Highest statesmanship at all levels is called for, if we are to succeed in this great American enterprise of building for a better future with good housing, in good neighborhoods, in modern towns and cities, for every American family: Therefore be it

Resolved, In order to meet the rising need for good housing over the next 12 years, the volume of national housing construction must be kept up at the minimum annual rate of 2,500,000 units per year.

In order to bring good housing within the financial means of every American family, local, State, and Federal programs must be carried forward to assure a balanced supply of housing, particularly responsive to the needs of low- and moderate-income families.

Department of Housing and Urban Development

We reaffirm our support for the establishment of a Cabinet level Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It should be the task of this Department to coordinate and provide leadership in all national housing and community development programs, and formulate for submission to the Congress and for implementation by all Federal agencies of a coherent set of Federal housing, renewal, and urban development programs.

The establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development would provide for economy, for more efficient administration, and good government. It would facilitate representation of local community interests and would make possible fuller acceptance of local initiative through representations by local authorities before one coordinated agency of the Federal Government. Housing for low-income families

We reaffirm our support of the public low-rent housing program as vital in meeting the needs of low-income families and recommend the following improvements to make this important program more responsive to such needs:

1. Increase in the annual contributions authorization to enable the Public Housing Administration to increase the number of low-rent dwelling units for which it can contract and to permit advance planning of low-rent projects and to maintain a production rate sufficient to meet local requirements, in harmony with the national housing policy objectives.

2. Authorization of capital grants from urban renewal funds for the writedown of site costs on public housing outside of urban renewal areas.

3. Authorization for the sale of projects or parts thereof to tenant cooperatives or to tenants where they are prepared for homeownership responsibility; and where such sale would serve local housing needs, and new units would replace those sold.

4. Authorization of relocation payments to families displaced in connection with public housing development.

5. Elimination of the present statutory limits on construction costs per rental room, and the adoption of a policy of construction cost limitations which recognizes prevailing local costs and changes in cost levels of well-designed public housing.

6. The amendment of the act to eliminate the 20-percent gap between the lowest private rents and the upper rental limits for admission to public housing. 7. Expansion of the functions of the Public Housing Administration to include all federally assisted programs concerned with the provision of housing for low-income families.

Urban renewal

We voice our continuing support of the urban renewal program and recommend that this program be substantially expanded and strengthened and that it be restudied and recast into a comprehensive 12-year program of renewal and modernization of the Nation's towns and cities.

Middle-income housing

In order to meet the critical housing need of families with modest incomes, we ask that the present programs be extended for at least a 3-year period with necessary modifications and improvements, including permission and encouragement for local housing authorities, nonprofit organizations, and cooperatives to act as sponsors, and that these programs be supplemented by new loan programs designed to encourage the supply of new homes at moderate rentals and to bring these homes within the financial reach of modest-income families.

Cooperative housing

In view of the major and notable contribution made by the true, nonprofit consumer cooperatives toward the supply of good and attractive housing for families of modest incomes, we ask that the programs to facilitate and encourage the provision of such housing be expanded and improved, and that the present limitations be removed; such as the mortgage ceilings on cooperative housing loans and statutory limits on the aggregate amounts of cooperative mortgages which may be purchased by FNMA under its special assistance authorization. Housing for the elderly

We ask for a renewed and expanded contract authorization under the direct lending program for housing for the elderly, and for additional new programs to provide decent housing at reasonable cost for elderly couples and individuals. Such housing should contain special features and equipment required by the elderly, have readily accessible community facilities and services, and, insofar as possible, should be integrated into the community as a whole.

We support Federal grants for a portion of the cost of health facility construction for nursing care of the elderly, under the Hill-Burton program and, in addition, ask that the FHA mortgage insurance, now available only to proprietary nursing homes, be made available also to nonprofit nursing homes.

We urge the enactment of a program to provide for community senior citizens' centers, making available to older people in the community, whether living in specially designed senior citizens' projects or in their own homes, medical and diagnostic facilities, counseling services, and a place for recreational and social activities.

We call for the enactment of a specal program to help in the rehousing of the elderly persons whose involuntary relocation is forced by public acquisition of land for highway construction, slum clearance, or public building. Such a program should provide for rent supplementation to eligible elderly persons displaced as the result of public action, in order to enable them to rehouse themselves in suitable living quarters. In this program, the Federal, State, and local governments would share in enabling the displaced elderly persons to meet the otherwise insurmountable costs of their forced resettlement. The cost of social dislocation caused by technological and engineering progress must be included in the price of that progress.

