The shortage of housing in the United States after World War II was caused by the large number of babies born and the rapid demobilization brought about by the "We want to go home" movement.
The sharp increase in population is unexpected. Birth did not stop during the war years, and "wartime babies" were always born in those years. The number of people born every year is as high as 3 million. By 1946, that is, the year when the transport ship began to transport troops back to China, the number of births was 500,000 more than the previous year. This is not the highest record, or even a record close to the highest record. The following year, the number increased by 400,000 from the record-breaking 65,438+0,946.
After the victory over Japan, the US military began to demobilize on a large scale. 1In February, 945, the army demobilized nearly one million people a month, and the navy demobilized another 250,000 people. According to the Law on Soldiers' Rights, demobilized soldiers can get married immediately. "After marriage, housing has become a big problem. There are so many demobilized soldiers that it is impossible to accommodate them. There must be at least 5 million houses in the United States, and it must be solved immediately. Obviously, it is impossible to ask the construction industry to solve it. Between the victory of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and Christmas, only 37,000 houses broke ground. As a result, there has been an unprecedented housing shortage in American history.
Truman's Policy and Helplessness
President Truman asked Congress to pass a law to set the maximum price of houses, and authorized him to use half of the building materials in the country to build cheap houses ($6,543,800 or less per house). This proposal was strongly opposed by the construction industry. In order to maintain their high profits, real estate developers sent effective lobbyists to Congress to lobby, so that the bill could not be passed.
However, the Senate agreed to hand over 75,000 wartime temporary buildings to demobilized soldiers for use. The government has also rebuilt and built some dormitory buildings and placed 1. 1000 newly-married soldiers. In winter, the weather is getting colder and colder, and another 65,438+0,000 families have squeezed into the vacated military camp. But this is just a drop in the bucket. There are/kloc-more than 0/100 million families living with others.
In Minneapolis, a couple spent seven nights in a car with their wartime children. There is an apartment advertised for rent in Atlanta, and the number of renters is as high as 2000. The big shots in this city were uneasy about this and paid 65,438+000 for the trailer for the demobilized soldiers. No matter the size of the city, you can see these dense groups of trailers, especially on campus. The University of Missouri conducted a door-to-door investigation on campus, leaving all the vacant places for Missouri students to live in, and sent a letter to students applying for admission to other States: although they have the admission conditions, there is no house to accommodate them. Demobilized soldiers in North Dakota turned granaries into houses. Benny Goodman's band performed for Cleveland on a voluntary basis and asked the audience to give up their rooms for rent.
We'll never find a place to live.
Even so, the house is still far from enough. Everyone said that the landlord was ruthless, and Mauldin was indignant-his resentment reflected the mood of his generation. He vented his emotions in a cartoon, drawing a pair of veterans arguing with a fat and aggressive landlady who has a daughter. There is a sign at the door that says, "There is a house for rent, no children and no dogs." The landlady said, "It seems that you soldiers just don't understand our difficulties."
At the time of the most serious housing shortage, any pair of homeless demobilized soldiers had many embarrassing experiences. Their most striking spokesman is cowboy singer Senator glenn taylor. He was elected to the Senate by the people of Idaho for his excellent performance of banjo. With his wife and children, he stood in front of the stone steps of Capitol Hill and sang in tears: Oh, let me have a home near the Parliament Hall/let the children play in the yard/one or two rooms, even if it is old/alas, we will never find a place to live!
The United States urgently needs a ten-year plan to build 6.5438+0.5 million residential areas every year. Until then, it seems that we can only solve it by tents for the time being. Although the construction industry is very powerful in lobbying Congress to prevent the government's huge plan from being passed, it is too expensive and too slow for them to build houses in that brick-by-brick way. We must find a way to solve it
The miracle of long island
By the beginning of 1949, someone had invented the method of prefabricating components in the factory to solve this problem. Henry kaiser created a production miracle in wartime, which enabled the American fleet to quickly make up for the huge losses caused by the Pearl Harbor incident and become the most powerful fleet in the world, while they created a production miracle in peacetime. This is the newly established Levitt & Sons Company.
William Levitt bought a 1500 acre potato field in Nassau County, Long Island. As far as its influence on postwar life is concerned, it is as important as the seven-inch TV set created by Dumont Company and the first electronic computer created by howard aiken of Harvard University.
Today, our so-called suburban concept, traced back, started from this land. Levitt's architecture, like Caesar's shipbuilding, is an assembly line. The first batch is 1.75 million at once, and the styles are the same. At the command, rows of bulldozers pushed forward, and with a wave of the red flag, they turned. Behind is responsible for paving the concrete floor, followed by electricians setting up street lamp posts and workers hanging street signs. Then, divide each house into many blocks. Teams of cars are driving on the solidified concrete road. Dismantle precast wallboard at 8:00 a.m., bathroom at 9: 30 a.m., sink and bathtub at 10, gypsum board at 3: 00 a.m.,1/floor. That's it, assembly line. The house will be built soon. This is the first Levittown, and some people look down on it. But they can't understand how grateful and satisfied the people who moved in at that time were. Levitt doesn't have to make a notice or spend money on advertising. It is enough for people to tell each other.
