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A government agency, created by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration as part of the New Deal, that was responsible for constructing much of the earliest public housing in the United States from 1933 to 1937. However, because it was dedicated to following the “neighborhood composition rule,” the housing that the PWA built was always segregated, and it nearly always helped make existing neighborhoods more segregated than they were before. Unfortunately, the PWA’s practice of deliberately segregating public housing became a template for future publicly-funded residential construction projects in the United States.
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Public Works Administration (PWA) Term Timeline in The Color of Law
The timeline below shows where the term Public Works Administration (PWA) appears in The Color of Law. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Public Housing, Black Ghettos
...rigid[ly]” segregated. In fact, Harold Ickes, the rather liberal head of the Public Works Administration (PWA) was controversial for giving “one-third of the units” to African American families, even though all...
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Rothstein offers some examples of how PWA projects intentionally segregated previously integrated areas. For its first project in 1935, the PWA destroyed...
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But the PWA housing program was short-lived, and from 1937 onwards, localities had to apply for federal subsidies...
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