During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
authorized the building of three "green towns", one of which was
Greenbelt, Maryland, in order to create jobs and provide housing for low-
to mid-income families. In order to live in Greenbelt, interested people
had to apply and meet certain eligibility requirements. During the first
open call for applicants, more than 3,000 individuals submitted
applications. From the 2,284 people who passed the initial "eligibility
tests", 885 families would be selected to live in
Greenbelt.
Greenbelt was designed to be a "model" community. Therefore the families
chosen had to meet what the selectors for the community felt were ideal
qualifications. In general,
the family demonstrated a need for housing
the annual income had to be between $800 and $2,200
the family could not have more than three children (the average was
two)
the head of the family was at least 21 years old
the applicants had to reside in Washington, D.C. or Maryland
Quotas were set such that Greenbelt's population of government and non
government workers and the religions that the Greenbelters practiced
would be
proportional to the percentages in the Washington, D.C.
area. The quotas were calculated using 1930 census data and other
statistics. The government did not want to practice religious
discrimination and the final religious quotas were as follows:
Religion
Catholic - 34%
Jewish - 7%
Episcopalian - 17%
Methodist - 16%
Baptist - 6%
Presbyterian - 5%
Others - 15%
The religious quotas were not followed explicitly, which resulted in 14%
less Catholics and 24% more in the "Others" category. Later, prospective
families were interviewed in order to evaluate if the family was
"right" for the neighborhood and if they possessed cooperative
dispositions and a genuine need to live in the Greenbelt housing. Kristi
Johnson examines
the government's selection process for families in more detail. Kristi
reveals that even
after selection, families needed to adhere to certain implicit criteria
or risk losing their housing in Greenbelt.