low today. But from 1901 to the present time, it has remained impossible to build structures for occupancy by the new arrivals for the lowest economic group without extensive financial help from the Government.

We have eliminated some 50,000 old law tenement houses in New York City since 1901. But this is a purely statistical triumph, except in the cases where it means either that we have found decent new quarters for the low-income family that formerly lived in that old law tenement, or else that the formerly lowincome family has moved up in the economic scale. While some or even many families have moved up, New York, like all the other cities of the United States, faces no shortage of low-income families: their problems may even be getting worse. I can say categorically, that the only low-income families who have benefited significantly from the demolition of old law tenements in New York City are those families who have been able to move into low-rent public housing. We have tried other methods of providing decent homes. We have tried vigorous code enforcement, and are trying it now, with expanded staffs of inspectors, and increasingly rigorous laws for them to enforce. Certainly, housing inspection can be helpful in improving general standards, but what can inspection do for the inadequacies that were built right into the building? What can fines or imprisonment do, when the landlord cannot finance improvements or when he prefers jail to unremunerative investment?

We have tried municipal loans to landlords who wish to upgrade their properties. But the administration of this law becomes bogged down in a series of constitutional problems involving government financing of private persons. Even when such loans are made possible, we find that only a small number of landlords can, through experience and motivation, qualify for them.

We have tried tax abatement of existing property, and tax exemption of improvements, as an incentive to landlords to improve their properties. We find that while this is helpful in making possible certain specific improvements-such as installing heat in an unheated building-it falls far short of the economic force needed to turn a basically unsound building into one that meets standards. Tax exemption of such major improvements simply does not lower their cost to meet tenants' means.

We have tried FHA modernization loans, only to find that the standards applied by the FHA to protect its insurance exposure, are impossible to meet in the case of old law tenement houses; and tend to make rents too high in the case of the older buildings erected since 1901.

We have tried a receivership procedure. This permits the city to take over a deteriorated building, repair its most serious defects, operate the buildings, and recoup its investment from the rents. Already we have been told by the commissioner in charge of this program that the rents that people can pay are not sufficient even to keep conditions in the structure continually sound-let alone contributing to a recoupment of the original investment. A good way to go broke, was how this commissioner described the receivership bill.

Finally, we have tried rehabilitation, under private adequately financed auspices. I have recently been serving as the president of a foundation established with a $250,000 grant. This was made by a single wealthy individual for the sole purpose of discovering whether it is economically feasible to purchase occupied old law tenement houses, and without dispossessing the present tenants, to bring the building up to modern standards within the limitations of its fundamental design. We have completed work on our first building. We purchased this building for $700 per dwelling unit-it has 24 units. We spent some $3,500 per unit to fix them up-installing bathrooms, modern kitchens, new plumbing, new gas lines, new electric wiring, cleaning up, patching, and painting. Because we were able to find this particular building so cheaply, our tenants were able to afford the increase in rent that brought it on the average from $20 per month to $60 per month. With the benefit of the new rents, we will be able to recoup our capital in 15 years, provided that we are not required to make major new expenditures in the building. But we have been unable to find another building which we can acquire at the same cost per unit.

We used nonunion labor. If one assumes a 15 year life for an old law tenement, we must compare the cost per unit-spread over 15 years, with the cost of a public housing unit in new construction spread over 45, 50, or even 60 years. And what happens after 15 years? Do we then face building a new public housing project anyway? Where is the economy in reconstructing the old law tenement house?

Because I believe that there is no economy in rehabilitating structures built before 1901, and because I do not think that families should be living in them,

I can see no alternative to the replacement of these buildings in our city by lowrent public housing. Assuming that there are some 400,000 of these apartments, and that State-aided public housing will take care of 100,000 of them, a 20-year program for the rehousing of our worst-housed low-income population would require 15,000 new federally subsidized low-rent units per year. I think we are capable of putting these units into the pipeline at that rate in New York City. Of course it will be costly. About cost, I will make only two final remarks. It must not be forgotten that a large part of the cost of public housing comes from our attitude toward private property and private ownership and private hardship. We could cut down the cost of public housing mightily, if we simply confiscated old buildings, without compensation. Does anyone want to do that? We could cut down the cost of public housing by not relocating anyone from the old buildings, simply throwing the old residents out on the street, as was done years ago. Does anyone want to do that? We could permit contractors to use substandard labor practices, inferior materials, lower room standards. Does anyone want to do that? The major criticism of public housing now is that its standards are still not high enough.

