civic, and labor leaders. There is wide agreement on the principles on which it is based. The Mortgage Bankers Association is pleased to have this opportunity to express its support.

Mr. ROUSE. The Mortgage Bankers Association has endorsed, and I am here to communicate to the committee, the support of the association on title IV of the Housing Act of 1954, which deals with slum clearance and urban renewal.

I have a very special personal interest in this legislation, as I had the opportunity to serve as a member of the President's Advisory Committee, and chairman of the Subcommittee on Urban Redevelopment, Rehabilitation, and Conservation.

That subcommittee, Senator, it seems to me, did a good job, as good perhaps as this Senate committee would like to have had done for it. The subcommittee itself was constituted of a labor leader, Dick Gray, the president of the AFL building trades department; Alexander Summer, a past president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards; Ralph Walker, a past president of the American Institute of Architects, a strong advocate of public housing and from that general point of view of housing, on the one side; and Ehney Camp, a young, bright conservative vice president of a southern life-insurance company, on the other.

We approached the task we had, with our conception of our mission being to determine what it is that cities ought to try to do to eliminate slums, and what the appropriate role of the Federal Government would be in such an effort.

We tried, as best we could, to bring before the committee the most objective study and discussion of what was happening in the country, what was wrong with what was happening in the country, what was right with programs that showed high potential, and how could we put together in the cities of the United States programs that were designed to really eliminate slums from American cities.

We brought in people on all sides of the program, not people who were representing particularly entrenched or biased positions but people who had been associated in redevelopment programs and rehabilitation efforts, people like Mr. Klutznick from Chicago, and Mr. McCord from Indianapolis, and people from the Housing Development Association in Norfolk.

We concluded our recommendations with enthusiastic agreement on the part of those people in the committee who perhaps had never before agreed on a housing program that had to do with slum elimination.

That same atmosphere of agreement prevailed among all the people to whom we talked. We were amazed to find the tremendously wide area of agreement that there is in the United States as to what ought to be done to eliminate slums.

Secondly, we were amazed to find the extent to which that area in which there was wide agreement was not being fulfilled in any city in the United States; that there is a broad understanding, on the one hand, of what ought to be done, but nowhere is it being done. I really believe that there is no informed person whom I have ever met in the housing field who would say that there is in existence in the United States today, in one single American city, a program which lives up to the composite knowledge that we have gained over the past few years, of what ought to be done in a city to eliminate slums.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you account for that?

Mr. ROUSE. That is what I would like to account for. I think it is understandable. I don't think it is just a matter of perversity on the part of cities. I think it is a matter of timing.

Our whole approach to this business of urban development is newer than we sometimes realize. The first zoning law in the United States was passed in 1916. In Baltimore, which is my own city-and I can quote dates a little more freely there-we had no effective zoning until 1932. Our housing authority was instituted in 1937; our planning commission was given real power to act in 1943: our redevelopment commission, in 1946. The program known as the Balitmore plan, which is a rehabilitation effort, really got under way in 1949.

But, by and large, we have been approaching this business of controlling and influencing urban growth from two ends of a pipeline. We have been developing the techniques of better planning, to try to see to it that new housing goes into the housing inventory, protected against blighting forces, and with some opportunity for longerterm survival. On the other hand, we have been working at the very bottom of the pipeline, removing that stuff which is utterly nonsalvageable, and which must be demolished and removed.

But in between lies the great housing inventory of America, the great sprawling areas of most American cities. Until we had first developed a technique of planning and developed techniques of demolition and clearance, it really isn't likely or possible that we could begin to deal effectively with the inventory in between. As we have reached that point, these programs have come about all over the country this little effort in Baltimore, known as the Balitmore plan, the effort in Charlotte, the exploratory effort they have had in Illinois, including the remarkable legislation in the Butler bill, and the program in New Orleans. City after city has come to take a fresh look at its problem, with the new tools which we only developed very recently. The redevelopment program is only 3 or 4 or 5 years old, really.

