As the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW) Credit Union, Kazan understood that most people, rich and poor, usually considered a home as “purely a product of his own efforts.” Yet, unlike all other routine necessities, owning a home required a sizable initial investment that was usually beyond that of those with moderate means or salaries. He felt that this made newly constructed buildings often out of reach for the poorer earners, causing harsher social and moral conditions with the tenement communities where the poorer people lived in tightly congested clusters.
