Bringing Catherine Bauer's Vision HOME

On "Modern Housing", the unfinished project of the Housing Act of 1937, the HOMES Act, and the path forwards for dignified housing in the United States

In the 1930s, amidst the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, a young architectural critic named Catherine Bauer published a book called Modern Housing. Throughout her book, Bauer exposed the devastating impacts of unfettered real estate speculation, arguing that, as the housing market modernized during the late 19th and early 20th century, the profit-hungry real estate industry began producing homes that were poorly designed, of low-quality, and far too expensive for the average family in both the United States and Europe.¹

However, she pointed out that, in the years following World War 1, many European nations and cities, such as England, Germany, and the city of Vienna, actively sought to ameliorate this problem, pursuing innovative housing schemes that produced better quality homes at a lower price.² As Bauer noted, these housing programs saved money while raising living standards. In Austria, for example, the Viennese government the city saved money by keeping the cost of land low through rent restrictions, allowing the government to purchase large swaths of land for a negligible sum.³ This allowed the city, which developed 60,000 units of “modern” housing between 1925 and 1934, to invest these surplus funds in community planning, as most Viennese housing developments included co-operatively run stores, playgrounds, libraries, and even health clinics, improving residents’ overall quality of life.⁴

On the other hand, Bauer pointed out that little has been done to solve the housing crisis in the United States. She argues that while European nations built 4,500,000 units of “modern housing” in the decade after World War I, the American real estate market doubled down on speculation.⁵ As a result, American housing remained unsanitary, overcrowded, and far too expensive for the average family.⁶ To solve this problem, Bauer asserted that the government should intervene in the housing market to ensure new developments are well-planned, meaningfully affordable, thoughtfully designed, and removed from speculative markets. “The primary problem,” she wrote, “is to provide as many good new houses at as low rentals as possible….it should be entirely possible to build new homes, that are actually and in the long run, cheaper than the bad and wasteful old ones.”⁷ 

Furthermore, Bauer drew inspiration from the housing programs that countries like Germany and the Netherlands were implementing during the postwar period, highlighting how these programs could be adapted to work in America.⁸ Through her analysis of European initiatives, Bauer identified several key elements of successful “modern” housing programs: public investment in housing development, access to subsidy for low income households, and civic control over the form, quality, governance, and financing of government-backed housing.⁹ She also argued that a successful program must be fairly universal in scope, providing housing for the working and middle classes, instead of solely those with the lowest incomes.¹⁰

The Britz Horseshoe Estate, a Weimar-era “modern” housing project in Berlin

Bauer’s emphasis on universalism was unique among housing reformers, as American housing programs have typically been limited in ambition, scope and reach.¹¹ Even today, federal housing assistance programs like Section 8 and contemporary public housing have strict income caps, but lack the funding necessary to benefit all Americans who are eligible for these programs.¹² By treating housing as a form of universal social insurance, Bauer believed the United States could guarantee that all of its citizens, particularly members of the working class, had access to dignified, adequate housing that they could afford.¹³ Furthermore, Bauer understood the threat of creating a “two-tier” policy framework, where the affluent receive widely-supported housing subsidies in the form of tax breaks, while the most vulnerable among us can only access housing benefits that are poorly regarded by politicians and the media class.¹⁴

Catherine Bauer was also painfully aware of the challenges “housers”, or people like Bauer who were committed to creating dignified homes for the working class, would face when fighting for a public housing program in the United States. She recognized that the American obsession with owning one’s home often demobilized working-class tenants from demanding a public housing program, as these people instead hoped to one day purchase their own property.¹⁵ As a result, housing reform movements in the United States up until the 1930s had largely been run by “disinterested specialists”, like social workers, architects, and bureaucrats.¹⁶ Bauer convincingly argued that these “specialists” were typically affluent and rarely were directly impacted by poor housing conditions themselves. As a result, she convincingly argued that only a mass movement, led by “consumers” of housing, could win a public housing program. Working people would have to organize across racial and socioeconomic lines to develop clear, concise demands for better housing conditions, something Bauer identified as a major challenge in a nation obsessed with homeownership.¹⁷

“If only a small part of the vast energy which was once directed toward individual home-ownership were now organized to demand a realistic program of modern housing — the best dwellings that planners can plan and that labor and materials can build (and we have an abundance of all three) – then there would be an American housing movement indeed."

