None of the many civic responsibilities that Leyton E. Carter shouldered as an expected complement to his position as the Cleveland Foundation’s director proved more significant than his chairmanship of Cleveland Homes, Incorporated. This private housing corporation was formed in 1933 to implement a program of slum clearance and low-cost housing construction to be financed by a $12 million allotment from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (PWA).

With blight swallowing up fully one-fourth of Cleveland’s total acreage, Cleveland Homes prepared a master redevelopment plan that called for 1,000 acres of east-side slums to be replaced with new streets and speedways linking low-income garden apartments with stores, schools and other public buildings.

The plan was never fully realized because Cleveland Homes proved unable to raise an additional $2 million required by the federal government. Nevertheless, during his brief tenure as chair of the housing corporation, Carter helped to lay the groundwork for the construction of the first three public housing projects in America. Before PWA decided in early 1934 to assume full responsibility for the first 1,028 units Cleveland Homes had planned to build, the housing corporation had commissioned all the necessary architectural drawings and acquired the land.

Construction of the Cedar Apartments, Outhwaite Homes and Lakeview Terrace was completed in 1937, and three years later PWA placed the public housing complexes under the management of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA). The founding director of CMHA, former Cleveland councilman Ernest J. Bohn, is usually given sole credit today for the concept of public housing, as it was he who persuaded city council to undertake a catalytic study of blight and influenced state legislation establishing municipal housing authorities. But Carter’s unpaid and time-consuming leadership of Cleveland Homes should also be acknowledged as part of the Cleveland Foundation’s record of accomplishment.