GOVERNMENT: The Payoff

In the dark days of the Depression, the New Deal tried out a plan to help the housing industry. With a $1,000,000 advance from the Treasury, the Government set up the Federal Housing Administration to insure loans for housebuilding and repair, thus spur the building industry. The experiment was a noble success. FHA's first insurance was on a loan for $125 to paint a house, repair the roof and install a water tank. Since then, the agency has insured mortgages on 3,940,000 housing units, and has made a total of 16 million loans for property improvement. FHA has not...

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