Welcome To The "American Dream"

Look Around Your Home

The Government Already Designed Your Life

You think you're independent. You think you live on your own terms. You think you're not part of the system? Welcome to the "American Dream".

But stop. Look around your home. The closed-off kitchen. The front-facing living room. The formal dining room you never use. The driveway, the fenced backyard, the rows of houses that look just like yours.

You didn’t design that life.

The U.S. government did.

The Government Designed Your Home and Your Lifestyle

Not with a blueprint and a hammer but with policy, propaganda, and a political agenda.

It started in 1944, during the final phase of World War II, when the U.S. faced a looming crisis: What would happen when 16 million American soldiers came home?

Unemployment. Social unrest. Communist sympathies. A possible second Great Depression.

The government’s answer?

Build a homeownership economy. Create stability. Control behavior. Engineer a new society from the ground up.

The GI Bill: The Program That Reshaped America

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill.

What it did:

• Offered low-interest, no-down-payment home loans to millions of returning WWII veterans.

• Covered tuition, job training, and unemployment benefits, helping veterans rise into the middle class.

  
  

By 1955, nearly 4.3 million home loans had been issued under the GI Bill fueling one of the largest housing booms in U.S. history.

But here’s the catch: These benefits were not applied equally.

• Black veterans were systemically denied loans through local banks and real estate agents.

• The Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) upheld racist redlining maps and racial covenants, denying access to suburban neighborhoods based on skin color.

  
  

The result? An explosion of suburban homeownership for white families only.

Levittown: America’s Blueprint for Behavioral Control

Enter Levittown, a massive post-war housing development started in 1947 by William J. Levitt.

Levitt & Sons used assembly-line methods to build homes fast, up to 30 per day, each one nearly identical. The homes were:

• 750–1,200 sq. ft.

• 2–3 bedrooms

• One bathroom

• Closed kitchen in the back

• Garage in the front

• Formal living and dining spaces

  
  

Backed by FHA loans, these houses were sold only to white families, enforced by explicit racial covenants in the deeds.

“No dwelling shall be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race,” read actual Levittown contracts.

This wasn’t just real estate. It was a system of social engineering.

The Suburban Home as a Tool for Control

The U.S. government didn’t just give people homes it told them how to live inside them.

Through FHA design standards, zoning laws, and cultural programming, the post-war home was designed to enforce:

Specific family roles:

• Closed kitchens for women to labor unseen

• Living rooms to host, but not to live

• TV rooms (dens) where fathers could relax and children absorb values

• Separate bedrooms to reinforce privacy, gender roles, and hierarchy

• Backyards and driveways to discourage community and promote consumption.

  
  

Reinforced by media:

• Shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver modeled this ideal.

• Ads and government-sponsored pamphlets glorified the housewife, the breadwinner, and the obedient child.

  
  

The Laws That Still Reinforce It Today

Think this is just history? Think again. These policies never fully went away they just became structural.

1. Single-Family Zoning (Still in Effect Today)

• Originated in Euclid v. Ambler (1926), but exploded post-WWII.

• Cities made it illegal to build anything other than detached single-family homes in most neighborhoods.

• Multi-family housing, duplexes, ADUs (in-law units)? Often banned.

In cities like Los Angeles, 75–80% of residential land is zoned for single-family homes only.

2. FHA & VA Loan Standards

• Still prioritize homes with traditional layouts, single-family, separated rooms, defined use spaces.

• Alternative housing models (live-work, co-housing, tiny homes) struggle to get financing.

  
  

3. Building Codes

• Many states require:

  • Minimum room sizes

  • Separated bedrooms

  • Single-kitchen homes

• These codes assume a nuclear family structure, ignoring how diverse modern households actually are.

  
  

4. Federal Infrastructure Spending

• Still prioritizes highways over walkable cities.

• Reinforces suburban, car-centric living isolating people and making community planning harder.

  
  

5. HOAs and Covenants

• Modern-day gatekeepers.

• Regulate everything from yard appearance to home additions, often enforcing traditional aesthetics and density limits.

  
  

The Impact: Lives That Don’t Fit the Mold Are Left Out

If you’re:

• Single

• A multi-generational household

• An immigrant

• A renter

• Part of a chosen family

• A remote worker

• Or simply someone who doesn’t want a dining room...

The system wasn’t built for you.

The layout of your home was never meant to support how you actually live. It was meant to train you how to behave. But Design Can Break the Mold.

This is where interior design becomes resistance. This is where architecture becomes activism.

At Levy Design Group, we don’t just furnish rooms We dismantle generational conditioning and rebuild around your real life.

What we do:

• Open the kitchen and turn it into a shared, social heart of the home

• Eliminate useless formal rooms and make space multifunctional

• Merge rest, work, and play zones to reflect your true rhythm

• Break free from outdated room purposes

• Design homes that work for real families, not 1950s blueprints

Good design doesn’t follow rules. It questions who made them and why they still exist.

If You Want Freedom, Start at Home

Your home may feel personal, but it’s likely built on a system that was never about you. It was about control, profit, and predictability.

Designing intentionally, with purpose, and autonomy is how we begin to rewrite that story.

You don’t need permission to change the way you live. You just need the right team to design it.

Levy Design Group is here to help you shatter the status quo one room at a time.