Felt tip pen used by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the signing ceremony for "S. 3497, An Act to assist in the provision of housing for low and moderate income families, and to extend and amend laws relating to housing and urban development." The official 'bill signer' Eversharp pen measures 5.25″ long and features a navy-blue plastic barrel bearing a gold facsimile signature with presidential seal and a silver-tone cap section. Accompanied by the original typed caption affirming that the pen was one of the “pens used by the President on August 1, 1968, in the signing ceremony of S. 3497," as well as a TLS by Sherwin J. Markman, assistant to President Johnson, presenting the pen to C. Howard Hill: "The president thought you might like to have the enclosed pen of the type he used in signing S. 3497, the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1964." Nicely mounted, matted, and framed together to an overall size of 11 x 16.5. In very good to fine condition, with staining to the transmittal letter.
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 came on the heels of major riots across cities throughout the United States in 1967, the assassination of Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, and the publication of the report of the Kerner Commission, which recommended major expansions in public funding and support of urban areas. President Johnson referred to the legislation as one of the most significant laws ever passed in the United States, due to its scale and ambition. The act's declared intention was constructing or rehabilitating 26 million housing units, 6 million of these for low and moderate income families, over the next ten years. The act authorized $5.3 billion in spending over its first three years, designed to fund 1.7 million units over that time. The legislation provided a significant expansion in funding for public programs, such as public housing. But it also marked a shift in federal programs, increasingly focusing on using private developers as a strategy to encourage housing production of affordable units. The program set the tone for future U.S. approaches to policy because of this focus on public-private joint initiatives in achieving public ends.
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