last speaker in the series was Miss Lucy Randolph Mason, public relations representative of the C.I.O., who spoke on labor unions and their relationship to Negroes.