Resettlement AdministrationEdit
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a short-lived but historically significant U.S. federal effort launched during the mid-1930s as part of the broader response to the Great Depression. Created to tackle the twin problems of urban slums and unproductive rural land, the RA sought to move distressed families to healthier housing and to demonstrate new approaches to rural development and community planning. Although the agency existed only for a few years before its functions were folded into the later Farm Security Administration, its experiments shaped debates about the proper scope of government in housing, land use, and rural policy that continued for decades. The RA operated within the broader framework of the New Deal and the Roosevelt administration, drawing on ideas about relief, reform, and reforming the ownership and organization of land and housing. See, for example, the early policy discussions surrounding Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisors, and the way these ideas fed into later programs such as the Farm Security Administration.
What follows surveys the RA’s origins, programs, and legacy, with attention to the practical results and the political debates those results provoked. It also notes how the RA’s work intersected with questions of property rights, local control, and social welfare, and it points to the enduring tension between federal coordination and individual initiative in American policy.
Origins and mandate
The Resettlement Administration emerged in a period of rapid experimentation in federal relief and planning. It was established in 1935 under the Roosevelt administration, with leadership including notable administrators such as Rexford Tugwell, who championed a more active role for the federal government in shaping land use and housing. The RA was charged with two core aims: to remove families from the worst urban slums and to resettle distressed rural households onto land and in housing that offered better prospects for health, education, and productivity. In practice, the RA sought to combine relief with aspirations for better community design and private-scale opportunities within a more organized, modern framework.
The agency’s operations reflected a belief that housing quality, land use, and rural prosperity were interconnected. It drew authority from the federal budget and executive action and worked in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and related agencies. The RA’s mission also aligned with broader ideas about how orderly planning and the deployment of capital could reduce the social and economic costs of poverty, while preserving incentives for property ownership and work.
Programs and operations
Urban relocation and slum clearance: One strand of RA activity involved moving residents out of overcrowded urban districts into improved housing arrangements or into planned communities designed to provide safer living conditions and better access to services. The aim was to reduce health risks, instability, and the costs of slum conditions for families and for tax bases in distressed city neighborhoods. The program framed relocation as a constructive step toward self-sufficiency rather than mere housing handouts.
Rural resettlement: The RA also pursued the relocation of certain rural families from unproductive farms or marginal land to sites offering better soils, irrigation, or amenities that could sustain family farming or small-scale enterprise. The idea was to alleviate concentrated poverty and to help create a more stable rural economy with clearer paths to homeownership or long-term tenancy.
Greenbelt towns and model communities: A notable portion of the RA’s program was the creation of model, government-sponsored towns intended to blend housing, work, and education in a coordinated environment. Three of the best-known examples are Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills,Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. These planned communities emphasized affordable housing, cooperative planning, and a degree of local control within a federal framework. The efforts sought to demonstrate how well-designed communities could support families, schools, small businesses, and public services, while still preserving private property and individual initiative. See Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale, Wisconsin for more details.
Infrastructure and services: Beyond housing, RA projects typically included the construction or improvement of roads, water systems, schools, and other public facilities. The goal was to create not just housing units but functional communities that could sustain families over time and reduce the need for ongoing relief.
Financing and governance: The RA operated under federal funding streams and administered programs through arrangements with local governments and private contractors where appropriate. Its leadership and organization reflected an emphasis on centralized planning combined with local execution, a hallmark of many New Deal-era experiments in the role of the federal government in everyday life.
Governance, impact, and reception
The RA’s brief life spanned a period of intense political debate about the proper role of federal power in economic and social life. Supporters argued that, in the wake of widespread misery, a responsive federal program could correct market failures, reduce human suffering, and create a platform for higher living standards and opportunity. Critics countered that large-scale relocation and planning represented a drift toward centralized power, eroding private property rights, and creating dependency on government programs. The RA’s record thus became a focal point for broader discussions about how to reconcile relief with accountability, and how much planning should be undertaken by the national government versus left to local initiative and private enterprise.
Racial dynamics also entered the conversation. Like many public housing and relocation efforts of the era, the RA operated in a segregated society where racial norms and discriminatory practices influenced implementation. In practice, some RA projects had racially mixed ambitions or offered opportunities to black families, while other arrangements reflected prevailing segregation. Debates about the fairness and reach of such programs continue in historical assessments, with critics noting that any remote form of housing intervention could be entangled with racial inequities of the period, while defenders argue that the projects nonetheless improved living standards for a broad cross-section of families and laid groundwork for later reforms.
The RA’s legacy is inseparable from its transformation into the Farm Security Administration in 1937, which inherited the RA’s rural relief and expanded on it with broader agricultural and community-development programs. The shift reflected an ongoing recalibration of federal approaches to rural poverty, land use, and housing policy. The photographs and reports produced during the RA era—much of which was later associated with the FSA’s documentation of rural life—helped shape public understanding of poverty, housing, and the potential for reform through better design and organization of rural spaces.
Controversies and debates
Scope of federal power and property rights: A central debate concerns whether federal efforts to relocate families and reform land use were legitimate expressions of national responsibility or overreach that crowded out private initiative and local decision-making. The RA’s experience is often cited in discussions about how far the federal government should go in directing living arrangements and land use.
Costs and outcomes: Critics of large-scale relocation and planning argued that the programs imposed costs on taxpayers and risked disrupting social networks and local economies. Proponents contended that the costs were warranted by the scale of deprivation addressed and by the long-term benefits of healthier housing and more productive rural areas.
Racial equity and fairness: In the context of the era’s widespread racial segregation, assessments of the RA’s impact on black families, and on racial integration more broadly, vary. Critics emphasize that racial bias constrained who benefited and how programs were designed, while supporters stress that the projects often advanced living standards for disadvantaged households across racial lines and helped set precedents for later housing policy debates.
Modern critiques versus historical context: Some contemporary observers frame the RA in terms of modern concepts of social policy, arguing that it embodied paternalism or misallocated resources. From a pragmatic historical perspective, defenders point to the RA’s role in spurring durable infrastructure, home ownership opportunities, and the development of planned communities that provided tangible improvements for many families during a difficult era. Critics of anachronistic critique argue that evaluating 1930s programs by 21st-century standards risks overlooking the context, constraints, and limited alternatives of the time, while acknowledging that no policy is beyond serious scrutiny.
Why some criticisms are seen as overstated: Proponents of the RA’s approach often note that the agency did not simply displace people; it aimed to create enduring shelter and pathways to self-sufficiency, using private property concepts and local participation where possible. They point to the long-run influence on rural development policy and the preservation of community-oriented planning ideas as evidence of constructive experimentation, even if not all projects achieved perfect outcomes.
Legacy
The RA’s most lasting influence lies in its experiments with planned communities, housing models, and the formalization of a federal role in coordinating relief with development. The transition of RA duties into the Farm Security Administration helped extend the logic of relief into more targeted rural reform and agricultural policy, influencing later programs that sought to extend credit, improve housing, and stabilize rural life. The RA’s footprint also lives on in the historical record of federal involvement in housing policy and urban planning, including how such policy is framed in relation to private property, local governance, and the balance between national coordination and local autonomy. The RA era contributed to a broader national conversation about the appropriate scale and scope of government in everyday life, a conversation that continued to shape debates over urban renewal, housing, and rural development for decades to come.