Finally, an element of cost in our present slums generally escapes attention. This element is the corroding effect that present-day building deterioration has had on the relationship between landlord and tenant, between, to put it bluntly, private enterprise on the one hand and an increasingly militant section of our urban population on the other. The real estate men who serve on my board of directors are not fools; their very real interest in human welfare has not blinded them to the realities of economic life. They believe firmly in the profit motive in economic life as a mainspring for the satisfaction of human needs. But they do not regard public ownership of low-rent housing as a threat to the private real estate business. On the contrary, they regard it as the protection of the private real estate business against the consequences of its inevitable failure to handle a burden that it never could handle: the burden of providing decent accommodations for those who cannot afford to pay for them. The rent strikes in New York-and, incidentally, how do you evict 20,000 families for not paying their rent-suggest a type of action which has only the most serious consequences for all real estate. Already, believe it or not, the rent strikes of tenement dwellers to protest against rats and no heat is echoed in threatened rent strikes in many luxury buildings to protest the color of bathroom tiles or the decorations in the lobby. The bitterness aroused by bad housing can spread; there is bitterness-hard, unrelenting bitterness-in our deteriorated buildings today, and I can tell you that some strange fishermen are angling in it. We do no service to the real estate industry when we allow these conditions to continue; we are not being truly economical when we fail to provide an adequate program for amending them. Fifteen thousand units of new public housing a year-a 20-year program to provide a low-rent substitute for the old law tenement-this is the measure of the program we need in New York alone to supplement the other local and State programs which I already discussed. On a national scale, this would seem to mean 100,000 new units per year. I hope you will provide for them. Thank you very much.

Senator WILLIAMS. I have a statement, Mr. Chairman.
Senator SPARKMAN. Proceed as you wish.

STATEMENT OF HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Senator WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words about several aspects of the housing bill, especially as they relate to middle-income housing and relocation of displaced

persons.

I think the bill as a whole is a creative response to the needs of our cities and suburbs. I was especially pleased to see the provisions extending the open-space program which I was proud to sponsor in 1961, the improved relocation provisions for families and small businesses, the new departures in low-income housing, and the new program for training urgently needed local government personnel.

I think it should also be pointed out that, for the first time since the establishment of FHA, a serious effort is being made to find ways of improving the quality of suburban living.

It has always seemed to me that, in our quite proper concern for the problem of the cities and deteriorating communities, we have tended to neglect the suburbs. But clearly they have their problems, too.

There is no question that most of our suburban developments represent a marked advance over the quality of housing available in the cities and surrounding gray areas. But it is equally true that many of our suburban communities are far less than they might be.

With the sprawling, haphazard, leapfrog development of the suburbs, a great many of the amenities and community values have been lost in the shuffle, so that in many instances suburban families end up with neither the advantages of city or country living.

They may get a nice house, but the nearest store may be miles away, schools may be equally distant and poorly located, and the community may lack any focal point or identity at all.

It seems to me that in this day and age there is no reason why suburbanites should continue to be plagued by the lack of variety in their choice of housing. The home is probably the largest single investment many families will ever make, yet their choice is all too often limited to a dreary, monotonous look-alike home in an illplanned subdivision, with no trees on the street, no park for the kids to play in, no corner store, no community facilities for teenagers, and a lot of grass to mow.

There is no reason why this need be so, why the new suburban communities must endure the loss of nature's amenities, the lack of social and cultural facilities, the absence of what used to be known as Main Street in the small towns of old.

Our local governments and private developers can do better with a little help, and I think the administration should be commended for tackling the difficult and complex task of making it possible for communities and builders to develop better patterns of suburban communities and truly improve the quality of suburban living.

I hope the committee will give its most earnest and careful study to the administration's proposals in this area.

While the administration's housing bill contains a number of exciting new advances, I think there are two areas where more action is needed: middle-income housing and the relocation problems of the elderly.

It seems to me that the Nation has done very well in meeting its upper-income housing needs, and the bill does provide for a continued attack on the housing needs of our very low-income families.

But the vast untapped market need lies in the middle-income field for families in the $4,000 to $8,000 income range, and, despite encouraging progress in this field through this bill and the 1961 Housing Act, we still have a long way to go. I think we must move faster in this field if the homebuilding industry, which is so important to the entire national economy, is to continue its rate of past activity.

I plan to submit a new proposal to the committee within the next few days, and I earnestly hope it will be considered.

