After World War II, activity in the aircraft industry did not halt. Aircraft manufacturing, which was only one of Wichita's industries, continued to thrive and people continued to migrate to Wichita. Because of the population growth, city leaders found it was not as easy to eliminate wartime housing as expected. In 1943, Harland Bartholomew was hired to revise the 1923 city plan. His firm’s study found that between 1940 and 1943, the city limits were expanded by only 13% while the population grew by 50%. This led the firm to express hope that there could be post-war growth "without an unwarranted outward spreading of population." Planners felt that Wichita had been "spaciously developed" during the 1920's with many subdivisions and, as such, that the city could continue to grow through infill construction to avoid urban sprawl. The firm and the Planning Commission, therefore, recommended that the housing developments built during the war should be torn down. However, this was based on estimates that Wichita's population would be 185,300 by 1970; yet by 1960, the census showed that 254,698 people already lived in the city.

In addition, the "temporary" housing in Planeview, Beechwood, and Hilltop Manor were still full of workers from Wichita's aircraft plants who appreciated the affordable rents. The 1950 census indicated that the largest average family size and the highest population density in the city existed in Hilltop Manor. Perhaps the defining moment for the future of the housing development came with the reluctance of the federal government to demolish the project without compensation rather than to sell it to residents or landlords so that it could remain rental property. In 1946, residents of Hilltop Manor formed a residents association and hired prominent attorney Payne Ratner to request that the City waive new provisions of the building code that would require expensive modifications in the houses. This would allow all 1,118 units to be sold to the cooperative, the Hilltop Manor Residents' Association. The federal government liked this idea and agreed to sell to the Association for just over $3 million. The city blocked this by refusing to compromise on its code; however, in 1948, with Boeing reactivated for jets, a city housing vacancy rate of only 1%, and a waiting list of 315 families for all three war housing complexes, any real chance of demolition was slim. A compromise resulted. The 400 so-called "permanent" units, the first ones