Greenbelt Homes, Inc

The housing cooperative now called Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI) was incorporated in 1952. But the history of its homes began fifteen years earlier, when in 1937, the United States built the first government planned community and named it Greenbelt. The federal government started this project during the Great Depression because it wanted to provide much needed affordable housing and it wanted to create jobs. Greenbelt was one of three New Deal Green Towns modeled after the English garden cities of the nineteenth century. Government planners called the town Greenbelt because of the surrounding belt of green forestland. Greenbelts plan featured inner walkways, underpasses, playgrounds, schools, businesses, and facilities for recreation. Most of the 885 original homes were row houses and apartments that were grouped into superblocks which separated pedestrians from road traffic. The town center now called Roosevelt Center was one of the first mall-type shopping centers in the United Sta...