War workers need rooms, apartments, homes is a 1942 poster of the Homes Registration Office in Washington, D.C. A photograph shows a man, a woman and a small girl with a doll sitting on a suitcase among luggage, over the line "Register your vacancies now" (NAID 513579).
What the sheet prints
Three people sit on a suitcase beside more luggage in the photograph. A man holds a coat over his arm. A woman holds a handbag. A small girl holds a doll. The text names what they need, asks the reader for it, and says where to call.
War Workers Need
ROOMS
APARTMENTS
HOMES
REGISTER YOUR
VACANCIES NOW
HR
Phone or Visit Homes Registration Office
REpublic 1086 - 14th ST. and PENNSYLVANIA AVE.
[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942 - O - [illegible]]
Who issued it
The record names the Homes Registration Office, Washington, D.C., as the maker, and the sheet gives its address at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue with a REpublic telephone exchange. The Government Printing Office imprint dates it to 1942; the job number is illegible. Per the archive, the intended audience was the domestic public and the purpose was mobilizing or securing compliance, under the home front and labor. The National Archives holds it with the World War II posters. The record does not say which office the registration desk reported to, and this page does not guess.
How to read it
Plain folks is the only tag, and the archive calls it faint: the ordinary family is shown as the people to be housed. That is the whole method. There is no enemy, no flag and no threat. A family sitting on a suitcase is the argument.
The request is worth noticing for what it is. The poster asks private householders to list their own spare rooms with an office, so newcomers can find them. It does not order anyone to take a lodger, and it names no penalty. It treats the reader's property as the reader's to offer. Asking owners to volunteer differs from requisition, and this sheet asks.
The record does not show how many vacancies were registered, and this page adds no figure. It is a local object: one city, one office, one phone number.
The same year, the Office of Price Administration posted a rent notice for Kitsap County, Washington State, which took another approach to wartime housing: a rule capping rents at their April 1, 1941 level. The 1941 Slums Breed Crime sheet is an earlier federal housing poster. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the period.
Sources
- FRAME object record, War workers need rooms, apartments, homes, 1942. Homes Registration Office, Washington, D.C.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-131, NAID 513579, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
