The Home Owners Loan Act was authorized on this day in 1933.This legislation helped create savings and loan associations, which allow Americans to invest money and get loans for home purchases.
Home Sweet Home
The Home Owners Loan Act was authorized on this day in 1933.This legislation helped create savings and loan associations, which allow Americans to invest money and get loans for home purchases.
During the Depression era, home ownership was an impossibility for many. The Home Relief Bureau was a government agency that dispensed assistance for the homeless. Artist Howard Taft Lorenz had first-hand experience with the bureau, that resulted in this satirical painting.…
In 1935 Lorenz found himself homeless and on relief in New York City.… The Home Relief Bureau led him to discover another government-sponsored program, the WPA Art Project.
Seeing an opportunity for employment, he taught himself to paint in oils. His canvases were devoted primarily to social satire incorporating caricatures in complex compositions. Years of homelessness and malnourishment took their toll on Lorenz. He died of stomach ulcers in New York City in 1956.
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).
Pictured: Howard Taft Lorenz, 1906–56, Home Relief Bureau, 1940, oil, 30 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from Museum of Modern Art.