mitted increasingly to the 221 (d) (3. So that we would expect, if the rest of the bills were passed, that there would be an increased supply. On the other hand, it is clear that many of these problems, in the elderly in particular, are not problems that are created by urban renewal. They are problems that the communities had on their conscience, if not openly but certainly should have had on their conscience all along. They are social problems, and these we feel are problems which may be not directly related to housing but are part of the whole welfare program of the local community, and there is a time when the local community has to assume these problems which existed before urban renewal and were only uncovered by urban renewal and accentuated by urban renewal. Otherwise, we would put under the urban renewal program and public housing program the necessity for solving social problems which are indigenous to the community and which existed before and will continue to exist after. So this was the philosophy in the terminal point on this.

Senator DOUGLAS. Senator Muskie.

Senator MUSKIE. Mr. Chairman, the first thing I would like to say is that this summary of questions which has been raised by witnesses on S. 2468 and prepared by the staff is an excellent one, and I wondered whether or not the Agency would submit answers to these questions for the record rather than undertaking to go through them.

Dr. WEAVER. We will be happy to do that. (See p. 1092.)

Senator JAVITS. Senator, would you yield at this point? I asked them to do this, and I apologize humbly for not having said this is magnificently done, and I hope it will be a constant practice of the committee.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you. Coming in late, I was not aware that anything had been done about it.

I do not want to take too much time, because I do know the chairman and Senator Clark have some questions. I would like to ask two or three questions about the urban renewal program as it applies to a State like mine.

As you know, Dr. Weaver, we are a State of small cities and small towns. The largest city is just under 80,000 people, and no other city exceeds 50,000. The largest metropolitan area probably is on the order of 150,000 to 175,000 people.

It is only in recent years, the last 3 or 4, that Maine towns have really begun to get their teeth into the urban renewal program. Frankly, their first bites have not been appetizing, and we are beginning to have some problems.

I have an impression from what your full-time people in this field tell me that the program is not really geared to the needs of small towns. I wish that I could someday sit down with them and some of your people, in order to go over it, but let me raise some of the points which they make to me.

One point which they make is that because your people in the regional office are geared to dealing with the big projects of big cities they do not really try to understand the importance of the small projects in the small cities, and tend to brush them aside as inconsequental and something that migrt just as well be dealt with outside the scope of urban renewal and might just as well be dealt with by the towns themselves, by their own resources or even by private enterprise. They say this is the attitude they run into in the regional office.

Secondly, they say that the machinery of the regional office is geared to the staffing which is possible in a big city. There you have experts and know-how that is geared to deal with the regional office in a way that makes it practical for them to work. In most of these small towns they are lucky if they have one full-time man, who probably never previously had any experience with an urban renewal program and who overnight has got to acquire the know-how to make all the short cuts, to eliminate all the redtape that a full-time and a larger staff in the metropolitan area can do. He has to do it at a time when his whole community has real doubts about whether this is a good thing at all.

In my city of Waterville, for example, they went through the usual labor pains of getting local approval of the project, and it involved an almost fratricidal fight, and finally the community approved. They thought that once they had approved it, and the next week or two they were going to see some ground broken. A year passed and they had not even begun to negotiate for the sale of the property.

I understand that this is not typical, but what happens to this poor little guy who is made the full-time executive director of the project? He has never had to do this before, and suddenly he has got everybody in the business community on his back: "You told us that if we would approve this it would do so much good for the town. Now our properties are being vacated and we are losing our rental income and you will not negotiate with us. You will not talk price. When can we begin to get down to business?"

As I say, when you have a big city with a larger staff, it seems to me at least you have some hope for breaking the logjam and getting some things done within a reasonable amount of time, but when you get this one little guy trying to sell a community on a project and then trying to put his finger on the dike to hold back the protests of the community, you have a little different proposition.

So, I wondered if it would be possible to explore two things: First of all, whether or not it would be possible in your regional offices to set up an organization geared particularly to the problems of the small community; secondly, whether it would be possible, especially in a State like Maine, which is a State of small communities, to provide some field personnel to sort of provide the know-how, and take these people by the hand, at least until you have one urban renewal project completed and build up know-how of their own. These are two specific questions I would like to raise.

