USA House is a term used to refer to a United States government program to assemble American-manufactured prefabricated houses in the United Kingdom to alleviate that country's homeless problem in the 1940s. The scheme was known as Houses for Britain.

History

Background

USA House was undertaken by the U.S. government at the behest of the British government under the terms of the Lend Lease Act. At the time, the United States was considered the world leader in prefabricated building techniques; a 1943 proposal by the Union of Soviet Architects had even suggested the purchase of American prefabrication technologies to deal with the Soviet Union's own housing dilemmas. Details of the arrangement were brokered by

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

.Kwak 2015
pp. 26–29
/ref> According to a period news report, the program was designed to "help shelter England's bombed-out population". Initial plans called for the construction of 30,000 homes in the United States which would be shipped to, and assembled in, Great Britain. The first of the

bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas. The first house in England that was classified as a b ...

-style homes constructed for the program were erected in the UK during the summer of 1945.

Criticism and cancellation

The program suffered, early on, from domestic United States criticism. Americans voiced opposition to the amount of lumber resources being devoted to

foreign aid In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. Ai ...

projects and expressed incredulity that war measures such as Lend Lease were being used to aid "everyday Britons". In the UK the program was also received skeptically after the first shipment of houses arrived damaged. Design factors of the buildings were also met with disfavor by Britons. For instance, the USA House was outfitted with an American-style

bathtub A bathtub, also known simply as a bath or tub, is a container for holding water in which a person or animal may bathe. Most modern bathtubs are made of thermoformed acrylic, porcelain-enameled steel or cast iron, or fiberglass-reinforced pol ...

, which is shorter and more shallow than the type used in Britain. Despite the original program goal of 30,000 homes, only 8,462 were ultimately supplied. According to a period report to the

Cabinet of the United Kingdom The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of His Majesty's Government. A committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the prime minister and its members include secretaries of state and other senior ministers. ...

, the British government cancelled the remaining order of 22,000 units following the termination of Lend Lease by the United States and due to Britain's inability to pay the full price of each house. Contemporary accounts attribute a variety of structural deficiencies in the buildings, such as differences in the foundation slab between the USA House and that of locally-built British temporary shelters, as contributing to the British government decision not to see the program through to completion.

Design

The USA House bungalows were timber-framed structures with a floor space of . Each building consisted of two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen, and was designed with a life expectancy of 10 years.

References

Bibliography