The Decline of Public Housing and the Politics of the Red Scare

Abstract

This article argues that the decline of the public housing program in the early 1950s has an overlooked political dimension—the role of the Red Scare/McCarthyism. Public housing advocates had used social democratic reform to secure the program. After the 1949 Housing Act, public housing foes were able to sequester the expansion of public housing legislation by turning to the local level. Many municipal policy battles attempted to limit the acceptance of federal public housing by means of Red Scare tactics. This is illustrated by the Los Angeles public housing war, one of the most vicious Red Scares of the domestic cold war. The Red Scare was used to cancel the ten-thousand-unit public housing contract with the federal government and to reverse city policy by toppling the pro–public-housing mayoral regime. Public housing's local defeats were circulated back to the national level, resulting in the demise of the program.