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UNITS BUILT BY F. W. A.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know how many units. Mr. Carmody, your agency has constructed?

Mr. CARMODY. At the end of June, and actually ready for occupancy, 10,086. They are being completed at the rate of about 240 a day. The CHAIRMAN. And how many have been contracted for?

Mr. CARMODY. Construction has begun on 42,215.

The CHAIRMAN. And how many units have funds been allotted for? Mr. CARMODY. Eighty thousand one hundred and forty-four.

The CHAIRMAN. And is the rate at which allocations are being made enabling you to keep production abreast with the need, so far as you know, Mr. Carmody?

Mr. CARMODY. I have suggested to the Coordinator's office that it would be very much better for production if we could be informed the day the decision was made to build houses, to get started rather than to have his office accumulate a list over a period of anywhere from 3 weeks to a month. I was told this morning that as a result of that suggestion the Coordinator now says he will undertake to send through a list each week. That will be an improvement over the past procedure. The CHAIRMAN. Do you think, Mr. Carmody, that in centers of defense industry like shipbuilding or aircraft, the construction of the plants gets ahead of the housing? Are we a little bit behind with the housing or not?

Mr. CARMODY. Well, we have had varying experiences there, Mr. Chairman. Let me give you a case in point:

PROJECT IN SOUTH BOSTON

We were told on November 20, 1940, to prepare to build 1,050 houses to take care of the shipbuilders at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass.-the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

It developed that at that time a slum-clearance project in Boston, owned by a Boston housing authority, was about ready for occupancy. It contained approximately 823 units. We were urged by the Coordinator to buy it.

I know Quincy a little bit; I know Boston a little bit; I know the Bethlehem Steel Corporation a little bit; and I wondered why we were pressed to buy a property in South Boston, twenty-odd miles away from the shipyard, when there was plenty of land available in the area nearer to the shipyard.

As a matter of fact, representatives of some of the shipyard workers came to me and said that we ought not under any circumstances to try to house those people in South Boston; that we ought to provide homes nearer to the yards.

However, the Coordinator pressed us to buy this property in Boston because it was ready for occupancy. The land cost was very much higher than land could have been purchased for precisely the same purpose near the yards. I resisted the purchase in South Boston. We had some argument about it. We discussed it in my office. Coordinator was very insistent that we do it.

The

I finally decided to do it, against my better judgment. We bought that property and paid $1,000,000 more for it than we ought to have paid for such accommodations.

Thirty days went by and not one single shipyard worker rented a home in that project. Finally I appealed to Joe Larkin, vice presi

dent of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and assistant to President Eugene Grace, whom I have known for 25 years. We worked together on employment and management problems for years.

Mr. Larkin undertook to persuade, or to get his company to persuade, people to go there. They didn't go. We had to throw the project open to other defense workers. We started with the workers in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston itself, and in spite of a special drive it is not 50 percent occupied now.1

We did that because the Coordinator flashes his Executive order in front of us every time we question any recommendation made by his office. You know the President is my boss, too, but I've known him too long and have too much respect for him and his defense. burden to bother him with small irritations. And then, too, in this case it was one man's judgment against another's and there is always the possibility the other fellow may be right. The Coordinator had had a good deal of experience and he had talked to real estate men in Quincy where the shipyards are located. Both of us learned a lot from that transaction-the difference is that he has never admitted it on the record and I have. I used to think I knew what "coordinator" meant. I thought it was the term for a man whose job was to get people to work together. I didn't know that it was spelled with the letters that we now use for "dictator."

However, we actually bought that property. The property is there. It has done the Bethlehem Steel Corporation no good; it has done the shipyard workers no good, and I understand that it was in their interests that that recommendation was made.

Now, we have not built the 177 units, the difference between what we bought and the 1,000 originally called for. We did buy a property at North Weymouth, within walking distance of the shipyards, and were prepared to build there until we found some difficulty in the local community. The people said that the shipyard workers would be taken care of by private building and so on and so forth. I felt that we ought not to build the 177 until we are dead sure they will be occupied.

Now, it happens in addition to this, that at the time this recommendation was up there was parking space there for about 2,000 carsaround the Bethlehem yards-but because of the increase in the number of ways that they built, that parking space was reduced to a point where it would accommodate about 1,000 cars. That was another reason why it seemed to be better judgment to build the houses for the shipyard workers within walking distance. However, it didn't happen.

DORMITORY IN SAN DIEGO

Now, in San Diego we built a dormitory. We were under terrific. pressure from the Coordinator's office to build a dormitory in San Diego. They told us we were not cooperating and so on and so forth. So we finally decided to build the dormitory. As a matter of fact some of our lawyers are doubtful whether we have authority under the law to build dormitories.

We met that by building what can easily be transformed into living quarters for families. But anyhow, we built the dormitory. We built 750 units in 30 days. No other agency that I know of has

1 See exchange of telegrams in Exhibit D, pp. 6946-6947.

done a faster construction job. We did it because of the terrific pressure and urge from the Coordinator's office. After being built these houses went for weeks without a single occupant. I am told now that there are still no occupants.1

The CHAIRMAN. We have been given many "horrible examples" of workers housed at great distance from their jobs. We had a witness in Trenton, N. J., who testified that he leaves his home for his work at 5 o'clock in the morning, gets to his work at 8; he quits at 5 o'clock and he gets home at 8 at night. And we have had similar instances of that in every place we have held hearings.