Another area of great concern to me is the relocation problem. I refer to the tens of thousands of people who are forced from their

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homes each year to make way for highways, housing, urban renewal, and other Federally aided programs.

One of the hardest-hit victims of relocation is the elderly person or family forced to move from a low-priced apartment to a high-priced one. This usually occurs when public housing accommodations are unavailable, as they usually are.

The administration bill would authorize local agencies to provide a supplementation payment that would be the difference between 20 percent of the displacee's income and the average rental for standard dwellings in the project area. Payments would be made for only 24 months, and the displacee's income would have to be below the eligibility limits for moderate-income housing.

This is a big step forward. It would help people who, through no fault of their own, have been forced into quarters more expensive than they can afford.

But I think the administration provisions could be a real disservice to elderly displacees.

In the near future I would like to propose an amendment on this point. Rather than having an arbitrary time limit of 24 months, I think the supplementation payments to elderly displacees should continue until some other acceptable arrangement could be made. The rent supplementation arrangement with the elderly person or couple should be terminated only after they have been placed in an acceptable dwelling which they can afford without supplementation.

I make this suggestion because it is very unlikely that the income levels of elderly persons will rise, and if a rent supplement is justified in the first place, the same need is likely to exist at the end of two years. If payments are terminated after 2 years, the chances are that these elderly families will be forced right back into substandard housing. Thus we would be forcing a second dislocation on top of the first.

Another area of concern is the need for uniform relocation standards for Federal programs.

It is painfully obvious that displaced families receive different treatment from administrators of different Federal programs. It is high time that we provide equal protection and benefits.

The Federal program generally recognized as providing the most adequate advisory service and moving expense payments is urban renewal. I am pleased that the administration proposal would extend the urban renewal provisions to displacees from public housing programs.

I think, however, that Congress should also give serious thought to providing uniform treatment of displacees by all Federal and federally assisted programs.

Also, all relocation programs should give special attention to the problems of displaced elderly persons.

The hearings conducted by the Committee on Aging showed clearly that elderly persons in crowded urban areas have been caught in the maelstrom of massive change taking place in our cities today. Every time a closely knit neighborhood is destroyed elderly people are among

those who lost the most.

Another part of the problem is the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods for renewal, which could be avoided in many cases if a more

adequate rehabilitation program were offered to homeowners and apartment house owners.

This year's administration housing bill would improve the existing rehabilitation program by making loans available at below market interest rates to elderly homeowners to make necessary improvements in their housing.

Repayment of the principal amount of the loans could be deferred with the elderly homeowner paying interest only during his lifetime. This provision in the administration's housing bill is substantially the same as that made by Senator Clark's Housing for the Elderly bill introduced last March. As a cosponsor of the Clark bill I am very pleased to see the administration adopt this particular aspect of our program.

Federal assistance programs up to now have been heavily oriented to clearance and to building of new housing. Conservation of existing housing, especially in dealing with the housing problems of the elderly, has been a serious gap. I would like to see this section of the housing bill adopted and after we have had an opportunity to see how it is operating, I think we may need to go still further in fostering rehabilitation and conservation of housing in urban neighbor

hoods.

The committee might be interested to know that late in 1962, the Aging Subcommittee conducted hearings in six cities on relocation problems and the elderly. I was privileged to serve as chairman of this subcommitee.

These hearings stirred widespread concern about the special problems of the elderly. The witnesses emphasized how older citizens are especially hard hit by relocation. The subcommittee heard from groups forced to move away from churches and familiar surroundings, businessmen whose livelihoods have been wiped out, and individuals who were desperate because a proposed move would cost them extra precious dollars in each month's rent. Many elderly persons living on inadequate pensions or investment incomes live in low-rent. urban neighborhoods, which are most often the areas taken for renewal or other projects.

The subcommittee toured the so-called skid row area of San Francisco. Many respectable elderly widowers had settled there because they could find no other quarters at rents they could afford to pay. Even the skid row area, however, was to be demolished for a renewal project.

The subcommittee heard much testimony that indicated the need for central relocation agencies to give assistance for all displacees in a given area. In one city, the subcommittee found that urban renewal officials were doing a good job for displacees, but that the highway department was establishing its own relocation office for displacees from a road construction project in the same city. This seemed like needless duplication to me.

In general, I came away feeling that we have brushed this whole problem of housing displacement under the rug for too long. And if we do not start giving real attention to this serious social problem, we may find our efforts to make progress in urban development grinding to a halt.