The CHAIRMAN. I wonder if they are not too optimistic. This bill provides for only a hundred thousand such units a year for 5 years, and there seem to be 400,000 in New York City alone. Mr. MASLEN. Well, in the field of housing, we have to learn to take a long-range view, Mr. Chairman The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean by that that we are merely laying a foundation here, and that we must expect to expand the program? Mr. MASLEN. In other words, we are thinking in terms of the next 10 years. This is a 10-year program, as I understand it. The CHAIRMAN. With respect to public housing, it is 5 years. Mr. MASLEN. That is right, the public housing provision will have to be reviewed in 5 years, and I think that is a sound feature of the bill. It may be that in 5 years we will have some real technical developments-I hope we will-so that we can modify that program. But I am talking in terms of the philosophy behind this bill which is conceived as a long-range program. In terms of that, we have a 5-year immediate goal, and it would provide a method of meeting the need, and I think that in the field of housing, we have to be guided by a method rather than ask for a complete solution. The CHAIRMAN. How many units which they do not have under construction and which they contemplate constructing in Baltimore? Mr. MASLEN. I cannot answer that question. I think the local housing authority could give you complete information on that. The CHAIRMAN. Do you think it is the primary responsibility of the Federal Government to undertake slum clearence? Mr. MASLEN. I think it is a shared responsibility of the Federal Government and the State and of the locality, and if Representative Gamble had been here, of whom I was a former constitutent, I would have been glad to have reminded him of the part which I took in persuading the Republican and Democratic and American Labor Parties in New York State to promote a State program. I think that New York City is a very good example of the partnership that should be developed, and I believe that Mayor O'Dwyer has already testified on the usefulness of this program for that city. Mr. SMITH. Do you mind giving us your background before you leave? Mr. MASLEN. Yes; I will be glad to. My full name is Sydney Maslen. At the present time my basic job is executive of the Washington Housing Association, which is a local citizens organization maintained by the community chest. I am chairman of the housing committee of the American Association of Social Workers, but before coming here 18 months ago, I was for 12 years the housing secretary of the Community Service Society of New York, which is a family welfare association which has a long record of activity in the housing field and which stimulated the passage of the New York tenement house law, and that explains my basic interest in this law-enforcement program. Mr. SMITH. What did you do before that? Mr. MASLEN. Before I entered the field of social work, I worked in business as a cost accountant. Then I took training, and I have been a social worker for 20 years. As part of my training, I have visited the cooperatives in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia; I have visited public and private housing developments in Great Britain and Holland, and many places in this country. Mr. SMITH. You are familiar with housing in Great Britain? Mr. SMITH. And in Austria? Mr. MASLEN. No; I have only read about the housing in Austria. Mr. SMITH. And in Russia? Mr. MASLEN. I have read about that. Mr. SMITH. I am speaking about public housing now. Mr. MASLEN. Yes. Mr. SMITH. You are not familiar with either Austria or Russia! Mr. MASLEN. Only in the sense probably of an interested person who follows these developments. Mr. SMITH. Do you think that the public housing program in Austria was a successful program? Mr. MASLEN. I presume it was until Hitler shelled the Karl Marx Apartments in Vienna. I think that probably put an end to that experiment. But I do not have the details of that sufficiently. It would depend on how you would define success. I understand that it did succeed in providing sanitary accommodation for families who otherwise could not afford it. Mr. SMITH. It was one of the factors which led to the bankrupting of the state, was it not? Mr. MASLEN. Well, I am told that it enabled rents to be kept down and enabled Austrian industry to get labor at a price which made it possible for it to compete with other markets in Europe. Mr. SMITH. You do not know whether it had anything to do with helping to bankrupt the nation? Mr. MASLEN. I cannot answer that. I do not know the extent of the program. Mr. SMITH. Let us take England. Do you think that their program is a successful program? Mr. MASLEN. I think it is a decided social aid toward the maintenance of stability in that country; very decidedly. Mr. SMITH. Do you think that program has had anything to do with causing Great Britain to become a socialistic state? Mr. MASLEN. No; I do not think so. The Chamberlain administration and the conservative administrations in Britain have all accepted the provision of housing for