Wanted - more Homes

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 11th Year

Issue

Issue No.

9

Date Released

1946

Length of issue (in feet)

1894

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1Wanted - more Homes

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

The March of Time synopsis: The latest March of Time, deals with an American problem parallel with our own acute housing shortage. The film shows the lengths to which home seekers are driven in their attempts to find somewhere to live, and discusses the measures being adopted to alleviate the situation.
The present crisis in housing, says March of Time, is a by product of the war and of ten years of depression which prededed it, when new construction was sharply curtailed, and, despite sporadic activity by the government in clearing away slum districts, not enough houses were built to keep pace with the growth in population. Local housing projects helped to forestall the impending shortages but these efforts were too few to have much effect on a problem national in scope.

With the outbreak of the war, private building came almost to a complete stop. Materials and manpower were mobilised and top priority went to barracks and war plants, while what material was left over the government directed into temporary housing in an effort to relieve congestion in war production centres. As the shortage of dwellings grew more acute, the American people, accepting discomfort in housing as a wartime necessity, consoled themselves with rosy dreams of their post-war homes. Wartime inconveniences were made more bearable by pre-views of the dazzling home laundries and glamorous mechanised kitchens of the future, and every woman thrilled to fascinating devices which were to turn the post-war home into a housewives’ paradise and make housekeeping a pleasant part-time avocation. Architects designed marvellous fabrications of plexi-glass and ply-wood, flooded with sunlight, air-conditioned and gleamingly efficient - all to be had at a nominal price when peace should come. But with the war’s end, soldiers and civilians alike have discovered that their brave new world has not materialised and that most of them are fortunate even to have a roof over their heads.

During 1946, says the March of Time, urban families seeking their own homes will reach a total of four million. Vacancies now available will accomodate three hundred thousand of these and, in the course of the year, six hundred and fifty thousand more vacancies will arise, but when all these have been filled, over three million families will still be unprovided for, unless new construction can bridge the gap. Materials needed for such constructions are in critically short supply and, at the current rate of production, supplies for this year will amount to less than two-thirds of requirements, chiefly through lack of manpower. In addition to shortages in nearly all basic materials, building is hampered by shockingly inefficient practices, for much of the construction industry still clings to hand work in a machine age and antiquated building codes often prevent the use of newer and more efficient materials and methods.

In the face of such obstacles, a national approach to the problem was a glaring necessity, and to overcome these difficulties a National Housing Expediter, has been appointed - Wilson Wyatt, who has succeeded in drafting an over-all housing programme which will enable private industry to erect two million seven hundred thousand homes by the end of 1947. To clear the way for the programme, a government order halted the flow of materials into non-residential buildings and high-cost housing. Wyatt’s first goal was fullest possible use of emergency housing units which could be put up quickly as a temporary expedient. Next and most important step was to speed up building by new methods through which permanent homes could be built in a fraction of the usual time, at a fraction of the usual cost. These new building techniques range from giant machines which deposit whole houses, to the less spectacular but more tested methods of pre-fabrication, by which houses are built sectionally in factories and assembled on the site. And it is by making the fullest use of assembly-line methods and new materials developed during the war that housing experts hope to meet today’s urgent need for more homes.

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.12 No.9 of the US edition.

Keywords

Buildings and structures; Domestic life; Social conditions

Written sources

The March of Time Promotional Material   Lobby Card, Used for synopsis

Credits:

Production Co.

Time Inc.