Defense housing · the city builds for war workers, separately

1936 – 1950

Even wartime emergency housing was sited to keep the map intact: A 1936 WPA property survey, sponsored by the City Plan Commission, documented South Bend's need for low-income housing; in 1939 the mayor urged the Common Council to create a housing authority and the council refused, realtors and builders opposing any public building that might disturb segregation. War forced the question: in 1941 the council created the authority — for defense workers, not for the poor. The first two projects were segregated by federal policy and by race and place: 250 units for white workers on vacant land in River Park, and 150 units for Black workers. For the Black project there was no vacant land in the Black neighborhoods, and the city's first proposal was to clear one: a site around Birdsell Street that would have demolished existing Black homes and businesses and the St. John Baptist Church to build housing its own displaced could not occupy, since the units were reserved for war workers.

J. Chester Allen counted the cost in the record's plainest sentence: the development would cause "46 Negro families" to "be left without homes." The Polish-American Central Civic Committee opposed "any other 'housing project for Negroes anywhere on the west side'"; the Black residents of the Birdsell site objected and asked for vacant land, or for the existing defense housing to be opened to them, and got neither. The city built instead in Beck's Lake and Maggie's Court — the two districts with, in the Commission's words, "some of the worst housing conditions in the City." The postwar sequel was refusal in the open: in February 1950 the council turned down an $11 million federal housing grant because it was perceived to be for minority housing, rejected another $3 million in April, and on 27 February 1950, before thousands of attendees, split in a tie vote — Republicans against, Democrats for — that killed the public-housing projects proposed for Maggie's Court and K Avenue for that year; the Prairie Homes and B. G. Smith Homes fights of the 1950s ended in the same 4–4 ties, with Beacon Heights and Southmore Heights passing to resident takeovers after delays that, in the Commission's finding, "displace[d] many African American families for years."

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Final Report of the Reparatory Justice Commission (2026), Part III.D — the 1936 WPA survey; the 1939 refusal and 1941 creation of the housing authority; the 250/150 segregated projects; the Birdsell Street proposal and Allen's "46 Negro families"; the Polish-American committee's opposition; the Beck's Lake and Maggie's Court siting; the February and April 1950 grant rejections and the 27 February 1950 tie vote; the Prairie Homes and B. G. Smith Homes ties.