those for whom private enterprise cannot provide as a proper function of government. As a matter of fact, the last time I was in England was in 1938, and in visiting in the south of England, one of the points made was that they had been able to shut down some of their penal institutions, which had taken prisoners from the congested areas, and they put it down to that housing program, which had made for a better family life. Mr. SMITH. Are they building any private houses in Great Britain now? Mr. MASLEN. Well, of course, we have a situation all over the world where the materials are simply not available to go ahead with housing construction, but between the wars there was about twice as much private housing developed as there was public housing. Mr. SMITH. You mean in Great Britain? Mr. MASLEN. Yes. Mr. SMITH. I am speaking of the period since the Socialist Government has taken over. Mr. MASLEN. I am not able to answer that question. My guess would be that the amount of private and public construction in Great Britain, since the war, has been very small, because, as you probably know, a third of the houses in Great Britain were bombed, and the main emphasis of their housing program has been on tearing down those which could not be salvaged and to put back into habitable shape those which could be. Mr. SMITH. As a matter of fact, the Socialist Government is not constructing much of anything in Great Britain today, is it? Mr. MASLEN. I think the Socialists-I am not here to defend the Socialist Government, but I know that during the days when London was being bombed and the other cities were being bombed, they were giving most of their attention to planning, and I think in 1940, when the city was being destroyed, they were evolving the plan for the reconstruction of London on a somewhat smaller scale than at present and were thinking in terms of new communities, and there evolved their plan for construction of new, complete towns, which would enable them to put a ceiling on the size of these big sprawling cities, stop them from sprawling further, and to provide new communities, constructed with both public and private funds and industry. Mr. SMITH. I understand private housing in England has been reduced to the point where there is little or no private housing construction under the Socialist Government. Mr. MASLEN. Well, Mr. Smith, I would think that you have been misinformed. I happen to be a shareholder of a private housing company in London, the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, and our company is adding to the number of houses. The company has repaired houses that have been damaged, and has plans for expansion. As in this country, this society is looking toward the British Government for some aid to enable it to do the job. Mr. SMITH. In other words, it is resorting to Government financing? Mr. MASLEN. Just as our Federal Housing Administration program here; yes. Mr. SMITH. That is the point I make. They have gone to public housing. Mr. MASLEN. I do not believe you would call our Federal Housing Administration program in this country public housing. I think we think of that as private enterprise. The CHAIRMAN. Are there further questions of Mr. Maslen? The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Banta. Mr. BANTA. In your statement you say that in the 10 years that we have had public housing we have had the construction of 200,000 public housing units. Mr. MASLEN. I think that should be authorizations. I think we have had some 168,000 housing units. Mr. BANTA. Yes; it is something less than that. Most of these units have been constructed in the cities, have they not, where you have your largest public-assistance recipients; is that not true? Mr. MASLEN. Yes. Mr. BANTA. How many of these houses were provided for public assistance cases? Mr. MASLEN. I cannot answer the question specifically, but I know that that question came up in New York, and the feeling was that it would not be advisable to have more than around 20 to 25 percent of the families in these public developments who were on relief. Mr. BANTA. Why not? Our public-assistance families are unquestionably our poorest families, are they not? Mr. MASLEN. Well, I did not agree with their position, Mr. Banta. I think there should be no restriction other than income, as to eligibility. But they did have a point. They felt that-and there is some validity to it-that unfortunately a recipient of public assistance, if he lives next door to another recipient of public assistance, or with other families, will naturally talk about his affairs and there develops a certain atmosphere, a poorhouse atmosphere. It may develop. And that is a danger they wanted to avoid. That is the reason for requiring that only a certain percentage of the development be occupied by those families. Mr. BANTA. I wonder if it would be less of a poorhouse attitude than to leave them in what we call slums. Mr. MASLEN. I am certain they are not thinking so much of the physical situation as the psychological situation, such as having a lot of people of the same character. Just the same as in the case of housing for