Federal Housing Administration - FHA

So…before 1934, a whole bunch of homes were doin’ the bankruptcy, foreclosure, and family-kick-out-dance. It left a bunch of people homeless in Seattle. And in other cities as well. Kinda all of them.

Then along came the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the FHA, which served to stabilize the process of building and buying homes. And you can imagine that home building is a big fat house of cards when it’s not well managed.

Shoddy workmanship allows homes to fail in the first breath of wind, so that insurance companies are loathe to pay when they fall, and banks are loathe to lend money to would-be home builders. And would you believe it...before the FHA, normal home loans were just 3-5 years. Like, you’d borrow...at today's dollar…200 grand to buy a home and be expected to pay all that off in just a few years.

Who could afford to buy a home? Yeah, pretty much nobody. So nobody does…nothin’...and a lot of people are very homeless and unhappy. The FHA set basic standards that served to improve building and housing conditions so that everyone wasn’t susceptible to, uh…big bad wolves, huffing and puffing...and a home, as long as it wasn’t made of straw, actually had a chance of staying intact for a few years.

And now the typical home loan is 30 years rather than 3-5...giving everyone ample opportunity to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the course of repayment. Yeah...maybe a better solution is to just repay your mortgage with autopay, so you don’t have to think about it too much...