Woman Proposes Government Help Distressed Families Keep Homes, 1935

“As a Woman Sees It” by Alice Dugger Grimes, as published in the March 1935 issue of the Carolina Co-Operator (formerly The Carolina Cotton Grower)

How fine it would be if some plan could come out of Washington whereby the government would lend to distressed home owners before they became delinquents, a plan just a little different from the well-known Home Owners Loan Corporation now in operation. Perhaps an addition to it could lend to those who are struggling so valiantly to meet the mortgage payments each month, and are meeting them, despite insufficient food, thread-bare clothing, lack of physician’s care and dental attention. A plan whereby these mortgage payments could be lessened each month and thereby stretched over a longer space of time. To many home owners, in reality just partial home owners, this difference, though it might be only of a few dollars, would bridge the gap between security and deadly insecurity.

Nothing is more heart-rending than to see a family forced to vacate a home upon which many payments have been made through the practice of the most basic sacrifices. A home where so much of one’s self has been poured out in the form of lawn and trees, walk-ways and fences, shrubs and flowers, fruits and vines; each nook and corner, each door and window, each porch and pantry planned with the purpose of comfort for one’s own immediate family.

The government is particularly interested in saving the home of the average man, so maybe before long this particular type of homesteader may be reached. We who fall under this classification must remember that Rome was not built in a day.