Rural housing

We support the programs of the Farmers Home Administration in rural areas and the program of 100-percent loans for housing for the elderly in rural areas authorized by the Congress. We ask that full provision be made for funds needed to implement these programs. We emphasize the importance of making the standards of the Davis-Bacon Act fully applicable on all construction under these programs.

Effective measures must be taken to provide decent rural housing, especially for hundreds of thousands of migrant farmworkers and their families now subjected to disgraceful living conditions.

A realistic program is also needed to bring good homes within the reach of American Indians on reservations and of Eskimos.

Supporting programs

Cities and towns are places in which people live and in which they work, in which they engage in both productive and creative activity. They are the places of residence, the workshops, and the cultural centers of the Nation.

Coordinated programs of urban planning and urban development are essential for sound growth of our metropolitan areas. Sound metropolitan area planning will be enhanced by expanded Federal financial assistance to our cities for community facilities, acquisition of land reserves, and for up-to-date mass transit systems.

A satisfactory housing and urban development program must make proper provision for aid in the provision of community facilities, of open space and community sites, and of assurance of soundly planned mass transit facilities, to be operated under proper labor standards.

Equal housing opportunity

The goal of equal housing opportunity for all Americans, long a key feature of labor's housing program, is still far from won.

Equal opportunity in housing should be assured in all programs in which housing is provided with Federal aid or is protected by Federal insurance or mortgages or guarantee or regulation of mortgage loans.

We ask that the President's Executive order on equal opportunity in housing be strengthened and its coverage extended. We pledge our fullest cooperation with the work of the President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in Housing. We again call for the enactment and forceful administration of State and local laws to outlaw all discrimination in housing on account of race, creed, color, or national origin.

Labor standards

To protect hard-won standards of building trades workers, not less than the prevailing wage should be required to be paid to all employees engaged in construction of housing in any program involving Federal financial assistance. Better housing throughout the world

To coordinate and intensify international efforts to improve the housing conditions of people throughout the world, we support the proposal for establishment of a new specialized agency on housing in the U.N.

We call on the U.S. representative in the United Nations to provide American initiative and leadership in the drive for better housing for people everywhere. National Housing Conference

For more than a quarter of a century the National Housing Conference has played a key role in every effort to obtain good housing for American families and therefore merits the continued support of the AFL-CIO and its affiliates.

Labor's goal of good homes in modern well-planned communities for all Americans can only be achieved with the vigorous support and cooperation of all of organized labor. Our housing efforts will be particularly enhanced by the establishment by affiliated unions and central bodies of effective housing committees to develop and support forward-looking housing programs and to back the housing committee of the AFL-CIO in its efforts to achieve the housing objectives of the trade union movement.

Senator SPARKMAN. Oscar H. Brinkman, cochairman of the Legislative Committee of the National Apartment Owners Association, Inc. Mr. Brinkman, come around, please, sir.

Your paper will be printed in full in the record. You proceed as you see fit.

STATEMENT OF OSCAR H. BRINKMAN, COCHAIRMAN, LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, NATIONAL APARTMENT OWNERS ASSOCIATION,

INC.

Mr. BRINKMAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Oscar H. Brinkman, and I appear before you as cochairman of the Legislative Committee of the National Apartment Owners Association, Inc., a nonprofit organization of owners of rental housing in all parts of the United States.

Mr. Henry DuLaurence, of Cleveland, Ohio, who is chairman of the association's legislative committee, is unable to be in Washington today, and I am therefore presenting the views of our association on S. 2468.

We appreciate the opportunity your committee has given us to express our opinion on this pending housing bill. Recognizing the fact that many other witnesses desire to be heard, I shall be as brief as possible consistent with the importance of the proposed legislation.

We would like to emphasize, at the outset, that we believe it is highly desirable to make homeownership available to every American family willing to undertake this responsibility. We believe the family and the Nation benefit through homeownership. There are many millions of families, however, for whom homeownership is not feasible or practicable, and it is highly desirable to have available for them an ample supply of rental housing of good quality.

We are cognizant, however, of the fact that in every city and practically every town, as well as in rural areas, there are people, a minority of our population, who, for one reason or another (and there are many reasons) live in housing that might be termed "slum dwellings." They constitute a problem that requires solution in the public interest. We believe, however, that the bill before your committee offers no sound or basic solution for the problems of slum dwellers. On the contrary, we believe that the bill, if enacted, would in the end increase and accentuate the housing problems of the Nation.