- Catherine Bauer, “Modern Housing”

Catherine Bauer’s work went far beyond simply writing Modern Housing; she took a job as the executive secretary of the Labor Housing Conference, an organization founded by unions like the Philadelphia-based American Federation of Hosiery Workers, to help build the housing movement she had called for throughout her book.¹⁸ Earlier that year the Hosiery Workers had taken advantage of a temporary Public Works Administration (PWA) loan program to build a modern, limited-equity housing project known as the Carl Mackley Houses, and were interested in establishing a permanent public housing program that could help them build similar projects.¹⁹ Bauer had always understood that the interests of labor and the housing movement were deeply intertwined; a federal housing program would create opportunities for union workers to obtain both better housing and well-paid employment, both of which were in short supply amidst the Great Depression.²⁰

Though she had little prior union experience, Catherine Bauer was an incredibly effective spokeswoman for the Labor Housing Conference. She travelled all over the country to distribute pamphlets and speak with workers about the importance of a permanent housing program at union halls from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, quickly winning over major labor leaders.²¹ Bauer was dogged in her pursuit of labor support for a public housing program; at a key point during the campaign, she simultaneously contacted the state federations of labor in Delaware, Maine, and Nevada, claiming that each state was the only one in the country that had failed to publicly endorse a housing program.²² Unsurprisingly, each of the three state labor federations quickly issued a public endorsement.

While innovative, PWA-financed projects like the Carl Mackley Houses were exciting to Bauer and the Labor Housing Conference, the loan program was temporary, making it important to establish a permanent public housing program in the United States. However, housing advocates were divided on how to approach new legislation. Some housing advocates, including those involved with the settlement house movement, argued that the most important role of a public housing program was the eradication of “slum” neighborhoods.²³ As a result, these reformers, who were mostly wealthy white women with little interest in radically reforming the real estate industry, believed that having control over the working class’s living environment would improve “behavior” and “civic spirit” in less affluent neighborhoods.²⁴ On the other hand, “housers” like Bauer were more interested in empowering the working class to take control of their housing, while also seeking to limit the ability of the real estate industry to make speculative profits.²⁵

Catherine Bauer in 1933.

By the mid 1930s, both the National Public Housing Conference, which represented members of the settlement house movement, and the Labor Housing Conference, which represented “housers”, were working with U.S. Senator Robert Wagner to draft legislation creating a permanent public housing program in the United States. The National Public Housing Conference had gotten to Wagner first, cajoling him to introduce legislation that would have enabled localities to receive modest subsidies for the construction of low-rent housing in March of 1935.²⁶ The National Public Housing Conference bill also unsurprisingly valorized slum clearance, linking new public housing construction with the demolition of areas reformers deemed “unsanitary.”²⁷ Bauer and the Labor Housing Conference were dissatisfied with Simkhovitch’s bill, believing its federal powers were insufficient, and began working on their own, alternate legislation.²⁸ As a result, the Labor Housing Conference’s bill differed from Wagner’s initial legislation in several key ways.²⁹ Firstly, Bauer had ensured the Labor Housing Conference’s draft bill would allow publicly financed housing to be built outside of designated “slum” districts, arguing that these restrictions would kneecap public housing in the future.³⁰ Her draft bill also created a new, independent authority to administer public housing, mandated a fair wage standard for all housing projects built by the authority, and enabled the authority to finance co-operative and limited-equity housing.³¹

Ultimately, much of the Labor Housing Conference’s draft bill was eventually adopted by Senator Wagner, who was impressed by Catherine Bauer’s dogged advocacy.³² After two unsuccessful attempts to pass the legislation in 1935 and 1936, due largely to real estate lobbying, Senator Wagner was able to secure President Roosevelt’s endorsement for a public housing program before the 1937 congressional session.³³ This, along with continued organizing from the Labor Housing Conference and members of the National Public Housing Conference, helped get a public housing program across the finish line in the fall of 1937. The Housing Act of 1937, the program Bauer and her comrades had spent years fighting for, finally established a public housing program in the United States. The bill created the United States Housing Authority (USHA), a federal body empowered to grant hundreds of millions of dollars of low-cost loans to local housing authorities.³⁴ These municipalities used this loan money to invest in the large-scale development of public housing in the United States, producing well over a million units for low-income people across the country.³⁵

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However, today, 90 years after Modern Housing was published, and 87 years since the Housing Act of 1937 was passed, accessing decent, dignified, and truly affordable housing is still a clear challenge for many Americans. Why is this the case, when Catherine Bauer’s landmark legislation, the Housing Act of 1937, passed through Congress? The answer is simple - the real estate industry and politicians did all they can to keep Bauer’s legislation from being implemented successfully.