Dr. WEAVER. These are really operational questions. I will ask Mr. Slayton to answer them.

Mr. SLAYTON. On the first point, I am surprised at your impression that the regional office tends to slough off the small projects and small cities, because in my dealings with the regional directors I get quite a different reaction. They are very anxious to help. They recognize that the small city does not have the experience and does not have the staff. They recognize that they have greater responsibility in trying to help. In all candor, however, I must admit that we have a problem in the smaller cities, in the sense that our forms are sometimes lengthy. There is a good deal of information asked which, in smaller cities, is not always necessary. We are now working out now what I call the short-form approach to see if we cannot deal with smaller projects and smaller cities on a less-complicated basis. I think that if we are able to break this loose that it will help considerably.

Now, on the business of the assistance to small cities directly by people in the regional office, we have a basic problem here of just numbers of people trying to provide all the assistance we can. We have been somewhat limited in our budget in the past year, as you know, and it is not always possible to have as many people out in the field as we would like, but they work as hard as they can directly with the people in the small cities and local public agencies to assist them in learning the ropes in this urban renewal business.

We have also set up special meetings in our regional offices where we bring in the new inexperienced executive directors of smaller cities and put them through a little course on problems and procedures and techniques and try to give them the basic kind of advice on how to proceed.

Senator MUSKIE. Would it be possible to supplement that by authorizing these small cities to hire consultants to take them through the actual project implementation?

Mr. SLAYTON. Yes.

Senator MUSKIE. They are available in the planning phase.

Mr. SLAYTON. Yes, they can employ a consultant to help them. It is part of a project cost, to help them get the project underway, with advice and consultation on many aspects of project execution.

Senator CLARK. Is it not true Mr. Slayton, that that kind of qualified individual is in short supply?

Mr. SLAYTON. Yes, they are. This has been an expanding program. We have about 100 new cities each year and 215 projects each year. It is difficult for the personnel to be trained and to be made available to provide that kind of assistance.

Senator CLARK. Senator Sparkman and I have been trying for some years to get into the housing bills a provision which would authorize scholarship grants and fellowships for people who were skilled planners and skilled operators in this area. We always get shoved over into Labor and Public Welfare and education bills, and it comes back to Housing, and Housing says, "Go back to Labor." I hope this year we can get it in Housing.

Senator MUSKIE. I heard this question first discussed in 1959 and the first session of this committee that I attended and I would agree it is worthwhile.

Mr. SEMER. Senator Muskie, I think that it ought to be called to the committee's attention that the present acting chairman, Senator Douglas, in the fall of 1957 was confronted with the same situation in Illinois, and there was a problem arising out of the language of the law that ought to be kept in mind. I am not aware of the specific details of the problem in Maine, but the law authorizes the Administrator to provide technical services to communities at their request, and it is constantly a problem in the Federal bureaucracy as to whether or not people want us to do it. So in the fall of 1957 the present chairman of the subcommittee had perhaps 10 or 15 down-State communities that were not being served, and most of them were at this hearing. He arranged for them to request such services, because as I say, being a Government agency, we are subject to criticism from time to time that we appear to be leading a community by the hand and the hand has not been held out first.

Senator MUSKIE. I hope you understand if I say that I do not mind if you are subject to criticism. [Laughter.]

There is this kind of problem and red tape, and I do not want to prolong this but simply want to give you something of the flavor of the problems that are raised up there.

They complain, for example, that they send some papers down to be checked, and the papers are returned with an objection which is raised by some operation in your office. They take care of that and send it. back, and the same papers come back with an objection from another operation in your office. So they never know when the thing is finally going to be buttoned up or can look forward to some final action on the papers. I know they are interested in the possibility of getting some kind of coordination in the regional office which would make it possible. What they would like, of cousre, is for somebody to go down to New York and sit down with a guy in the morning and he says, "Well, you are all right. Go back home. You can start breaking ground." I know this is not possible, but is it possible to gear an operation in your regional office to the particular needs of small towns?

