Resettlement Administration

The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm Security Administration. History The RA was the brainchild of Rexford G. Tugwell, an economics professor at Columbia University who became an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt during the latter's successful campaign for the presidency in 1932 and then held positions in the United States Department of Agriculture. Roosevelt established the RA under Executive Order 7027, as one of the New Deal's "alphabet agencies", and Tugwell became its head. The divisions of the new organization included Rural Rehabilitation, Rural Resettlement, Land Utilization, and Suburban Resettlement. Roosevelt transferred the Federal Emergency Relief Administration land program to the Resettlement Administration under Executive Order 7028 on May 1, 1935. However, Tugwell's goal of moving 650,000 people from of agriculturally exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress. This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive influential farm owners of their tenant workforce. The RA was thus left with enough resources to relocate only a few thousand people from and build several greenbelt cities, which planners admired as models for a cooperative future that never arrived.