On March 7th, 1949, when his humble sales department opened in the bleak morning, more than 1000 couples lined up there. Some people have been waiting for four days and four nights just to have some coffee and fried cakes for dinner. As soon as the door of the sales department opened, it was like Oklahoma snapping up land at 1889. Those who are now called "young couples" are scrambling to buy a four-bedroom house for $6,990 in the first batch. If the handling fee, greening and kitchen electrical equipment are included, it is less than $654.38+$00,000.
Revolution in construction industry
The first Levittown was laughed at by many people. The main reason for the ridicule is that all the houses in the town are unified. The so-called "color design" of the first houses was just two different colors.
According to Levitt's calculation, it is considered that building a swimming pool for 2000 households will occupy the area equivalent to a tennis court. So he ordered the construction of eight swimming pools and the cancellation of all tennis courts. Everything can only be one way. Monday was designated as Laundry Day, and all the backyards of 1750 were covered with washed clothes. But under no circumstances can you hang clothes on Sunday. No one can build a wooden fence. Lawn should be mowed regularly. These are clearly written in the contract. Even those new mechanical tools that have just come on the market seem to conform to Levitt's plan. The distance between trees is 28 feet (there are two and a half trees in front of each house), and the error can be measured in inches. The stones on the sidewalk are slightly curved, but the angles are uniform. If residents want to make some features, they can only consider the interior decoration and the tone of the doorbell (although the doorbell rang or didn't ring at that time, the doorbell was still used).
Architects and sociologists are disgusted. In their view, such entrepreneurs are dictators, however, people who buy houses don't care about these. Demobilized soldiers who once lived a strict military life and their wives who lived in mobile homes still remember the history of not having a house. For them, houses built according to unified specifications are still warm homes. At that time, it was predicted that these cheap houses built by Levitt without basements would probably become "slums" in the future. However, nearly 60 years later, these houses are still standing.
The government drifted with the tide.
Because of its low cost, economy and practicality, "Levitt" style residence was soon followed by other places. For a time, many small towns named "Levitt" mushroomed on American territory. However, there is still a problem that puzzles the further promotion of Levitt's residence, and that is transportation. For example, Long Island District, which borders Queens, new york City in the west and extends to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, forms a peninsula with long east-west and narrow north-south. There are only trains from Manhattan to Long Island. The scarcity of flights and high ticket prices make living in the suburbs and going to work in the city a luxury.
The American government has taken a very wise approach to solve this problem. The government decided to build the Long Island Expressway by issuing national debt. The construction of expressway on Long Island has solved the employment problem of a large number of veterans. At that time, tens of thousands of new york veterans participated in the construction of this expressway. Where roads were built, Levitt-style houses were built. After the road was completed, the veterans got married, had children and settled down.
The construction of Long Island Expressway has greatly saved the commuting time of "commuters" (people who live in the suburbs and work in the city). Take Levittown as an example. It's only a 30-minute drive from here to Manhattan. As a result, the low-income people in the city rushed to complain and bought a house in Long Island. With the increase of population, commercial facilities are gradually improved. This once sparsely populated peninsula has gradually become a prosperous community. Because new york's market is "close at hand", the cost of land and labor in Long Island is lower than that in new york, and there are ready-made transportation facilities to use, entrepreneurs have come here to invest, creating many employment opportunities for the local area. All these have become the reasons for the sustained economic growth of Long Island.
How is myth created?
William Levitt suddenly became a mythical figure. No matter how angry aesthetes accused him, he still let people own houses. Imitators appeared all over the country. He took his men across the Pennsylvania border and began to work on an 8-square-mile piece of land along the Delaware River, where spinach was once planted. The town designed by his designer has 1 100 streets, including schools, churches, baseball fields, city halls, factory railway branches, parking lots, doctors and dentists' clinics, reservoirs, commercial centers, railway stations, newspapers and garden clubs. In short, it has everything a city with a high density of 70,000 people needs, and it is the tenth largest city in Pennsylvania. Levitt called this second Levitt town "the most well-planned town in America". His voice became hoarse when he talked about it. "Of course, I am very excited to be able to use a product to meet the needs that no one can solve."
Strange to say, his own house is very different from that in Levittown. This is a lovely farm in Barkis County, with thick stone walls, hand-cut rafters, thick trusses and spacious rooms. Seen from a distance, this is a deep forest without people. He thinks such a house is good, but he said to the visitors, "It is unreasonable for you to ask people to buy a house they don't want, and the price is beyond their ability."
His ideal far exceeds that of contemporary American real estate developers. He said, "But I don't just build and sell houses. Frankly speaking, I also want to gain some fame, which is human nature. I want to build a town that makes me proud. " After a pause, he added, "Of course, you must be bold and think big."
As a result, with the joint efforts of Levitt and the American government, the biggest problem that troubled the United States after the war was finally solved.