Mr. SLAYTON. On that first point, I am aware that we have had problems of that nature, and we have taken steps sometime back to end the practice of raising objections point by point, rather than giving a critique of the whole project. This should not be occurring any more. I have been banging away at my regional directors on this for some time.

Secondly, the gearing up for the small cities. We are working out the procedure in the New York regional office. This is going to be the testing ground for it, and so you should derive the first benefits you might say.

Thirdly, anytime you would like to send down people from your area to discuss this problem, we would be more than happy.

Dr. WEAVER. Or anytime you wish to call them to our attention by writing.

Senator MUSKIE. I may take advantage of your invitation and bring them down here. They have had enough experience now so they can ask, I think, significant and meaningful questions, and they ought to have that opportunity.

May I ask just one more question on this question of displacement costs. I have already touched upon the loss of income problem, which I am sure is not a new one with the urban renewal program, and here you have delays that are in part due to the necessity of working out a program intelligently. But then you have unnecessary delays, part of them attributable to the local project directors, part of them attributable to the regional office, I am sure, and part of them attributable to Washington. In any case, it is not the fault of the property owner. In the case of Waterville, I think there were income losses stretching over maybe a maximum of 2 years before the property owner could actually sit down and negotiate for the disposition of his property. Now, in some cases the income loss is a very substantial portion of the compensation that he gets for the property ultimately. I am sure that this problem has happened so many times all over the country that you have had to give it some thought, and I would like to have some comment on it.

Mr. SLAYTON. In 1959, the Congress passed an amendment to title I to provide for early land acquisition. A good many States have not passed enabling legislation to make this possible in their State, but this permits a city in the planning period to buy property prior to

approval of the urban renewal plan, to take care of this kind of hardship case. We have been urging cities to use this wherever possible in order to take care of just such a case as you mentioned, but it does require amendment to State law. Off the top of my head, I cannot recall the situation in Maine, and whether it is possible under the Maine law or not.

Senator MUSKIE. So it is possible to do this?

Mr. SLAYTON. Yes, sir.

Senator MUSKIE. But not before the community itself has approved a project?

Mr. SLAYTON. It is possible at the time when a community, through a city council action approves the application to us for a project and declares that area an urban renewal area and then applies to us for planning funds. During that period they may undertake early land acquisition, so long as State law permits it. We advance money to the city in order to purchase that property.

Senator MUSKIE. That would would be a hard one to explain in a city where the question of project approval itself is a critical issue. The proponents then would be in the position of going out and buying land out from under the opponents before the issue was resolved in the community.

Mr. SLAYTON. There would have to be approval by the city council because the city council has declared this an urban renewal area under State law. At the time they submit an application to us they have made that determination.

Senator JAVITS. Would the Senator yield at that point? There are circumstances, that I have run into them myself where the local community has enough resources to go out and pick up desirable parcels in an area that it expects to be marked for urban renewal even in advance of passing the plan as a plan. It then becomes municipally owned property, but I think the administrator is absolutely right in saying that all of this must be permitted by State law and if the local finances will allow, but they really are in no condition to get into it and give them any money until they have made some overt commitment that this is what they are going to do at least that much-and really it is awfully hard to see how they could do it otherwise.

Senator MUSKIE. Senator Javits put his finger on my question. This does have to be done out of the resources of the community.

Mr. SLAYTON. We are permitted to make a loan to needy communities to buy this property.

Senator JAVITS. After they have made the declaration. I think what Senator Muskie is getting at is before anybody knows about it. Mr. SLAYTON. They have to make that declaration, yes.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, I do not want to ask any questions, but Senator Tower has given me a list of questions that he wishes answered for the record. May I make those part of the record at the request of Senator Tower, so they may be answered.

Senator DOUGLAS. Certainly.

(Senator Tower's questions and the response by HHFA follow.) ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY SENATOR TOWER TO HOUSING AND HOME FINANCE AGENCY

(1) Question. How many public housing units have been added to those under fiscal management for the fiscal years 1962 and 1963?