Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

Federal Housing Administration (FHA), agency within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that was established by the National Housing Act on June 27, 1934 to facilitate home financing, improve housing standards, and increase employment in the home-construction industry in the wake of the Great Depression.

The FHA’s primary function was to insure home mortgage loans made by banks and other private lenders, thereby encouraging them to make more loans to prospective home buyers. The FHA’s approach was designed to attract support from interest groups such as the real-estate and banking industries, which were historically opposed to federal intervention in the housing arena. Prior to the FHA, balloon mortgages (home loans with large payments due at the end of the loan period) were the norm, and prospective home buyers were required to put down 30 to 50 percent of the cost of a house in order to secure a loan. However, FHA-secured loans introduced the low-down-payment home mortgage, which reduced the amount of money needed up front to as low as 10 percent. The agency also extended the repayment period of home mortgages from 5–10 years to 20–30 years. The resulting reductions in monthly mortgage payments helped to prevent foreclosures, often made buying a home cheaper than renting, and allowed families with stable but modest incomes to qualify for a home mortgage. In addition, because government-backed loans involved less risk for lenders, interest rates on mortgages went down.

In 1938 Congress established the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), which fostered the creation of a secondary mortgage market (a market in which banks and other investors could buy and sell existing home loans) that increased the capital available for mortgages. Following adoption of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill (1944), the FHA consolidated a system of long-term mortgages for the construction and sale of private homes. The Veterans Administration’s home-loan guarantee program, created under the GI Bill, required a down payment of only one dollar from veterans. Such changes contributed to a significant increase in American home ownership. Between 1934 and 1972, families living in owner-occupied homes rose from 44 percent to 63 percent.

Although FHA programs dramatically expanded home ownership, not all segments of the population benefited from them. FHA-insured mortgages favoured the construction of new single-family homes rather than multifamily units, and in time the nuclear family residing in a single-family home became synonymous with the American dream. However, FHA legislation initially did not benefit low-income families, single women (unless they were war widows), the non-wage-earning elderly, or racial minorities, who for decades were officially or unofficially prevented from obtaining loans because of FHA lending practices.

Further contributing to the mass disinvestment of urban neighbourhoods was the home-valuation system that the federal government adopted under the FHA. As part of its mandate to insure home mortgages, the FHA was required to develop appraisal rules and risk ratings. In order to define the fair value of a home and its property within a certain housing market, the FHA set up a system of valuation based on the principle of uniformity: it defined the best residential areas as those in which property values were clustered within a narrow range, on the rationale that such neighbourhoods tended to be more stable. The FHA also assumed that neighbourhoods occupied by the same racial groups would be the most stable over time and produce the highest returns, or property values, for residents.

The FHA home-valuation system reflected the dominant prejudices of the time. It effectively maintained racially segregated neighbourhoods by preventing minorities from purchasing homes in predominantly white areas. The neighbourhood-boundary drawing that reflected the racist valuation system and was central to FHA lending practices came to be known as redlining.

To maintain racially homogeneous neighbourhoods, the FHA also tacitly endorsed the use of restrictive covenants, which were private agreements attached to property deeds to prevent the purchase of homes by certain minority groups. It was not until 1950 that the FHA announced that it would not insure mortgages on properties with restrictive covenants.

FHA-supported redlining lasted until the mid-1960s and left minority urban neighbourhoods severely overcrowded. An administrative rule change from HUD, which subsumed the FHA upon the former’s creation in 1965, directed the agency to alter its practices to expand lending in urban and minority areas. Although the FHA did make formal changes, it often worked in concert with the lending industry to refuse mortgage credit to African Americans. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 further chipped away at the racial elements of FHA lending practices by prohibiting discrimination in housing, including home financing. The act also created the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) to help finance the development of low-income housing projects. New legislation in the 1970s and ’80s required the private lending industry to report lending statistics, such as the race and sex of applicants and the location of approved mortgages.