paraplegics. It would seem that in our American society it is much healthier to have a heterogeneous scattering of all of our different income groups, and so forth. That is why in public housing the tendency is to move towards trying to get an integration of private and public dwellings, and different rent levels, in the same community. Mr. BANTA. And requiring a different rent from a person who has a different economic status? Mr. MASLEN. That is right; that is quite an accepted principle. Mr. BANTA. Which means, of course, that if he is living in public housing he is obtaining public assistance. Why would we not have even a larger element of people developing poorhouse attitudes if we provide public houses for them? Mr. MASLEN. Your question is a little bit involved. I would like to answer it a part at a time. It seems to me that the philosophy of graded rents, whereby the rent is adjusted according to the income and and the size of the family, is a way of assuring that the subsidy which is provided from the public treasury is going to the families who need it most. If you do not do that, it means that the small family, for instance, will perhaps be enjoying a rental out of proportion, whereas the larger family with perhaps a smaller income would have to be paying a higher rental. Mr. BANTA. Well, that is true according to the philosophy of those who advocate public housing. But here is the philosophy that you should not put all the poorest people that you have in these good public housing units, because you might develop a poorhouse attitude, or such a mental attitude. But those whom we do put there, we are subsidizing. Why would not the same argument hold true, that putting lowincome people in public housing units would develop in their minds the poorhouse attitude, if they are living on public property and subsidized? Mr. MASLEN. Well, I think the argument is somewhat overdone, because in an era of 60,000,000 jobs, living in this period of postwar prosperity, the proportion of families on relief is so small, and those who would qualify for the different size apartments Mr. BANTA. You say the portion that is on relief is so small? Mr. BANTA. Have the public assistance roles declined substantially during the last 2 or 3 years? Mr. MASLEN. No; I think they have increased during the last 2 or 3 years, because of the boys coming back from overseas, and the wives' allowances being reduced. Mr. BANTA. Then, the proportion is not very small. Mr. MASLEN. NO. I am thinking in terms of depression years when the equivalent of the whole population of Buffalo was on relief in New York City. In that situation it is conceivable that you would have a dense population of families on relief in a public housing development. This program is a slum-clearance program, basically, as I understand it, and what I am saying is that the percentage of people living in the slum areas who are today on relief, as compared with those that were in the depression years, is so small that I do not think it is a practical problem. Mr. BANTA. I think you should read the bill, because there is nothing in this bill that provides for slum clearance at the present time. There would be no demolition provided until 1950. No demolition. Mr. MASLEN. Well, I might call your attention to page 89, line 4, which I found about 3 o'clock this morning in preparing to come down here, and it very specifically requires elimination of slum dwellings, equal in number to the dwellings that the public housing agency would erect. Mr. BANTA. Well, at some time. Not at the same time when the new buildings are erected, necessarily. At some time it would require that. Mr. MASLEN. As a practical proposition Mr. BANTA. The question is when and how strong that requirement is. But that is beside the question that I have in mind. You have some tenants who are living in these units, some public assistance tenants, and you propose to put more in there, some percentage of them. Would it not be better and even less costly, if persons who are unable to pay rent were provided with public assistance grants to pay the rent, just as you provide here? If 10 percent of these people in the public housing units are receviing assistance after a social study has been made by a public welfare agency, and they receive a grant which is sufficient in amount to enable them to pay the rent which the housing authority must charge in these developments, then, they are subsidized by still another agency of the Government, further, along with all the others, by another administrative cost, by another bureau. Would it not be better if we provided for people who are unable to pay the rent an outright grant? And not have the expense and burden of another agency to be doing a piecemeal job, with still another doing a piecemeal job, and, of course, I do not know how many others? Mr. MASLEN. Well, Mr. Banta, I can only refer you to Senator Taft's comments on that. I think you are referring to the rent certificate plan. He felt that that would be such an expensive program to administer, and would require such a tremendous addition to the welfare administration |