Unsurprisingly, the real estate industry is partially to blame. When the Housing Act of 1937 was being pushed through Congress, real estate lobbyists fought to water down the legislation, with organizations like the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) making the deceitful argument the that a public housing program would ruin America’s legacy of freedom.³⁶ Ironically, the real estate lobby had no issues with New Deal era interventions in the housing market when they benefitted — organizations like NAREB were vociferous supporters of programs like the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC), which helped keep real estate buoyant throughout the Great Depression.³⁷ Bauer herself acknowledged the detrimental impact that real estate had on her legislation; in a 1957 piece on the state of public housing in America, Bauer herself argued that real estate lobbying prevented public housing authorities from using resources in new or creative ways. To Bauer, this dynamic left public housing authorities “clinging desperately to the beleaguered [public housing funding] formula, instead of trying to improve it in the light of experience and public attitudes.” 

At the same time, however, equal responsibility lies at the feet of the lawmakers who acquiesced to the demands of real estate lobbyists, as their concessions reduced the quality of public housing, and restricted its reach through means-testing. Once the Housing Act of 1937 reached the Senate, conservative legislators quickly mobilized to kill elements of the bill that were most central to Bauer’s universalist vision. Almost immediately, the section on co-operative and limited equity housing, a part of the legislation Bauer strongly valued, was struck from the bill, limiting the types of housing that this new authority could build.³⁸ An amendment introducing an “equal elimination” clause, which required public housing authorities to destroy or repair “slum housing” each time they built new units, was also passed, limiting the volume of housing some authorities could produce.³⁹ The legislation was also weakened by an amendment from arch-conservative Harry Byrd, a southern Democrat who placed harsh limits on construction costs.⁴⁰ This amendment forced local authorities to cut corners in order to ensure their projects came in under budget, lowering the quality of public housing.⁴¹

The Governor Al Smith Houses, a high-rise public housing development in Lower Manhattan

Lastly, conservatives in the Senate passed an amendment placing strict income limits on public housing.⁴² On its face, the means-testing of public housing makes some sense – it is absolutely vital that public housing is built largely for the most vulnerable among us, particularly if housing is to truly become a basic human right in the United States. However, history has shown us that means-tested social welfare programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) have constantly been targeted for devastating budget cuts by conservatives in Washington D.C..⁴³ Unsurprisingly, this pattern has proven to be true for public housing; the federal government became increasingly unwilling to invest in the program by the 1960s, as public housing tenants across the country became more and more racially diverse. As funding dwindled, many public housing authorities began to run at a deficit, making it hard to keep up with rapidly rising maintenance costs. ⁴⁴

At the same time, mass media seemed determined to prove that public housing had failed, running countless news stories about crime and “disorder” in these developments, which soured many Americans’ view of the program.⁴⁵ Of course, this created a perfect storm for conservatives (and moderate Democrats) to dismantle public housing during the late 20th century — during the 1980s, the Reagan administration slashed federal housing funding by 70% in spite of increasing poverty levels amongst public housing tenants.⁴⁶ By the 1990s, pillorying public housing was a fully bipartisan issue; Democratic president Bill Clinton advocated for the passage of the Faircloth Amendment, a modification to Bauer’s Housing Act of 1937 that essentially barred public housing authorities from increasing the number of units in their portfolios.

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Today, much like in the 1930s, housing is, once again, under siege. Decades of deregulation and privatization of the housing market has pushed homelessness rates to their highest point since the Great Depression. Speculation is worse than ever, as private equity firms like Blackstone have become America’s most powerful landlords, purchasing over 300,000 units of housing across the United States. Of course, private equity’s speculative investment in real estate directly harms tenants; in California, rents skyrocketed by up to 63% per year while Blackstone spent over $14 million to block rent control initiatives in the state between 2018 and 2020. At the same time, landlords across the country have happily adopted YieldStar, a price-gouging algorithm that encourages property managers to raise rents at breakneck speed.

