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| Becoming a Nation of Home Owners Did you know that prior to WW-II, America was a nation of renters, not home owners? After the war NAHB fought to ease controls on materials critical to home building. The return of 12 million soldiers and sailors eager to start families made homeownership a national priority. Though the GI Bill made purchasing a new home a possibility for many, only 142,000 new homes were built in 1944. By 1946 that number had grown to 937,000, and two years later in 1948 the figure was nearly 1.2 million. But 11 years later in 1959 NAHB was still asking, in a special section of The New York Times, “Can we house our exploding population?” NAHB’s goal was to make housing affordable, but also to make it available on a fair and non-discriminatory basis. By 1961 NAHB was a strong advocate for public housing and later a champion of many of President Johnson’s Great Society initiatives affecting housing, like the Fair Housing Act and the Model Cities program. |
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