Building a "family-friendly" metropolis: Sexuality, the state, and postwar housing policy

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 39, Issue 5, 2013, Pages 933-955

  Howard, Clayton ^a  

^a Center for Interdisciplinary Studies   (United States)

Author keywords

Federal Housing Administration (FHA); marriage; San Francisco Bay Area; sexuality; suburbanization; urban redevelopment

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; PLANNING HISTORY; POST-WAR; REDEVELOPMENT; SEXUALITY; SUBURBANIZATION; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN HOUSING; URBAN POLICY;

CALIFORNIA; SAN FRANCISCO BAY; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84881537838     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144213479322     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. David Beers, Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 40.
2. "San Francisco Marriage Figures Drop," San Francisco Examiner, October 4, 1955; "S.F. Housing Problem," San Francisco Examiner, January 24, 1960.
3. Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985);
4. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996);
5. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Postwar Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003);
6. Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005);
7. Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007);
8. David Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007);
9. Andrew Highsmith, "Demolition Means Progress: Urban Renewal, Local Politics, and State-Sanctioned Ghetto Formation in Flint, Michigan," Journal of Urban History 35, no. 3 (2009):348-68.
10. In the past thirty years, GLBT historians have chronicled the growth of queer bars, neighborhoods, and bars in dozens of cities across the United States after World War II. For examples, see John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Modern Homosexual Minority in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);
11. Brett Beemyn, ed., Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories (New York: Routledge, 1997);
12. Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brother Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);
13. Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005);
14. Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). For examples of historians thinking about the relationship between transgressive sexuality and urban space see Bryant Simon, "New York Avenue: The Life and Death of Gay Spaces in Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1920-1990," Journal of Urban History 28, no. 3 (2002): 300-27;
15. Josh Sides, Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Urban theorists and geographers have also considered sexuality and space. See Manual Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983);
16. Benjamin Forrest, "West Hollywood as Symbol: The Significance of Place in the Construction of a Gay Identity," Society and Space 13, no. 2 (1995).
17. John D'Emilio, "Gay Politics and Community in San Francisco Since World War II," in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey Jr. (New York: New American Library, 1988);
18. Susan Stryker and Jim Buskirk, Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1996);
19. Boyd, Wide Open Town;
20. Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005); Sides, Erotic City.
21. For more on prewar suburbanization, see Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981);
22. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier.
23. Public Health Service, Federal Security Agency, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1945-1955 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956). Statistics only account for new marriages and do not factor in divorces or annulments. Statistics specifically for San Francisco County were not available for every year.
24. "Mr. Wyatt's Shortage," Fortune, April 1946.
25. "Housing: Children, Dogs, and Wall Street," Time, May 17, 1948.
26. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 203-5.
27. Cohen, A Consumer's Republic, 141;
28. Paul Wendt and Daniel Rathbun, The Role of Government in the San Francisco Bay Area Mortgage Market (Berkeley: University of California Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 1952).
29. U.S. Department of Census, 1960: Census of Housing, Volume V: Residential Finance, Part 1: Homeowner Properties (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961), 359; Cohen, A Consumer's Republic.
30. "Housing: Up from the Potato Fields," Time, July 3, 1950.
31. Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3.
32. "Senate Votes Death for Sex Crimes," Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1949;
33. Estelle Freedman, "Uncontrolled Desires: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960," Journal of American History 74, no. 1 (1987): 83-106;
34. Boyd, Wide Open Town. For an analysis of the ways in which the Cold War reshaped Americans' understanding of gender and sexual norms, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
35. Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952), Section 1636. Similar language was included in the 1947 edition of the manual.
36. FHA, Underwriting Manual, 1636; Canaday, The Straight State, 141.
37. See Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier;
38. Cohen, A Consumer's Republic; Self, American Babylon, Freund, Colored Property.
39. Mortgage guidelines coexisted with a range of other structural incentives to marry and adopt gender-specific economic roles, including changes in the tax code. See Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
