author
Edith Elmer Wood
1871–1945
A key voice in early public housing reform, she argued that crowded, unhealthy housing was a structural problem, not a personal failing. Her writing helped bring housing and public health into the same national conversation.
1 Audiobook
An Oberland Châlet
by Edith Elmer Wood
About the author
Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Edith Elmer Wood was an American writer, public health advocate, and housing reformer. She studied at Smith College and went on to become one of the best-known early analysts of housing conditions in the United States.
Wood is especially remembered for pushing the idea that slums and overcrowding were social and economic problems that demanded public action. As a writer, lobbyist, and government consultant, she helped shape thinking around public housing during the New Deal era and argued that better housing was closely tied to better health.
Her books included The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner, Recent Trends in American Housing, and Introduction to Housing. She died in 1945, but her work remains part of the history of American housing reform.