The HAP board members were not housing reformers and had no interest in operating public housing after the defense industry completed its mission. armed forces were marginalized in Portland’s private housing market, and for these individuals, federal housing had the most promise. 3 Many Caucasian single mothers, African American families, and returning Japanese and African American veterans of the U.S.

By 1947, 236 units that had been slated for deactivation at Guild’s Lake Courts were reactivated and were undergoing repairs for use as veterans’ housing. Despite the end of the war, housing in Portland remained in critically short supply. In the 1940s, only two of the twenty-five developments operated by HAP allowed African American residents. After V-J Day in 1945, defense housing nationally was privatized, demolished, or converted into low-income federal housing. The residents were often clustered regionally within defense housing, a consequence of trainloads of passengers from a given state arriving and queuing up for the housing wait list at the same time. The Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) managed more housing between 19 than any other single housing authority in the nation in 1946 this vast expanse of units was operated as an affordable housing opportunity as units were removed from the developments in an erratic manner. African Americans moving into Guild’s Lake Courts came from Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas 2 whereas whites interviewed migrated from more Northern states like Missouri, North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and rural Oregon and Washington. Whites were often afraid they would be perceived as racists and some asked for their comments of surprise not to be included in the transcripts. Others perceived that African Americans first arrived in the summer of 1948, a point when the racially divided housing first integrated as part of crisis management, not as part of a planned effort to desegregate. Some of the white residents interviewed prior to the reunion had only learned of the African American members of the development from images brought to the interviews intended to stimulate memories. Lorenzo’s perspective was not unique to African American residents.

Units for African Americans were so far from the other sections of Guild’s Lake that one resident, Thorton Lorenzo, commented at a reunion that he “didn’t know there was any white folks in Guild’s Lake.” 1 Even in the aerial views it is very difficult to make out the housing occupied by the African American community, because it is in the far upper-middle edge of the image between the mountain and the river, just beyond the oil tank farms and train tracks. The residents of these electric units and residents of neighboring private homes watched the development of Guild’s Lake Courts, transforming a barren landscape into vast expanse of pre-fabricated row house units for as far as the eye could see. The northernmost section was reserved for African Americans the area consisted of two of the eight sections of the housing project and they were the last to be made available to rent and were first occupied in March 1943. The first residents to move in occupied a quaint courtyard grouping. The first residents moved into the limited number of electrified units at Guild’s Lake Courts in October 1942. Chapter Five: Moving into Guild's Lake Courts

X3 reunion the expanse