40. National Association of Homebuilders, Home Builders for Land Development (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Homebuilders, 1950), 17.
41. United States Savings and Loan League, pamphlet, What You Should Know Before Buying a Home, 1959.
42. FHA, Underwriting Manual, Section 1320.
43. American Public Health Association, Committee on the Hygiene of Housing, Planning the Neighborhood (Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1948).
44. FHA, Underwriting Manual, Section 1640.
45. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 206.
46. FHA, Planning Profitable Neighborhoods (Washington, D.C.: Federal Housing Administration, 1938), 19.
47. FHA, The FHA Plan of Home Ownership (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954).
48. FHA, Underwriting Manual, Sections 1321 and 1370; FHA, Planning Profitable Neighborhoods.
49. National Association of Home Builders, Home Builders Manual for Land Development (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Home Builders, 1950), 200-204.
50. APHA, Committee on Hygiene and Housing, Basic Principles on Healthful Housing (New York: American Public Health Association, 1939). In 1948, the APHA condemned what it saw as the superfluous profiteering of real estate developers, who compelled extended families to buy new homes far away from one another: "Failure of many real estate developments to provide a reasonable variety of dwelling types within a neighborhood has undoubtedly contributed much to a costly and undesired mobility of urban families." APHA, Planning the Neighborhood, 29.
51. FHA, Underwriting Manual, Section 1303(a).
52. For a similar argument regarding the G.I. Bill, see Canaday, 169-73.
53. Thomas Holden, "The Big News Is the Birth Rate," Architectural Digest, May 1952.
54. "Bay's Boom in Babies Means Building Boom," San Francisco Examiner, January 3, 1955. See also "How Sound Is the Building Boom," Fortune, June 1950.
55. Maxine Livingstone, 4th Annual Builders' Competition, Parents' Magazine, February 1954;
56. Susan Hall Harrison, Post World War II Tract Homes: Subdivision Developments of Joseph Eichler, master's thesis, University of Virginia, 1980.
57. Sunset Books and Sunset Magazine, New Homes for Western Living (Menlo Park, CA: Lane Book Company, 1956), 66.
58. Branden Enterprises, Tropicana Village, San Jose, California: 10,000 New Homes (San Jose, CA: Branden, 1958), Rare Book Collection, Environmental Design Library, University of California, Berkeley.
59. San Jose City Planning Department, Santa Clara Subdivision Activity, 1957-1967 (San Jose, CA: San Jose City Planning Department, 1967).
60. City of San Jose, County of Santa Clara, and City of Palo Alto Human Relations Commission, Public Hearings on Housing Patterns, Zoning Laws, and Segregated Schools in Santa Clara County, August 4-September 22, 1975.
61. Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce, "Sunnyvale's Panorama of Progress," May 1956, Local History Collection, Sunnyvale Public Library, Sunnyvale, CA.
62. Sunnyvale City Planning Commission and the Santa Clara County Planning Commission, A Basic Planning Study for the City of Sunnyvale (Sunnyvale, CA: Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and Sunnyvale City Council, 1951);
63. Sunnyvale Planning Department, Preliminary Studies for a General Plan for the City of Sunnyvale (Sunnyvale, CA: Sunnyvale Planning Department, 1955), Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkley; San Jose Planning Commission, Master Plan of the City of San Jose (San Jose, CA: San Jose Planning Commission, 1958). Many of these policies followed recommendations made by the federal government. See FHA, Planning Profitable Neighborhoods.
64. APHA, Planning the Neighborhood.
65. Town Council of the City of Los Gatos, et al. v. The State Board of Equalization, et al. 141 California Court of Appeal, 344 (1956).
66. "Downtown Developers Rap St. James Park Center Plan, San Jose Mercury, October 4, 1960.
67. "'Dial a Doll' Cocktail Bar Promoter Gets Wrong Number," Sunnyvale Standard, April 12, 1962; "So Much for Table Talk," San Jose Mercury, April 13, 1962.
68. "Stanford Drops Six Students as Sex Deviates," San Francisco Examiner, February 14, 1956; "Cop Movies Net 24 in Sex Case," San Francisco Examiner, January 27, 1959. The police in Santa Clara also staked out the men's room in a local department store. See "8 Nabbed on Morals Charges," San Jose Mercury, February 6, 1962. For a history of gay and lesbian life in Santa Clara County, see Ted Sahl, From Closet to Community: A Quest for Gay and Lesbian Liberation in San Jose and Santa Clara County (Campbell, CA: Ted Sahl Gallery, 2002).
69. "Crucifixion Without Nails," L.C.E. News, September 3, 1962.
70. "Cop Movies Net 24 in Sex Case," San Francisco Examiner, February 14, 1956.
71. D'Emilio, "Gay Politics and Community in San Francisco Since World War II"; Stryker and Buskirk, Gay by the Bay; Boyd, Wide Open Town; Meeker, Contacts Desired.
72. Sides, Erotic City, 10.
73. "Homosexuality in America," Life, June 26, 1964.
74. Housing and Home Finance Agency, "Why People Buy the Houses They Do," Housing Research 4, October 1952, 3. Making a "home for the family" was the most commonly cited reason for purchasing a house.
75. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Annual Housing Survey: 1973: Part A: General Housing Characteristics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), 19.