Unsurprisingly, the ever-escalating cost of housing has not resulted in better quality homes; 6.7 million Americans still live in physically inadequate housing, or homes that have at least three major structural deficiencies and/or lack plumbing, electricity, heat, or hot water. Millions more are exposed to a whole host of pollutants, such as lead, asbestos, nitrogen dioxide, and dust, in their homes. Tragically, public housing residents are disproportionately vulnerable to dangerous living conditions thanks to the violence of budget cuts from conservatives in Washington D.C.; entire complexes now face major building deficiencies, such as prolonged heat outages, rodent infestations, lead, mold, and lack of hot water, conditions that cause a direct threat to human life.

The housing landscape undoubtably feels bleak right now — if you’re a tenant, you yourself are intimately aware of this. But there is still hope. Tenants have begun to organize across the country, building the housing movement Bauer so passionately called for throughout Modern Housing. In Kansas City, 200 tenants recently went on rent strike with the KC Tenants’ Union, demanding collectively bargained leases, better living conditions, rapid repairs, and a rent cap on federally financed units. This summer, tenants in Louisville, Kansas City, Connecticut, Bozeman, and Chicago banded together to form the Tenant Union Federation, a nationwide coalition of tenant unions that will help renters fight for dignified living conditions. In cities across the country, like New York City, Burlington, and Oakland, organizers have established community land trusts, organizations that can steward permanently affordable, decommodified housing.

Furthermore, many of these organizers have begun translating their demands into actionable legislation, crafting policies that closely mirror Bauer’s proposals in Modern Housing. Many of these policies concern social housing, a model that closely mirrors the “modern” housing Catherine Bauer called for in the 1930s. Much like “modern” housing, which Bauer described as housing that is well-planned, non-speculative, subsidized, and community-controlled, social housing seeks to eliminate the profit motive from the domestic sphere.⁴⁷ Today, social housing organizers are fighting for housing that is decommodified, equitable, independent from the pressures of financial markets, resident controlled, and deeply (and permanently) affordable, much like the “housers” of the New Deal era.

Auspiciously, there is now a growing appetite for social housing in the United States. Municipalities across the country, such as Atlanta, Seattle, and Chicago have passed bills creating public developers or social housing funds, once again bringing the government into more direct involvement with housing development. This movement has also gained steam at the state level; earlier this year, New York State Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, a democratic socialist, and Senator Cordell Cleare introduced legislation to create a statewide Social Housing Development Authority. Their proposed authority would be equipped with the power to build, acquire, rehabilitate, and administer high-quality, deeply affordable housing to New Yorkers at a wide range of incomes, a goal that is closely in line with Catherine Bauer’s vision for a universalist housing program. Similar proposals have been introduced in other states, such as California and Rhode Island, where policymakers have come to see a public developer as a potential salve to affordability crises in their region.

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Perhaps most promisingly, social housing has now made its way to the national stage, as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) have introduced the Homes Act, a bill that would create a federal Housing Development Authority (HDA). This authority, which would operate within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), could both directly develop new social housing and purchase market-rate housing and convert it into social housing. The authority would be funded by a $30 billion investment annually - the same amount the federal government spends on the Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction - as well as a revolving loan fund. 10% percent of this funding would be allocated towards housing in rural communities, while another 5% of this funding would be dedicated to Tribal housing, ensuring that social housing funds are fairly distributed across the United States. Research from the Climate and Community Institute estimates that the Homes Act could build or preserve 1,250,000 units of social housing — which is equivalent to the number of housing units in the entire state of Kansas.

Importantly, the Homes Act recognizes the responsibility the federal government must assume to improve living conditions in public housing. Decades of financial austerity and government negligence have left many public housing tenants living in unhealthy homes, as local authorities cannot afford to make basic repairs. The Homes Act would actually invest in public housing for the first time in half a century — the bill would authorize substantial funding to public housing authorities across the country with severe capital backlogs, finally allowing many of these authorities to make long overdue repairs that are necessary for resident safety. Furthermore, the Homes Act would repeal the Faircloth Amendment, actually enabling public housing authorities to build again for the first time since the Clinton Administration.

