Puerto Rican Homeowners Appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt

Background: Throughout the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, received millions of letters from civilians from across the United States and its territories. Acting on behalf of their families or as representatives of community organizations, Americans wrote seeking assistance or sharing assessments of new government relief programs. In Puerto Rico, New Deal programs were administered through the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA). This new agency was set up to distribute emergency rations and coordinate activities related to health, education, housing and slum clearance, labor and the economy. Part of the sprawling new government bureaucracy established during the Depression, the PRERA came to represent the New Deal and Roosevelt’s administration for many Puerto Ricans. Having to write in English to a faraway government, this letter writer was alarmed by the predatory lending practices of local banks and requested government intervention to prevent widespread foreclosures.

San Juan P.R.
March 10th 1934

Hon. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Governor Palace
San Juan P.R.

Hon. Madam:

For our children [please] carry to our Hon. President of the United States, Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt th[is] memorial, that many homes will be very soon [foreclosed] if the branch of the Bank to lend money on [an already mortgaged] home is not open very soon in Puerto Rico.

Many [heads of families] have had to convert in tenant from their own home as they could not pay the mortgage, and many others are going for the same way.

The most of them are home from three dollars down and I recommend that you interest to Administrator of N.R.A. to give pre-finance to these, because of this way you save more home and will have build less home than those offered to build with fund of the NRA.

This is a matter which need[s] preference [priority] and we hope you will take interest necessary, as nobody in Porto Rico nor out of Porto Rico like[s] to try this matter because millions of dollars are invested in such business in Porto Rico without paying any taxes . . . those persons are trying to trouble the foundation of such institution, because they know that it is the better business in Porto Rico.

By the newspaper “The World” [El Mundo] of Porto Rico you can see every day advertising [offering mortgages].

We hope from your human spirit do something real and help us to safe [save] our homes in order to when God ask[s] us, we can says “our children has a home and no body can throw it out to the street.”

Yours sincerely and very respectfully,

Ramón Lopez
William 47
Santurce P.R.

Source: Ramón Lopez Bonilla to Eleanor Roosevelt, 10 March 1934, Fortaleza file, General Archives of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico.