Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

My own State cannot have public housing. Still, I cannot sit here as a Representative and want to deny to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia-these places where human beings have to live in grossly substandard housing-those facilities. Certainly there is no political pressure from my district coming into this. I do not know of any man worthy of taking the oath of Congress that is going to succumb to political pressure. I am not going along with that argument that we cannot be trusted.

Mr. SMITH. Will the gentleman yield?

Let us look at the original amendments to the Constitution. They were specifically designed on the principle that Congress could not be trusted. Original amendments to the Constitution specifically set that forth-limitation of governmental powers.

Mr. MONRONEY. Designed at Congress or the whole Federal Government?

Mr. SMITH. Congress is one of the three branches.

The CHAIRMAN. It was set up as a check against the mob psychology. Mr. NICHOLSON. While they are asking that question, will you tell me what "Federal money" is? I have heard a lot about it. I have been trying to find out what Federal money is. Can you tell me?

Mr. CARR. I think it is money collected from the people. It is our

money.

Mr. NICHOLSON. So, the only way you can do anything in Baltimore, or anywhere else, is to let the people in Baltimore stew in their own juice.

Mr. CARR. I feel this way about it, Mr. Nicholson: I repeat I have visited many cities. Many of them have no slums, in spite of the fact that most of our people connected with the publicity on the subject feel that every city has slum areas.

If I lived in a city without slums I do not think I would want to pay for the slums of Baltimore or New York unless they could not finance it another way.

I do not believe you were in the room when the per capita indebtedness of $1,794 was given, but the State and local indebtednesses are $21 for the State and $96 for the local community. It is just a question of where you are going to get the money. They can borrow that money even cheaper than the Federal Government can. I may be

wrong.

Mr. MONRONEY. We have already embarked on the insuring of building with Government FHA loans. Those are the people that can afford to buy and pay for their houses that we are giving certain aids to. Should we follow your line of reasoning and say, "Let the cities and municipalities insure these mortgages"? I cannot see the logic in your reasoning.

Mr. CARR. One is certainly an outright expenditure as against a Federal contingent liability on which there have been no losses to date. Mr. MONRONEY. If you look at the present cost of these houses you can hardly be very secure as to some of these mortgages. I think title II, when costs were low, was pretty safe ground. On title VI-I have supported it and continue to do so-I still think we are building up a contingent liability which is equal to the liability we are talking about on this other side. If one is a job for the municipality, and the people in the lowest income status cannot possibly

be home owners, I cannot see why the job of insuring mortgages is not a like proposition.

Mr. CARR. Mr. Monroney, you say that they cannot possibly be home owners. I do not believe that that is quite true. I feel that when we get ample production of housing, and normal vacancies back again, there will be plenty of people in the low-income brackets that will buy their homes. I have sold them myself in Washington. There is a lot of housing on the market when you get an ample supply, and people move up in better housing that is going to be available, and if we will go ahead and enforce our local health and safety codes that is what takes place.

I would like to quote one thing. You ask if I can trust Congress. Let me read from the London Daily Telegraph of July 29, 1947:

Mr. Bevin complains that the ratio of four municipally built houses to one built by private enterprise was too generous. He gave a warning that if the shortage of materials worsened, houses built for sale would be almost entirely excluded.

The Englishman did it; maybe we would not do it.

Mr. MONRONEY. Let us be reasonable and look at the supply of building materials to rebuild bombed-out structures by the hundreds of thousands. Do not say that the situation England faced in 1947 was similar to the situation in this country. Let us be reasonable about this thing.

Mr. CARR. As far as getting the structures built is concerned, I think private enterprise-they go right on here to say that many people have their belief that if government stayed out of it they would have gotten the country housed earlier.

This is from Mr. Bevin. He said he hoped for an "early adoption of piece rates," speaking of labor. "It appears to be fundamental to all of us," he said, "that we do not do our best work under sustained ideological inspiration. We have got to have some more material reward."

That is, to me, a rather strong defense of our private enterprise system. I may be overalarmed. Maybe the builders are unduly alarmed as to what could happen under this kind of a program. It has happened in other countries, and, in fact, every country that has tried public housing, if they do the job, has to go much further than this bill permits. Where will it stop?

Mr. MONRONEY. I have heard a good deal about the British system, and limitation of building, but I think that the war is more the cause of trying to rebuild bombed out places than your public housing. Men have one suit of clothes, and women one dress a year. It is a situation where you have not the exchange and supplies necessary to do the job necessary to rebuild England at the moment.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You will have to admit that private enterprise, or private industry, is not interested in the clearing of slums. Mr. CARR. I beg your pardon. Private enterprise is interested in slums. I have cleared some myself right here in Alexandria.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You said the Baltimore experiment is an experiment in slum clearance. Is it not more of an experiment in housing law enforcement?

Mr. CARR. I am glad that you asked me that. I did not mean that it was an experiment in slum clearance. I do not think that slum clearance and housing should be considered one and the same problem.

Mr. BUCHANAN. How can you separate them?

Mr. CARR. Because there are many slum areas that would certainly not be rebuilt in low-cost housing. I can cite two or three here in Washington with which you are probably familiar.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Not necessarily low-cost housing-housing of any description.

Mr. CARR. It could be commercial, second commercial, or industrial. Slum clearance is a very important thing. You say we are not interested. I am sorry you feel that way. I do not know a man in the real-estate business or home-building association that I consider worthy of his salt who is not interested in this and trying to find the answer. I think we have made more progress than we are given credit for.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You disagree that in section V they are not doing a better job than you are now?

Mr. CARR. It could be interpreted either way. We feel, from our experience, that if the wrong Administrator, a man like Mr. Strauswe would not have a chance in the world of getting any of that property or doing anything with it.

Mr. NICHOLSON. Out this back door you can walk into a slum as bad as there is in any city in the United States, I think. We are attempting to tell them-in Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago-how to take care of slum clearance. If you just walk out the back door you can walk into one.

Mr. CARR. That is right. We have legislation here in Washington that when the Housing Agency gets some money it can go ahead to start clearing Washington slums. How it will be interpreted, I do not know. We feel that it is the best law that has been passed up to date. I think that once appropriations are made so that that Agency can get some money, a lot can be done in Washington slums.

Mr. NICHOLSON. My point is that if we are going to clear slums we had better start at home instead of going out in the broad areas of the country and trying to do it.

Mr. CARR. The money, in this instance, is going to come from the Federal Government. But I can tell you this: I spent 3 months studying one slum area in the city, and I found out that by buying the ground-and it was carefully appraised-buying the ground, tearing the buildings down, and rebuilding, that so-called downright loss would have been returned through increased taxes in about 19 years.

I maintain that most slums can be cleared at a profit if the communities will get together and work it out. I do not think that the Federal Government has to do it. They have the credit. Why does the Federal Government have to lend them the money?

Mr. BUCHANAN. Do you think that Washington real estate is assuming a comparable property tax rate as other real estate in the metropolitan areas throughout the Nation?

Mr. CARR. I think our tax rate is one of the lowest in the country because we have no bonded indebtedness, and certainly our city is run under the public scrutiny as no other city in the world is run. The rate may be a little lower. Up in New England and other places they have tax rates twice as high as Washington. In a good many places in the country the tax rates are fairly comparable to Washington.

Mr. MULTER. You spoke about slums you cleared. Did you replace those substandard living quarters with other living quarters?

Mr. CARR. We replaced them with other living quarters, but not for the same people.

Mr. MULTER. What happened to the other people?

Mr. CARR. In this particular instance we gave them ample time to get out. It was not a heavily populated area. It was a very small piece of ground in Alexandria, and I would say it was as fully or as heavily populated as any project.

Mr. MULTER. Where did those inhabitants that came out of the slum areas go?

Mr. CARR. In many cases they go into other slum areas. You do not get rid of them until you educate the people. It is a social problem as well as a physical one.

Mr. MULTER. That is what the legislation is trying to do now, not just hide the slum areas. This is intended to replace those slum areas and give these people in the substandard dwellings a place to live at rents that they can afford to pay.

Mr. COLE. That is what it tries to do.

Mr. MULTER. It may not be accomplishing it as fast as it wants to. Mr. COLE. As a matter of fact, the history of the areas which have been cleared have been decidedly to the contrary.

slum area has not been

Mr. MULTER. If you are going to say that replaced with dwellings, you are right; but until it has been replaced with dwellings somewhere else to take care of those occupants of the slum, you are not accomplishing the purpose.

Mr. BUCHANAN. May I have permission to include the editorial of the Baltimore Sun of April 22 with Mr. Carr's testimony? The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be done. (The editorial above referred to is as follows:)

[From the Baltimore Sun, Thursday, April 22, 1948]

ON READING TOO MUCH INTO A LOCAL ACHIEVEMENT

Baltimore's attempts to improve living conditions in slum areas through scricter enforcement of fire, health, and building regulations have drawn high praise from the National Association of Home Builders. Baltimore's law-enforcement campaign, according to the monthly organ of the home builders, is providing much-needed minimum housing, is gradually ridding this great metropolitan center of its slum areas, and is markedly reducing the rate of juvenile delinquency. The association believes that other cities with a slum problem might well follow Baltimore's lead.

Before other cities are led to believe that Baltimore has found an inexpensive and sure cure for all slum conditions, the beautiful picture presented by the home builders should be toned down a bit. Baltimore's efforts to force compliance with the minimum legal standards of decent living conditions are neither providing much-needed minimum housing nor gradually ridding the city of its blighted areas. The slum clean-up campaign has brought about the replacement of windowpanes and plaster in some areas, improved sanitary conditions to some extent, and compelled landlords and tenants alike to clear out rat-infested cellars and back yards. But the overcrowded, substandard buildings remain exactly that.

Nor is the Baltimore program "markedly reducing" juvenile delinquency. There was more juvenile delinquency in Baltimore last year than in the previous year, according to police records. The number of new cases of tuberculosis, another byproduct of slum conditions, also increased last year. So, flattering as the words of the home builders may be, the facts do not fit the praise. Nor is it strictly accurate to say that the Baltimore slum clean-up program is being "achieved strictly through the enterprise of private home builders" in cooperation

with property owners and city officials. The local program is largely a health measure, supported by civic-minded groups, and it took the establishment of a special housing court to get the cooperation of vested interests.

Baltimore's housing-law-enforcement drive is an excellent one and deserves wide recognition. The city can blush with fitting pride at the publicity given its efforts by the home builders. But no one should assume that Baltimore is doing anything more than making a few dilapidated buildings a little more inhabitable. Housing-law enforcement is not slum clearance, and nothing will make it so.

Mr. CARR. Could I have permission to get the one they wrote a year before that about this same project? I think it is a very startling

contrast.

Mr. BUCHANAN. This is the one that counts. This was after the job got started and progress was made.

Mr. CARR. They batted last, but they changed around as completely as anybody I ever saw.

The CHAIRMAN. Without ojection, you may do that. (The document above referred to is as follows:)

[From the Baltimore Evening Sun, October 7, 1946]

MAKING THE SLUMS RETREAT BY HOUSING-LAW ENFORCEMENT

(By R. P. Harriss)

Can slums be combated just by enforcing the law? In an effort to show that they can, Baltimore's Housing-Law Enforcement Committee has completed the renovation of a single block in south Baltimore and, on the basis of what was acomplished there, is asking the board of estimates for funds to set up a fulltime housing-law enforcement unit.

This block, bounded by Leadenhall, Henrietta, Hamburg, and Bevan Streets, in a Negro area, was selected as being fairly representative of substandard housing areas in the city. To casual observers it was a dreadful, blighted block, beyond reclaim. Close examination revealed that structurally the small, old houses were pretty sound. The housing-law enforcement committee set out to make the block more livable and less of a liability to the city, not by any fancy building program but simply by enforcing existing regulations.

The committee is composed of personnel designated by heads of various city departments who work cooperatively with the health department. First, representatives of the buildings engineer's and street cleaning engineer's offices went into the area with health officers and noted all violations of the city housing code and other regulatory laws. Then they notified the landlords that they must correct these violations. In all but a few instances the property owners complied; two or three had to be prosecuted.

What an amazing difference this block now shows. It has to be seen to be believed. House fronts, where lintels were dangerously broken, have been reinforced and the brickwork pointed up. But the greatest change is observable in the interior court. This once was a crazy congeries of tumbled wooden fences, rotted and sagging porches, fallen-down sheds, defective yard toilets overflowing raw sewage, and a maze of winding, hidden, filth-choked little alleyways without air or sunlight, exhaling mephitic odors and inhibited by hordes of rats.

In place of all this, there now is an airy, open court where children play in safety and housewives wash and dry clothes in neighborly friendliness. Gone are the crazily hanging back stairs, gone the stinking yard toilets, gone the rotting sheds which cut off all outside light and ventilation from the rear rooms. Here and there new windows have been let, cracks filled.

The general appearance differs from a modern, low-rent development only in that it is picturesque instead of being architecturally flat and dull. Random, unannounced visits inside the homes reveal them as neat, cozy, clean, though of rather doll-like proportions. Except for being so small, the rooms are not very different from those in thousands of respectable city homes. These are modest dwellings, yes; they aren't slum dwellings. The excrescences and defects which kept them slums have been cleared away. It was as simple as that.

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »