our community we can show you successes in every one of the programs that have been mentioned.

Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mayor ALIOTO. Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence, I would next like to call upon my California colleague, Mayor Norman Mineta.

MAYOR NORMAN MINETA, SAN JOSE, CALIF.

Mayor MINETA. Thank you, Mr. Alioto.

As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Community Development Committee, I can tell you that for the past 3 years, the No. 1 priority of that committee has been the development of a community development block grant. As a mayor and as the committee chairman, I can assure you that we cannot afford any additional delay in the development of such a consolidated grant program. Programmatically, we are ready for the development of the community block grant. The need for the activities which such a program supports is approaching desperation in many communities. Further, in our judgment, the obstacles blocking obtaining another year's funding for the existing programs seem insurmountable.

We are dependent upon this committee to act now. As the committee knows, we prefer on many of the key points the congressional as opposed to the administration version of the community development bills.

In the area of housing, the U.S. Conference of Mayors supported the Senate bill last year. We support the existing housing programs. We would support a similar effort this year. This year, we would also urge the committee to consider including in such an omnibus housing bill, two items:

One is programmatic linkage when operated at the national and local levels between the local housing programs and the local community development programs.

Second, provisions which would permit the Department of Housing and Urban Development to allocate housing units to local government based on local needs as set forth in locally developed multiyear housing plans.

Mr. Chairman, S. 2182 would be a great step toward providing the local flexibility which we need in this area.

Let me capsulize my reaction to the President's housing message and S. 2507, by saying that I am discouraged that after so much study and so long a delay, so little came forth.

We had expected on S. 7 to see a specific set of proposals. However, none really came forth.

After looking at the legislation, we are disturbed that the President is proposing that Congress acknowledge as a matter of national policy that the housing programs have failed, that he is asking the Congress to adopt in advance a housing allowance program, the details of which we have not yet seen.

Furthermore, that he proposes abandoning the national housing

goals.

The substance of the President's message and the legislation do not warrant really taking more of the committee's time. However,

I have appended a separate statement on my reaction to the President's bill.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, let me say that today you have before you a group of anxious, concerned, and frustrated city officials who are extremely worried that they may be caught in the middle of a power struggle between the Congress and the administration, a struggle which may ultimately produce nothing in terms of legislation, but which will most certainly damage our capacity to deliver services in the city. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mayor ALIOTO. Mr. Chairman, there is a little bit of sadness in the next presentation. We are going to present perhaps for the last time before this committee the distinguished mayor of New York. I want to say before presenting him that he was actually the original moving force behind setting up this Legislative Action Committee for the Conference of Mayors. I think we can see now that Mayor Lindsay was regarded as the articulate spokesman for the cities in the sixties and seventies, and the man who made the greatest contribution to the solution of those problems.

I am delighted to present the mayor of the city of New York. The CHAIRMAN. I know, not too many years ago he was a member of the establishment here in Washington. We welcome you back.

MAYOR JOHN LINDSAY, NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.

Mayor LINDSAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

After Mayor Alioto's introduction, I ought to be quiet. I can be very brief.

In New York City in 1972 and 1971, we broke all records in the history of the city for numbers of units that went into construction, federally tax-supported housing, both low income and middle income. In 1972, we moved 35,000 units into construction, and in 1971, 22,000 units into construction.

We have in our pipeline right now 70,000 units. We can move by June 1974, 20,000 of these units into construction, depending on whether or not the trickle of 236 and public housing backup money is available. I don't have to advise the distinguished members of this committee that, since the moratorium, we have all been on a bootstrap brinksmanship, day-to-day operation, to acquire Federal funding for housing that is already going into the ground, having no idea whether or not the full financing will come through.

This housing has worked. We have had a lot of problems with established housing programs in the United States. They are not easy. We have to pump a lot of local money into all federally supported housing, including public housing, because of cost limitations, design quality, and various other things.

All of us have had various problems with scattered siting. Even middle-income housing is somewhat suspect because of racial fears. Nevertheless, notwithstanding, even with all that, it has been a massively important series of programs, with enough flexibility in it-not enough-but enough flexibility in it so that with might, and muscle, and good talent we have been able to move a lot of housing forward.

Without it, we would be in far more serious shape than we would be

now.

There is no way in the central cities, particularly the larger ones, that you can solve the problem of shelter without both construction and rehab. In none of these cities is there a vacancy ratio that you can live with. In New York City, it is well under 2 percent. There is no possible way the problem of shelter can be handled unless you attack the problem of new housing, which means construction and the problem of rehabilitating of old housing.

Yet, I wish to say that it may well be that the most difficult problem the Nation has ahead of it is again to rediscover the best possible way to preserve housing stock in the central cities particularly.

No ideal solution has yet been discovered by anybody, but to say because of the fits and starts of some of those programs, everything should be abandoned and we should forget about the national responsibility to move forward in the area of shelter would be a disaster for the country.

Indeed, I would predict that if, as a result of the administration's refusal to support any meaningful program for construction and rehab, that 2 or 3 years from now, the country is going to be in the most serious kind of crisis, and it may not even be discovered until then.

Finally, I should like to say something about the housing allowance, the strategy that is projected for late 1975 or 1976, 18 months from now approximately, as an experiment first for the elderly, as I understand it. We haven't seen the "whites of the eyes" of it yet. We don't fully understand it; I am sure that HUD doesn't fully understand it or know exactly where they are heading with it.

I myself and this is purely a personal viewpoint-I am very skeptical that it can work at all. It may even have to create necessarily more bureaucracy and more standard setting than anything you have now.

Anyone who has any experience at all, using HEW money in the shelter area, knows the problems that causes, the pushing up of rents, the adding to deterioration. It is a difficult road to pursue.

I would like to echo what the cochairman of the action committee said. It is so risky to stop everything in the tried programs that we have had in the past, while we point to an experiment in 1975 or 1976, which experiment itself is already doubtful and could be a difficult thing to do.

Lastly, let us understand that for the foreseeable future, the private sector is not going to be able to, and probably won't even try to construct or to rehab housing in these large industrial States, particularly in the central city areas, at costs people can afford either to buy or to rent. It is simply impossible. That means that the United States of America has got to assume an obligation. That is nothing new.

The country has assumed that obligation since way back in the early 1930's. Every country has had to do that in the Western community, in the Western World. That, it seems to me, is the reality of what we are faced with here. To abandon that national Federal responsibility for shelter for Americans at this point, which I think is the main thrust of what the administration would do, would I think, spell disaster and crisis for the future.

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Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mayor ALIOTO. Mr. Chairman, we have a new mayor out in Los Angeles, Tom Bradley. He has a long devotion to ameliorating housing conditions among the poor and the disadvantaged. With your permission, we would be pleased to hear from him. The CHAIRMAN. Mayor Bradley?

MAYOR TOM BRADLEY, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Mayor BRADLEY. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, each of us, as you can well see, could cite a number of examples in our own communities where the proposals before this committee and the Congress could very greatly affect us. I am going to cite just three.

In my city of Los Angeles, there are some 88,000 new housing units that are needed now. Many of those are for the elderly, many for the poor or those who are on limited incomes.

In the field of public housing, we have 800 units that are so old and deteriorated and dilapidated that they need to be replaced now. We have four redevelopment programs in our neighborhoods, many of them well along the way. They have been stymied, they have been disrupted, they have been threatened by the moratorium, by the cutoff.

Now, they are more threatened by the possibility that with the new legislation, with the new proposals before the Congress, that there may be continued interruption in the flow of those dollars.

Not only is the morale of our community affected, our staff in our community redevelopment agency may very likely begin next year looking for new positions unless this legislation is moved to a point where they can clearly see it is going to pass and will be signed into law.

I think that is the essential reason why we express such alarm here about the need for haste, not just with the Senate, but with the House as well. Our message is really directed to both the House and the Senate.

We believe that there must be some assurance that we are going to get the block grant, the community development bill, and that it be tied to housing. Equally important is the fact that we must have some assurance that the programs now underway will not be devoid or disrupted to the point where they cannot be sure to continue. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mayor ALIOTO. Mr. Chairman, Mayor Frank Burke of the city of Louisville always brings a very constructive viewpoint to these proceedings. We will call upon him.

MAYOR FRANK BURKE, LOUISVILLE, KY.

Mayor BURKE. Mr. Chairman, each one has said before that we appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee which has jurisdiction over legislation which, in a very real sense, is a part of the essential life support system of our cities. We really hope that what we are each saying is not repetitious but that it is cumulative and emphastic.

I suppose in the idiom of the military, that we are some of the field soldiers. While we do see the effects of the strategic approaches to housing problems and the needs for community development, what we really know about are the day-to-day needs of a majority of the American people.

To put into sort of general perspective what we see, it is that those programs most recently administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and for years before that by other agencies, despite admitted weaknesses, have dramatically transformed some of our center cities into really new worlds. Now they are methodically drifting to a stop.

In Louisville, I see a nonprofit-community based corporation which has built several million dollars worth of subsidized housing over the past 4 years with presently 100 percent occupancy and waiting lists. Now they are laying off the staff and folding up.

In those areas where housing and community development merge, we see again in Louisville one of the few apparently successful planned reuses of surplus Federal property after years of planning, controversy, and compromise, ready to be built to provide housing for persons of moderate income. Now it is simply being allowed to sit.

In terms of frustration and its subsequent evils, it would be difficult to overestimate what this situation can produce nationally. It is the nature of housing in community development programs that the results of these slowdowns and stops will take from 18 to 24 months to finally come to a dead stop.

What we respectfully suggest with all of the sense of urgency that wẹ are capable of conveying is that Congress act now to assure continued momentum toward progress in American cities. We need housing and community development legislation, whether it is built of block grants or grant subsidies or whatever. We really believe there is a graver danger that there is going to be at least a yearlong period when the housing and community development programs can slip through the cracks.

Mr. Chairman, we are grateful for the opportunity to be here. We know we are all saying the same thing, but we do not know any better way to emphasize to you that it is important to every place. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor ALIOTO. Mayor Stanley Cmich of Canton, Ohio, is next, Mr. Chairman. We would like to call on him now.

MAYOR STANLEY CMICH, CANTON, OHIO

Mayor CмICH. Mr. Chairman, I will be brief. I do not want to be repetitious. However, I am certain that we all agree that our visit here today deals with the serious concern of needed, necessary legislation to meet the expiration date of the present housing programs.

In Canton, we are concerned deeply with two top priorities, and that is a healthy economy and decent, safe, and sanitary housing for our citizens. In our community, we have a long list of senior citizen housing and low-income family housing needs. Therefore, we urge the passage of housing legislation that will meet the timetable and assure continuity of housing programs in our community.

Mayor ALIOTO. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.