The National Housing Act of 1934, , also called the Capehart Act, was part of the New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

 passed during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 in order to make housing

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

 and home mortgages

Mortgage loan

A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...

 more affordable. It created the Federal Housing Administration

Federal Housing Administration

The Federal Housing Administration is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying...

 (FHA) and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation

Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation

The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation was an institution that administered deposit insurance for savings and loan institutions in the United States...

.

It was designed to stop the tide of bank foreclosures on family homes. Both the FHA and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation worked to create the backbone of the mortgage and homebuilding industries.

The Housing Act of 1937

Housing Act of 1937

The Housing Act of 1937, sometimes called the Wagner-Steagall Act, provided for subsidies to be paid from the U.S. government to local public housing agencies to improve living conditions for low-income families....

builds on this legislation.