Monday, March 10, 1947
Housing
JFK was attending a national housing conference in Chicago. There was a severe shortage of decent housing for the returning veterans from World War II and Kennedy had made it one of his issues. He told the gathering:
Veterans need homes and they need them quickly. Upon he solution of this problem will depend much of our own future. Most veterans recognize the whys and wherefores of the housing shortage, but let u remember that most veterans are young men and have but one standard to apply to the current waste-the prodigious accomplishments of this nation in war.
Any veteran who watched the American supplies pouring ashore on the Normandy beaches; who saw Pacific Islands cleared and air strips rolled out in four or five days; who saw the endless waste of war and the seemingly never-ending productivity that replaced that waste, is it any wonder that the veteran can not understand why he is not housed?
[153, p. 616-617]