A Place of One’s Own: Housing, Liabilities, and Social Space in the 1940s

Since the recent financial crisis in 2008, indebtedness has again come into the focus of historical research. Enormous credit card debts, mounting student loans, the burst of the real-estate bubble appear to be contemporary trends in the United States yet they are deeply rooted in the history of financialization in the 20^th century (Hyman 2011; Krippner 2011). This paper scrutinizes one particular genealogical reference point in the history of indebtedness in asking what made people take out loans in the context of an emerging U.S.-mortgage market in the 1940s. How did they cope with different loan deals in a spreading installment credit market with precarious forms and obligations? I will unfold what ownership and indebtedness meant to different groups of debtors by referring to this difference as debts difference. At this point debts difference will be focused on the impact of racism in the mortgage market of the 1940s while – in general – the concept involves an intersectional approach on class and gender, too. Against the backdrop of the panel’s question on pooling and saving practices I will focus on the societal implications of liability and credibility and how the homeownership apparatus enabled “the making of the indebted man” (Lazzarato 2011) through the implementation of loan practices that in turn reshaped social cohesion. The paper will bring into focus the social and spatial dimensions of the economic history of financing homes in the mid-20^th century. By contextualizing debt practices within New Deal policies, the paper will explore how saving practices were promoted, denied or suppressed, and how governmental incentives encouraged individuals and families to invest in financed homes as part of an emerging indebted self.