With the understanding that housing needs vary substantially across communities, the Homes Act authorizes the HDA to develop a wide range of housing typologies, including publicly-financed rentals, limited-equity cooperatives, homes stewarded by community land trusts, and more traditional homeownership opportunities. The bill also supports groups interested in creating their own housing — the HDA would have the power to finance social housing projects devised by tenant unions, labor organizations, and non-profits, in addition to those proposed by local housing authorities. Tenants who want to purchase their building and convert it to a limited-equity co-op could also receive financial assistance from the authority, an exciting step towards the decommodification of market-rate housing. The HDA’s ability to produce and finance a diverse range of housing models would have excited Catherine Bauer, who unsuccessfully advocated to incorporate cooperative housing and union-initiated projects into the Housing Act of 1937.⁴⁸

The Homes Act also acknowledges the central role that labor must play in any successful housing movement, something Catherine Bauer espoused throughout her career with the Labor Housing Conference. As a result, the legislation promotes the use of union labor, requiring all construction and repair jobs to be in compliance with both the Davis-Bacon Act and prevailing wage standards. The Homes Act also requires that any construction project worth over $25 million dollars has a project labor agreement, helping to ensure that on-the-job conditions are safe and dignified. These strong pro-labor legislative provisions have helped to reactivate coalitions between housing organizers and unions, which played a vital role in passing the Housing Act of 1937. While a formal coalition like Bauer’s Labor Housing Conference has not yet been assembled, major labor unions like the United Auto Workers (UAW), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have all endorsed the Homes Act.

Ocasio-Cortez and Smith’s bill also ensures that future social housing residents have not only strong tenant protections but also the right to democratic control of their homes. All HDA housing would have to follow “just-cause” protections, insulating residents from retaliatory evictions and protecting their right to organize. Furthermore, source of income discrimination, or the refusal to rent units to tenants with housing vouchers, would be banned in HDA housing. Since source of income discrimination is only illegal in 17 states, and enforcement of these laws are typically weak, HDA housing could become an important resource for voucher-holders who struggle to find dignified homes. Furthermore, tenants would be given democratic control of their homes; all developments financed or built by the HDA would have elected tenant associations. These provisions, which closely mirror what Catherine Bauer called “civic control” in Modern Housing, actually give tenants the power to control their living conditions, something that is rare in a speculative and exploitative real estate market.⁴⁹

Lastly, the bill has stringent protections to ensure housing remains permanently affordable; for rental units, housing costs would be set at just 25% of residents’ income, and would not be able to increase by more than 3% per year. For homeowners and co-op shareholders, housing costs would be kept low through shared-equity models, where the resale values of property is restricted to ensure affordability is preserved. Furthermore, the bill has strong, binding affordability provisions to ensure a wide range of working-class Americans can access social homes. Importantly, the bill makes a strong commitment to housing the most vulnerable among us; 40% of the homes produced by the HDA must be targeted to those making less than 30% of area median income (AMI). Another 30% of units must be targeted to those making between 30 and 50% of AMI, while the remaining 30% of units has no income targeting requirements whatsoever.

The income mix that Ocasio-Cortez and Smith propose guarantees that the HDA is universalist in scope, while also prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable among us. And, at least for American housing policy, this shift towards universalism is a radical departure from the idea that our homes are commodities to be bought, speculated on, and sold to the highest bidder. As Catherine Bauer argues in Modern Housing, universalist housing policy is important because it encourages this shift in thought, allowing housing to instead be treated like a public utility, or something the government is expected to build and invest in for the benefit of the people.⁵⁰ The Homes Act allows us to imagine a world where government-financed housing is seen as social insurance, a basic benefit that all people can count on to support them, instead of a means-tested program that is constantly threatened with budget cuts.

90 years after she published Modern Housing, Catherine Bauer’s fingerprints can be seen throughout Ocasio-Cortez and Smith’s bill text. In fact, the Homes Act adopts many of Bauer’s proposals that were cut from the Housing Act of 1937, such as the provision of federal funds for the construction of limited equity cooperatives and union-initiated housing projects. Passing this legislation would finally bring Bauer’s vision for the Housing Act of 1937, a bill she hoped would make housing a public utility in the United States, to life, nearly nine decades after this legislation passed through Congress.

Of course, passing this legislation won’t be easy. The real estate industry, which doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions each election cycle, is a major opponent of the bill. Conservatives will almost certainly claim that the Homes Act is a threat to the “American Dream” of individual homeownership — a dream that has arguably been dead for more than two decades. People with power and money will argue that the Homes Act is too expensive, even though we spend the same amount on the Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction every single year.

To win the Homes Act under these unfavorable conditions, housing organizers should heed Catherine Bauer’s advice — “disinterested specialists” like policy wonks, urban planners, and architects, will not build successful movements for social housing.⁵¹ Instead, social housing organizers must build movements by organizing those who are actually impacted by speculation, landlord exploitation, and unsafe living conditions: people experiencing homelessness, rent-burdened Americans, and those facing foreclosure. To finally win the “modern” housing that Catherine Bauer fought for during the New Deal, the multi-racial working class and labor unions must build a mass movement to demand the homes we’ve always deserved.

1. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 242.

2. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pgs 126-128.

3. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 171.

4. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 149.

5. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 239.

6. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pgs 29-30.

7. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 153.

8. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pgs 126-128.

9. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 130.

10. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 121.

11. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pgs 2-3.

12. Acosta, Sonya, and Brianna Guerrero. "Long waitlists for housing vouchers show pressing unmet need for assistance." Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington, DC (2021), pg 3-4.

13. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg 58.

14. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pgs 121-122.

15. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 237-238.

16. Bauer, Catherine. “Housing: Paper Plans or a Workers’ Movement” in America Can't Have Housing, edited by Carol Aronovici (New York, NY, Committee on the Housing Exhibition by The Museum of Modern Art, 1934), pgs 20-21.

17. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 253.

18. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 106.

19. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg 111.

20. Bauer, Catherine. “Housing: Paper Plans or a Workers’ Movement” in America Can't Have Housing, edited by Carol Aronovici (New York, NY, Committee on the Housing Exhibition by The Museum of Modern Art, 1934), pg 23.

21. Birch, Eugenie. "Woman-made America: The Case of Early Public Housing Policy." Journal of the American Planning Association, 44 (1978): pg 140.

22. Birch, Eugenie. "Woman-made America: The Case of Early Public Housing Policy." Journal of the American Planning Association, 44 (1978): pg 141.

23. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 118.

24. Melosi, Martin V. The Sanitary city: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. Pgs 74-75.

25. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pgs 79-80.

Image of Catherine Bauer: Lewis Mumford papers, Ms. Coll. 2, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, UPenn], found in https://placesjournal.org/article/philip-johnson-catherine-bauer-and-modernism-at-moma/

26. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 130.

27. Hunt, D. Bradford. "Public Housing in Urban America." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 2018, pgs 3-4.

28. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg 185.

29. Note: The Labor Housing Conference worked with Congressman Henry Ellenbogen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who represented the Pittsburgh area, on their draft legislation. While many of their legislative proposals were picked up by Robert Wagner, Ellenbogen, who was Jewish, was dropped as the bill’s lead sponsor in the House of Representatives in 1937. Bauer and many of her colleagues at the Labor Housing Conference were furious about this, and attributed Wagner’s decision to antisemitism within Congress. For more information on this, see chapter 5 of Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer by H. Peter Oberlander and Eva Newbrun.

30. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pgs 184-185.

31. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 131.

32. Hunt, D. Bradford. "Was the 1937 US Housing Act a pyrrhic victory?." Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 195-221, pg 201.

33. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 153.

34. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg 189.

35. Bloom, Nicholas Dagen. Public Housing That Worked : New York in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, pg 6-10.

36. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pgs 188-189.

37. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pgs 178-179.

38. Hunt, D. Bradford. "Was the 1937 US Housing Act a pyrrhic victory?." Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 195-221, pg 205-206.

39. Bauer, Catherine. “Now at Last: Housing; The Meaning of the Wagner-Steagall Act” The New Republic, September 8th, 1937, pg 121.

40. Hunt, D. Bradford. "Was the 1937 US Housing Act a pyrrhic victory?." Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 195-221, pg 208-209.

41. Hunt, D. Bradford. "Was the 1937 US Housing Act a pyrrhic victory?." Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 195-221, pg 209.

42. Bauer, Catherine. “Now at Last: Housing; The Meaning of the Wagner-Steagall Act” The New Republic, September 8th, 1937, pg 121.

43. Radford, Gail. Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg 206.

44. Goetz, Edward. New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), pg 37.

45. Crump, Jeff R. "The end of public housing as we know it: Public housing policy, labor regulation and the US city." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27, no. 1 (2003): 179-187.

46. Bloom, Nicholas Dagen. Public Housing That Worked : New York in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, pgs 218-219.

47. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 153.

48. Oberlander, H. Peter, and Eva M. Newbrun. Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64. UBC Press, 2011, pg 131.

49. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 130.

50. Bauer, Catherine. Modern Housing. University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pg 129.

51. Bauer, Catherine. “Housing: Paper Plans or a Workers’ Movement” in America Can't Have Housing, edited by Carol Aronovici (New York, NY, Committee on the Housing Exhibition by The Museum of Modern Art, 1934), pgs 20-21.