So, first, I think it is timing. Secondly, I think it is a matter of gradual awareness in American cities. Slums first were recognized as a social problem, which took a severe toll in human values, and that aroused an initial interest in the slum problem. Recently cities have come to recognize that they are tremendously threatened economically and that their accessible bases are going steadily down. Even the addition of new construction in many cities is not keeping pace with the reduction of assessments in older cities, and in all cities the huge central area, which isn't a tiny part of the city but which is a vast part, is gradually losing value and base, and therefore threatening the financial solvency of the city.

So really I think we have just reached a point of timing where we can begin to develop an overall effective program in slum elimination, and that is why I think this wide agreement that I speak of has developed. But it has only very recently developed.

It seems to me that that wide agreement consists of three main points. First of all, a realization that a piecemeal surgical approach toward slum elimination won't work. It is going to take a lot more than simply going in with a few or a great many demolition projects to eliminate slums. There is serious question as to whether or not all

of the demolition programs today have kept pace with the growth of slums in the cities in which those projects have occurred.

There was a grand jury that met recently in Brooklyn, after a Brooklyn fire killed seven people, and it made a rather searching study of slums in New York, and surprised itself to find that if New York continued the extraordinary rate of demolition and new construction that has been underway in the past several years, it would be more than 100 years before New York even eliminated the old tenements, much less kept up with the increased spread of blight in New York City.

In Chicago, where extraordinary redevolopment has been underway, there are 56 square miles of blight, and I think very few of the people out there feel that the present programs have kept pace with the spread.

So that people have come to say, "We have got to do more than that." Obviously, some of these areas must be demolished, but also we have to throw a rope around this spread of blight. We have to prevent this threat. We have to start enforcing occupancy controls in cities, not just say we have no responsibility for overcrowding. We have to move into older areas that are worth saving, and find out what are the blighting forces that are pulling them down, eliminate adverse uses where they occur, create new street and new traffic patterns, introduce park and recreation areas, demolish the unfit housing which is still maybe a small percentage of the housing in a given neighborhood, and try to create out of that huge area of a city, which is cold and unsolaced and spiritless and unneighborly as it exists now, a new neighborhood in which people are happy to live and want to live and where forces of deterioration are reversed by forces of care and concern and a buildup of the property.

To do that, it seemed to us that the Federal program of assistance ought to be revised. Instead of doing what it does now, under title I of the Housing Act of 1949, providing Federal grants on a two-thirds basis essentially for demolition programs only-and that is the effect of title I as it stands now-that same principle ought to be broadened and cities ought to be encouraged to go in and look at their overall program of deterioration, and be encouraged, not to go in with a single surgical project but to go into the city and create planned neighborhoods and take the steps necessary to create them, including public utilities that are required, and street lighting, in many cases. Bad street lighting can be a force for slum creation, and inadequate paving, lack of recreation areas, too much congestion, nonconforming uses The CHAIRMAN. Don't forget the most important thing-smoke. Mr. ROUSE. It certainly is.

The CHAIRMAN. And smog and dirt.

Mr. ROUSE. In many cities, it is a starting point.

If the cities would plan and contemplate a program on that kind of a project, then Federal assistance would reach through that total project the city now adds up the total cost of acquisition and demolition, and it deducts from that the reuse value of the land, and the Federal Government contributes two-thirds. Instead of doing that, in this total program of urban renewal, the cost would be totaled up, with public recreation areas, parks, demolition, and acquisition, and from that would be deducted reuse value of the land, in order that the cities could enlarge their scope and enlarge their approach to this problem.

I really believe that there is almost no dissent in the United States for the desirability of an approach to this problem. But then we said that the fact that that becomes available to cities doesn't mean they are going to do it. There still may be cities which are going to say, "Well, we haven't thought through the problem," or they haven't faced up to it, and here are Federal funds for a redevelopment project, and here is an FHA program available, section 202, or something else, and they rise to only those requirements sufficient to meet that Federal grant. We asked person after person, who had a deep stake in the housing program, "Don't you feel it is reasonable that the Federal Government should require as a precondition to Federal aid of any kind, that a city face up to this problem of urban decay, along the whole front? Why should there be Federal assistance extended for either redevelopment or public housing or any of these antislum aids, if that city isn't willing to set in motion an antislum campaign for areas not yet overcrowded? This is something clearly within the city's responsibility. And what justification is there for the Federal Government going in with this huge aid, if the city won't take the steps readily available to it to limit the spread of slums?"

Person after person agreed that it was reasonable to do that, and that it was reasonable to say that a city must face up to this whole problem of urban decay and put in motion a workable program to deal with it, before it is entitled either to public housing grants or urban renewal grants, or FHA section 202 mortgage insurance. And that provision is incorporated in this bill, as it should be.

There was some little bit of anxiety here and there that maybe the administration of that program would be so severe that it would stopany effective slum work anywhere in the United States. The prospective administrators of the program don't think that the legislation is that severe-Albert Cole doesn't, and Jim Follin doesn't-and that within the requirements of this act, as it stands, it is possible to set appropriate standards that are gradually increased as the experience of cities increases and as their effectiveness increases. In order to insure that there will be a steady increase in the effectiveness of cities and a lifting of standards, the bill also provides for the establishment of an urban renewal service, in order that the experiences in one city can be communicated to another, in order that that which is being done somewhere, and fails, can be reported to other cities so that they might avoid that experimental mistake, or at least learn from it.

So, gradually we can find a way for each city to help the other in developing a workable program for an overall attack on slums. This urban renewal service would be designed just to do that, to provide technical advice and assistance to cities at their request, and to set up a staff in the urban renewal administration for that purpose.

One minor provision of this bill-minor as far as Federal financing is concerned is a little section 414, which provides for a $5 million fund. That idea generated in our committee. There were some people who smiled at it as being naive, that we wouldn't be likely to-first of all, that the advisory committee wouldn't accept it, which they did, and then, when Mr. Cole and the President began talking with Members of Congress, it would be rejected as naive. But I am glad to see it stayed. It can be tremendously important to this whole effort.

This is a very new developmental program, in all of its aspects. Urban redevelopment is still new, and conservation, housing, law enforcement-all over the country people are thirsting for new techniques. We had 350 cities send delegations to Baltimore in the last few years, to see a very little effort that we have underway there. And this $5 million fund would be for the purpose of permitting the urban renewal program, without the limitations that will apply to regular loan and grant provisions of the bill. It would be clearly designed to promote and encourage pilot programs in American cities which can light fires that can be a real beacon to other cities in their development of the urban renewal program.

I think that covers, sir, my comments on this.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Do you have any questions, Senator Bricker?
Senator BRICKER. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you gentlemen have anything further you would like to say?

We appreciate your testimony, and we may want to call you back later. You have a number of suggestions here, many things you are for and some that you are against, and we may want your help a little later. But we do appreciate your testimony at this time.

Mr. CLARKE. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness will be Mr. Joseph H. Ehlers of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Mr. Ehlers, I see you have a statement. Do you prefer to read it?

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH H. EHLERS, FIELD REPRESENTATIVE, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS

Mr. EHLERS. I have a statement, Mr. Chairman. I will read it very briefly.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, without objection, if you do not read all of your statement, your complete statement will be placed in the record. Mr. EHLERS. My name is Joseph H. Ehlers. I am field representative of the American Society of Civil Engineers and am making this statement on behalf of that society.

The American Society of Civil Engineers, with a membership of about 37,000, is the oldest national engineering society in the United States, with branches throughout the country. It is the technical society most actively concerned with the designing of engineering public works and shares a similar interest in public buildings with the American Institute of Architects.

Our interest in this bill lies particularly in section 702, entitled "Reserve of Planned Public Works." I will limit my observations to that section. It is somewhat remote from the main subject of housing, and I will be brief, simply bringing a few problems to your attention. Section 702 is grouped with section 701, "Urban planning," in title VII of the bill. The connection between the two sections is remote. My remarks deal principally with the authorization to the Housing and Home Finance Agency, in addition to supporting the basic concept of advance planning.

Despite the fact that we hold the present Administrator of the Agency in high regard and greatly admire the forceful manner in