Housing Background Including The Duplex Home.

The manufacture of housing is a central part of the American economic history, involving the development of construction technologies, the organization of building trades, the ownership of real estate, the availability of capital and credit, and the marketing of units. Duplex Housing has evolved a great deal over the years, but its main start can be traced to the need for affordable housing for the average American.

Individual houses, duplex homes, and multifamily housing complexes always function as part of larger environments. Because gas and electric lines, piped water, paved streets, sewers, and garbage collection affect the healthfulness and quality of housing, the extension of these services is part of the history of housing as well as that of public works and sanitation.

These services must be present for important household technologies such as indoor plumbing, central heating, gas and electric stoves, electric lights, and refrigeration to be used. Dwellings themselves offer the best evidence of past conditions, but building and zoning laws, deeds, insurance maps, building permits, and mortgage-lending records are some other specialized sources that are useful to a new builder considering building in an area.

The residents of the tenements and of most apartment houses were renters, as were most inhabitants of the early company towns. But after 1919, some employers provided opportunities for home ownership to skilled white male workers, seeing it as a way to reward employees and discourage worker mobility and strikes. Patterns of suburban home ownership were also influenced by the extension of streetcar lines in the late nineteenth century and by the availability of cheap bungalows and mail-order cottages. In the 1920s, Better Homes in America, Inc., an association of bankers, builders, realtors, and manufacturers, worked closely with the Department of Commerce under Secretary Herbert Hoover to promote home building and ownership. Over seven thousand chapters of this organization were operating by 1930.

By the time of the Great Depression and World War II, the federal support of private suburban housing development (including Duplex Housing) increased greatly. The income tax deduction for mortgage interest (in 1939) was a powerful stimulus. Also, Federal mortgage insurance for G. I. mortgages for veterans after the war and for developers made purchasing a suburban house cheaper than renting an urban apartment. In addition, automobiles made the suburbs more accessible, and federal funds for road building encouraged low-density development.

In addition, Duplex Housing was instrumental during the time of the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion or national origin. Title VI, prohibits public access discrimination, leading to school desegregation. And Title VIII, (as related to Duplex Housing) is the original "federal fair housing law," and it helped provide an opportunity for affordable housing, including Duplex Housing. Later amended in 1988, the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1988, disabled access required for multi-family housing intended for first occupancy after March 13, 1991.

Other federal programs of the 1960s and 1970s involved leases or pay-back arrangements to private developers designed to house poorer families in privately owned mixed-income rental projects subsidized by the government. In some cities, rent control legislation kept units affordable, but often landlords retaliated by attempting to turn rental units into condominiums. In the 1980s the Reagan administration cut federal assistance to all low-cost housing, which contributed to a growing problem of homelessness. Duplex Housing had become incredibly helpful and a main stay in these Housing development projects.