ession many people lost their homes because they were unable to make payments on their housing loans, called mortgages. Lending institutions then seized these homes but were often unable to resell them or even rent them. Two of the most popular of the early New Deal agencies were the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which helped individuals by refinancing their home loans so that banks did not seize the homes, and the Federal Housing Administration, which helped banks by taking most of the risk out of home loans by insuring loans up to 80 percent of the value of the property. In his second term, President Roosevelt secured the passage of legislation that allowed him to set up the U.S. Housing Authority. This agency helped to rebuild slums and encouraged low-cost housing construction, of major importance because it was the first direct involvement of the federal government in building houses.One of the most sweeping and imaginative New Deal reforms was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an independent federal corporation set up to improve conditions in a depressed area of 103,600 sq km (40,000 sq mi) in seven states. Chiefly responsible for this scheme was Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, a progressive Republican who had almost single-handedly blocked the sale of government-owned power sites on the Tennessee River during the 1920s and who was a firm believer in government ownership and operation of public utilities such as power and water companies. Roosevelt was a widely known advocate of publicly owned power, which he saw as a yardstick with which to measure the real costs of private power companies. He was greatly attracted to the TVA because of its possibilities for the conservation of natural and human resources.The TVA built a series of dams for power production, flood control, and navigation improvement. It distributed its own water-generated, or hydroelectric, power to many who never before had enjoyed the benefits of electr...
