Quotes about FHA

Norman P. Mason

You are responsible for the participation of all racial groups in FHA programs.

He was the first FHA administrator to make statements saying that non-discriminatory housing services should be available to the American people. At the time the Southern states had laws allowing and protecting legal segregation especially in housing. The Southern field staff interpreted his instruction to be sure that both blacks and whites had access to FHA services, but they used the “separate but equal” doctrine: Provide services to both races but always in segregated housing projects. This was typical of the kinds of problems that motivated the Civil Rights Acts offered by President Kennedy in 1963 and passed by President Johnson in 1964. See {637272} for a similar Mason statement.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the 1930s and the 1940s, we set up the FHA. We set up the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. We set up specific bureaus to make our communities look the way they look.

Charles Abrams

The FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremburg Laws.

The Federal Housing Authority actually developed policies that literally prohibited private mortgage lenders from writing mortgages for black neighborhoods and to not lend to blacks who wanted to buy houses in predominantly white neighborhoods. The Nuremburg Laws were the laws passed by Nazi Germany to make prohibit Jews from engaging in most civil activities.

Mark Zandi

It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.

Jayma Mays

I was really across-the-board, like a nutcase. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I just did everything. I was even part of FHA, Future Homemakers of America. How lost was I?

Raymond M. Foley

FHA has never held interracial characteristics in a project or neighborhood to be a basis of eligibility or ineligibility for mortgage insurance, per se.

FHA, in contrast to this administrator’s statement, was a major factor in increasing and maintaining housing discrimination in America. See {637259}, {637269} and {637260} for FHA official manuals which contradict Foley’s denial. He justified the inconsistency by pointing to the words “per se”. The agency never literally told FHA staff to discriminate he claimed. However, most people reading the two examples given above, would get the message that FHA was opposed to inter-racial, non-segregated housing.

Kenneth T. Jackson

Previously, prejudices were personalized and individualized: FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy. Whole areas of cities were declared ineligible for loan guarantees.

“FHA” was the Federal Housing Administration. This federal agency de facto controlled the vast majority of the mortgage loans in America. The agency, under the control of racists, redlined black neighborhoods from obtaining mortgages and even worse discouraged mortgage loans even in affluent white areas if it was an affluent Negro family that wanted to buy a house there. {637259} and {637260} are quotations which are examples of FHA racist policies.

Mark Zandi

Indeed, the FHA was born out of the Great Depression, which was also caused in significant part by a foreclosure crisis. Mortgages in the early 1930s were mostly three- to five-year 'bullet' loans, which did not amortize and were due in full at maturity.

Federal Housing Administration

If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties should continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.

FHA Quotes