Mr. CARMODY. Now, Mr. Chairman, at this point I would like to say I am not an expert in this housing field, but what I think the whole housing business needs is a good dose of good common sense. The CHAIRMAN. I think you are right.

Mr. CARMODY. From all of us.

RENT RANGE SET BY F. W. A.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you are right about that. Now, Mr. Carmody, is the rent range that your agency has set adjusted to that of the other housing agencies?

Mr. CARMODY. Well, in the first place, as I have already said, we have this thing which looks like a directive in the law. We also have had from the Coordinator's office-and also before it was disintegrated, from the Advisory Commission on Defense-suggestions about rents-the range of rents. As a matter of fact I think the Coordinator still puts on his locality progress reports, which come to us for each project, a suggested rental range. The actual rents are determined by the management division within the Federal Works Agency. In determining those we try to follow the law. We are guided by what the Coordinator recommends and guided also by what the manager finds on the project when he deals with the employers and with the tenants themselves and that is where the specific amount is really determined.

The CHAIRMAN. A witness suggested yesterday to this committee that all nondefense housing construction of a public sort be discontinued for the duration of the defense emergency. What do you think about that?

Mr. CARMODY. Well, that is a difficult question for me to answer because one of the agencies in my own group is the United States Housing Authority.

I think generally that the housing they provide is as badly needed by the people who get an opportunity to live there as any other housing, and to that extent all housing today is defense housing if we are thinking in terms of national morale and in terms of having a unified front for the American people.

The fact of the matter is that the regular United States Housing Authority program has been greatly slowed down because they had

1 See telegram, Exhibit F, pp. 6948-6949. Also see San Diego hearings, pp. 4856, 4881, and 49C0-N.

practically exhausted their appropriation and were able to revive it only by making new arrangements which enable them to recover some sums which they are putting in some slum-clearing projects.

It boils down to this: Is the emergency so great that those who ought not to have lived in slums at all will be compelled to live there for another indefinite period?

FORCED DEMOLITION OF SLUMS

The CHAIRMAN. We had a number of witnesses testify before this committee that, wherever possible, a clause should be written in the present public housing construction contracts to the effect that at the close of the defense emergency an equivalent number of slum units should be demolished. Do you care to express an opinion about that?

Mr. CARMODY. Well, I wouldn't without giving some consideration to how much that would cost and what cooperation might be obtained from the local communities.

These new defense-housing projects, in many cases, are going into communities that had not previously had any public housing experience. In many cases I feel confident that the best disposition of these defense homes in the public interest will be through the local housing authorities as part of their broader slum-clearance program, but I would not like to be required to say specifically today that that would be the best policy everywhere.

We are, in some cases, undertaking to build demountable houses with the hope that when the emergency is over and they will not be needed in those areas, they may be moved somewhere else. How successful that will be only time and a little more experience than we have had thus far will tell.

Mr. Chairman, I might put into the record that table on substandard dwellings and new nondefense residential construction and recommended public defense housing, dated July 15, 1941, which shows certain cities and for each of them the total number of dwelling units in the city, the number of occupied substandard dwelling units, date of real property inventory on which this is based, the number of dwelling units valued at $4,000 or less built by private funds since the date of the real property inventory, the number of United States Housing Authority nondefense dwelling units and the number of defense housing dwelling units recommended for assignment by Defense Housing Coordinator.

I think if that were to go into the record it might give the committee a good idea of the problem that is presented by these citiesGadsden, Ala.; Hartford, Conn.; Boston, Mass.; Detroit, Mich.; Wilmington, N. C.; Philadelphia, Pa.: Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Allegheny County, Pa., excluding Pittsburgh.

The CHAIRMAN. We will have it inserted in the record at this point.

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The table referred to is as follows:

EXHIBIT A

Substandard dwellings, new nondefense residential construction, and recommended public defense housing, July 15, 1941

[graphic]

Number of defense housing dwelling units recommended for assignment by Defense Housing Coordinator

250

1,500

1,120

1,000

1.275

5,000

1,000

4,000

Source: Real Property Inventory.

2 Estimated from building permits data supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Division of Construction and Public Employment.

3 Includes 1,000 defense housing dwelling units being constructed by United States Housing Authority under Public 671.

Not available.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN M. CARMODY-Resumed

The CHAIRMAN. Will you compare the speed on building public projects with private projects, taking into consideration not only the construction period but the time taken to raise the money and to develop the financing?

Mr. CARMODY. I have here, Mr. Chairman, a table that shows the date for allotment of money, the date construction started and date of completion for some of the early P. W. A. projects. These go back about 6 or 7 years to the first public housing program. Shall I read them and then ask if this table may go into the record? I did not select these. I have taken the very first ones that the P. W. A. program turned out.

The first one on my left is at Techwood Homes, Atlanta, Ga. The money was allotted on the 12th of April 1934. Construction was started on the 12th of February 1935, and it was completed June 26, 1936.

University Homes, Atlanta, Ga., was very much the same except that the money was allotted on the same date, April 12, 1934, and the project started April 22, 1935, and it was completed on March 17, 1937-nearly 3 years later.

The Cedar-Central Apartments, Cleveland, Ohio, allotted April 12, 1934, construction started June 18, 1935, and completed March 15, 1937-a total of about 3 years.

Lockefield Garden Apartments, Indianapolis, Ind., allotted April 12, 1934, started July 15, 1935, and completed February 16, 1938-nearly 4 years.

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