76. U.S Bureau of the Census, 1960 Census of Population and Housing: San Jose, Calif.: Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961), 15 and 116. The Census projected the number of "unrelated" people based on a sample survey of a fraction of the residents in a tract.
77. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1960 Census of Population and Housing: San Francisco-Oakland Statistical Metropolitan Area (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961).
78. Reba Hudson, interview with unnamed researcher, 1981, GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, San Francisco, CA.
79. Housing and Home Finance Agency, Office of the Administrator, Urban Renewal Provisions of the Housing Act of 1949, As Amended Through 1956 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1956). For a definition of "family," see Housing and Home Finance Agency, Urban Renewal Administration, Local Plans for Residential Redevelopment and Family Relocation: Continental United States through December 1954 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954).
80. "Skid Row Gives Renewalists Rough, Tough Relocation Problems," Journal of Housing18, no. 8 (1961): 327-36;
81. Housing and Home Finance Agency, Urban Renewal Administration, Relocation from Urban Renewal Project Areas: Through December 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961). The 1949 Housing Act, amended through 1956, actually named both "individuals" and "families" as the intended beneficiaries of relocation aid. For unknown reasons, the Urban Renewal Administration did not interpret the law to include families. This discrepancy lasted at least until 1964. As late as 1963, the Urban Renewal Administration published a "fact sheet" on redevelopment that declared: "The local public agency is required to offer families displaced from an urban renewal project area decent, safe, and sanitary housing at prices and rents within their means." A year later, the agency added the word "individuals" to its description of relocation assistance. Housing and Home Finance Agency, Urban Renewal Administration, Urban Renewal Program: Fact Sheet (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1963).
82. Housing and Home Finance Agency, Office of the Administrator, Relocation of Families: Continental United States through March 1954 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954).
83. "South of Market Blight Turning to Blossom," San Francisco Call-Bulletin, no date, George Christopher Papers, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco, CA.
84. San Francisco Department of City Planning and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, A Preliminary Plan for a Project in the South of Market Redevelopment Area 'D' (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Department of City Planning, 1957).
85. "Needed: A Clean-Up," Editorial, San Francisco Examiner, June 28, 1954.
86. "Sex Deviates Make S.F. Headquarters," San Francisco Progress, October 7-8, 1959.
87. Arthur D. Little, A Progress Report to the Department of City Planning of the City and Council of San Francisco (Arthur D. Little, Inc., August 1963), George Christopher Papers, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco, CA.
88. For an analysis of the gay bar raids during the Christopher era, see Boyd, Wide Open Town, 108-147;
89. and Christopher Agee, "Gayola: Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco's Gay Bars, 1950-1968," Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 3 (2006).
90. Dean Jennings, "A Night with the 'S Squad,'" Saturday Evening Review, April 12, 1962; "Secret Crime Patrol Expands," San Francisco Examiner, March 14, 1959.
91. San Francisco Department of City Planning, Issues in Housing, Housing Report II (San Francisco, CA: Department of City Planning, 1969).
92. "Huge South-of-Market Redevelopment Urged," San Francisco Examiner, November 30, 1961.
93. Chester Hartman, City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
94. "Fabulous Barbary Coast Gives Way to Redevelopment," San Francisco Examiner, January 18, 1959.
95. Frants Albert, Urban Renewal Study for San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1960;
96. "Telegraph Cleanup Next," San Francisco Examiner, November 25, 1962. Like residents in Boston's Jamaica Plain and New York's Greenwich Village, the inhabitants of Telegraph Hill successfully fought redevelopment, yet the possibility of demolition encouraged private renewal.
97. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, prepared with the help of the San Francisco Department of City Planning, A Report to the Board of Supervisors: Redevelopment in Diamond Heights (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1950).
98. Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco, Diamond Heights: A Report on the Tentative Redevelopment Plan (San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1951).
99. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Program for the Sale of Church Sites in Diamond Heights (San Francisco, CA: Redevelopment Agency, 1964), George Christopher Papers.
100. For more on the history of residential hotels in San Francisco, see Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California, 1994).
101. In 1962, the L.C.E. News, a gay newspaper, told its readers that a bar called Jack's Waterfront Hangout had relocated due to the Golden Gateway Redevelopment. "Exodus," L.C.E. News, April 30, 1962.
102. Mary Ragison O'Shea interviewed in Peter Stein, dir., The Castro (San Francisco, CA: KQED-TV, 1996). For the growth of the Castro, the Haight-Ashbury, and other neighborhoods in San Francisco in the 1960s, see Sides, Erotic City.
103. See Boyd, Wide Open Town, and Sides, Erotic City.