Since the Second World War we have been living under laws designed for the encouragement of home construction and ownership and the abolishment of slums. We have had increasingly liberal provisions for higher financing and lower downpayments, and for housing grants or subsidies.

But we should face the fact that some time (if we have not already done so) we will reach a point of saturation where the seeming benefits of so-called Federal aid will work a great disfavor to their recipients and a hardship on the entire Nation.

If, for instance, we overbuild private housing, whether owner-occupied or rental property, we inevitably create a slump or deterioration in market values which can be as serious in its economic effects as the financial collapse in real estate that was a factor in the 10-year depression starting in 1929.

The importance of maintaining the values of our present stock of housing is of utmost consequence. The equity in their homes is the largest asset of most of the 33 million families who occupy them. Any situation which may adversely affect the values of their homes will, in turn, adversely affect the financial stability of the entire Nation.

The bill before you is of equal interest to some 7 million citizens who are owners of the 20 million rental units in the country, including a large share of the vacant units. To a large extent this property represents the savings of the great American middle class. These people are equally entitled to protection against situations causing serious vacancies, cheapened housing values, depressed rents, followed by a deflation in the values of homes generally and rental property in particular.

We believe that such a chain reaction is already starting and would be accelerated and intensified by enactment of the pending bill.

Have we reached a saturation point in housing? Are we overproducing? Every business index seems to point to the fact that we are. Consider these facts which support the conclusion:

1. The existence of the highest vacancy ratio in rental housing since the great depression of 1930-39, approximately 72 percent on an average, and much higher in some areas of the Nation.

2. The largest percentage of FHA foreclosures since the inception of the program, with a continually increasing pattern month to month and year to year.

3. The inability of the FHA to dispose of houses and apartment properties that have been foreclosed or taken over, so that there are already in the neighborhood of 100,000 housing units in the hands of the Government.

4. A growing number of distress cases involving mortgages in default which the lenders or FHA are reluctant to take over because

the mortgages balances exceed the market values. This condition, existing now in time of cold war prosperity, would be tremendously multiplied if and when there is a business recession. Foreclosures would skyrocket as in the 1930's.

5. The highest foreclosure rate now since the great depression of the 1930's.

6. A decreasing birth rate at a time of increased housing construction, and the formation of more housing units than family units.

All these factors or even a majority of them indicate we have reached an overproduction of housing units, with its attendant economic dangers. Yet the bill under consideration is designed to further stimulate housing construction by subsidies and other devices at costs to the Government of billions of dollars. Those dollars can only come ultimately through taxes extracted from thrifty and hard-working citizens striving to keep up the payments on their own homes, and from tenants whose rents in part represent the payment of taxes on existing properties.

This is certainly not the time to relax the financing requirements of what is already the most lenient or liberal mortgage financing in our history. Such relaxation is neither economically sound nor sociologically desirable. It will not cure the undoubted evils of our cities' slums.

We believe that every reasonable and practical effort should be made to rehabilitate the slum areas of the Nation's towns and cities. And the process should extend to the people who inhabit those areas and who, in many instances, are responsible for much of the so-called blight through unfortunate personal habits and characteristics.

But we insist that the responsibility rests on local communities and State governments to apply the remedies that are needed. There is no valid reason for the intrusion of the Federal Government in the field of rehabilitation of our towns and cities and rural areas. The fact is that, through the tempting bait of Federal grants for urban renewal and public housing, the States and towns and cities have been led to avoid their primary duty and responsibility. But the grants and low-interest loans ultimately come out of the pockets of the local citizenry and the treasuries of their industries, plus the added burden of paying an army of high-salaried Federal housing bureaucrats.

What can the Federal housing bureaucracy do better than informed and intelligent local citizens to rehabilitate and improve housing within the borders of our towns and cities? The answer is: Nothing.

Great areas of our cities and towns have been torn down and bulldozed in recent years under the auspices of the Federal bureaucracy, in the name of better housing. The people who owned or occupied the so-called substandard housing have been evicted, and in many cases left to shift for themselves in obtaining other places to dwell. Substantial buildings have been knocked down in the name of urban renewal. The owners of small businesses have been evicted and deprived of a means of livelihood, all in the name of urban renewal.

Land for which the Federal Government paid has been sold at small fractions of its actual value to wily real estate speculators. Scores of thousands of Negroes, who were supposed to be benefited by urban renewal, have lost their homes to the Federal bulldozer crews and have been forced into the squalor of public housing or left to their own