A ST. LOUIS story illustrates how stark the FHA policy could be. Charles Vatterott was an area builder who obtained advance FHA guarantees for a subdivision of single-family homes in western St. Louis County. Vatterott called his development St. Ann and intended it to be a community for lower-middle-class Catholics, particularly returning war veterans. He began construction in 1943, and while he made a special effort to recruit Catholics, he did not prohibit sales to non-Catholic whites—he barred only blacks, as the FHA required.
