EXHIBIT E.-HOUSING PROJECT IN BALTIMORE WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1941. GLENN L. MARTIN, Glenn L. Martin Co., Middle River, Md.: On representations to the government that a great number of employees of the Martin Co. were eager to find homes in Baltimore we did not take time to build a defense housing project—instead we bought Armistead Gardens and reserved 600 of its 700 homes for Martin Co. workers. You were advised on May 15 that 200 units were ready for immediate occupancy and that the others would be available in a short time. Your company was urged to cooperate with the Federal Works Agency and its agent, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, to the end that Armistead Gardens be tenanted as quickly as possible. We have made every effort to inform Martin workers that housing is available, but for reasons we are unable to understand in face of your earlier representations of need through coordinator of defense housing we have not received from your company the cooperation expected. The result is that today there are nearly 300 vacancies in Armistead Gardens. Because of this serious situation I have directed the housing authority to open the project to qualified defense workers employed by other companies in the Baltimore area. Meantime I am curious to know whether the apparent lack of enthusiasm on the part of your organization in getting Armistead Gardens fully tenanted with your own workers is due to the fact that the Government did not elect to build defense homes on your site. You are aware that work is being pushed on 300 additional homes and that an allocation has been made for 750 others to be constructed in the immediate vicinity of Armistead Gardens. We ought to decide definitely and promptly whether to go ahead with this construction or stop it. It was started to provide homes for your workers brought in because of the expanding production program. In the face of your failure to fill Armistead Gardens are we to understand your housing needs are taken care of? JOHN M. CARMODY, Administrator, Federal Works Agency. EXHIBIT F.-CORRECTION OF NEWSPAPER REPORT OF STATEMENT ON SAN DIEGO Lt. MAX I. BLACK, HOUSING1 [Copy of telegram-Day letter] Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, Calif.: JULY 22, 1941. My attention has been called to newspaper references to statement I made before Public Buildings and Grounds Committee of the House of Representatives in connection with its inquiry into need for additional defense homes. I am reported to have said that San Diego has been overbuilt. What I said was that under terrific pressure to make accommodations available for single men we completed a 750 unit dormitory in 33 working days only to find that apparently it was not needed. I am informed that there have been only 10 applications for accommodations and no occupants. It is further reported to me that as a result of a survey 1,900 rooms are available in private homes for single men. My statement to the committee was not intended to discourage building of homes where they are actually needed but to discourage repetition of recommendations for dormitories or other structures when they are not actually needed for defense purposes. We understand our manager, Mr. Voight, has been working in full cooperation with your committee and with other local officials to do everything humanly possible to meet housing needs. 1 See enclosure in Lieutenant Black's letter, p. 6893. We appreciate your cooperation and shall thank you for any help you can give him to salvage what we can out of this dormitory investment. JOHN M. CARMODY, Administrator. EXHIBIT G Dates in construction process, first Public Works Administration Housing Division projects 1 Date initial occupancy. Contractor did not complete construction. NOTE.-Demolition work required on these projects was performed between date of allotment and date construction started as reported above. INTRODUCTION OF EXHIBITS Miss DUBLIN. Mr. Chairman, I should like at this time to introduce into the record certain material received from sources not represented by witnesses before the committee. The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed. Miss DUBLIN. Mr. Chairman, as exhibit 1 I offer for the record a paper entitled, "How to Bring Forth an Ideal Solution of the Defense Housing Problem," written by Walter Gropius, chairman of the department of architecture, Harvard University, and Martin Wagner, assistant professor of regional planning, Harvard University. (The paper referred to above is as follows:) EXHIBIT 1.-HOW TO BRING FORTH AN IDEAL SOLUTION OF THE DEFENSE HOUSING PROBLEM? BY WALTER GROPIUS, CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AND MARTIN WAGNER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF REGIONAL PLANNING, HARVARD UNIVERSITY In answering the question, "How to Bring Forth an Ideal Solution of the Defense Housing Problem?", the authors of this paper are fully aware of the fact that their advice for a more ideal solution at a time when defense production is in full swing might come belated. Iron-clad necessities have already pushed forward solutions of provisional character. But, since the acute want of better housing cannot be considered as a mere wartime emergency problem and will arise again as a post-war demobilization and rehabilitation problem of first rank, we should like to scrutinize it also from the latter point of view. Of course, suggestions regarding an “ideal solution" must certainly entail measures more complex and radical than those which have been taken up to now. 60396-41-pt. 17—18 PRESENT DEFICIENCIES IN HOUSING DEFENSE WORKERS (1) While food, clothing, and other everyday goods can be bought by the average man at reasonable prices adapted to his income, a decent, up-to-date dwelling is out of reach for the poorer classes. Although 45 percent of the capital given by the Government for Federal Housing schemes is a subsidy without any return, the rent for these dwellings is still too high for the average income of $1,000 to $1,500 per family. The reason why the prices for dwellings, in spite of public subsidies, are out of proportion compared with other commodities for living is the fact that the building market, the most complex in its structure, has not yet been absorbed by the machine and that it is less efficiently organized than the industry. One glance at the enclosed diagram reveals that the increasing wages for the still large amount of handwork involved in building have doubled the price of dwellings during the same period in which the price for the Ford car could be halved. No doubt the quantity-production method which has produced the low-cost automobile could as well be applied successfully for more efficient low-cost houses. But the conditions for prefabrication have not yet been prepared sufficiently. The lack of coordination in the building field has delayed the issue, causing serious disadvantages also for the present defense crisis in housing. (2) The sudden and spasmodic influx of a large number of workers into organically grown communities must automatically cause symptoms of illness against which all the sound parts of the body will react with measures of defense. It is therefore quite understandable (a) that landlords and house owners oppose new defense housing schemes of permanent character in fear of seeing their local housing markets deranged after the war has passed; and (b) that municipalities see their budgets thrown out of balance by being burdened with additional expenditures for schools, police, hospital service, and so forth, during the war boom and with relief costs of all kinds when this boom is over; and (c) further, all brackets of the working class will resent seeing the "labor supply depots" of their communities inflated and thus their own chances to get jobs and decent wages threatened when the war industry is forced one day to lay off masses of workers. For all these reasons we do not believe that the building of new permanent dwellings of the usual type and shape represents the ideal solution of the housing problem in defense regions. We hesitate to recommend such a housing policy, even in cases where newly built dwellings of permanent character are supposed to replace later on slum dwellings, because we doubt whether the past housing policy of clearing the slums--intended to pour new wine into old bottles, so to speak-has been on the right track toward solving the housing problem at all. Experienced housing experts and town planners all over the world emphasize that any housing policy ought to start from a survey on permanently available working places, for it is the income-engendering working place that generates rent which people can afford to pay for newly built dwellings. If the income-producing working places are not insured for the same life span for which the dwellings are built, ghost houses and ghost towns will be the logical consequence of such a disintegrated housing policy. This is exactly what happened in the past and what has mainly caused the development of blighted areas and slum districts in all the larger and smaller towns, as well as in the agricultural regions. Land developers, contractors, and housing experts often did not realize that the life span of income-producing working places in our period of fast and vast technological progresses is 1 From Bulletin No. 18 of the National Housing Committee (figures given are for the State of New York): by far shorter than that of the dwellings which are supposed to live for 25, 50, or even 100 years. The incongruity between the life span of working places and that of dwelling places is one of the most serious causes for obsolescence in housing and for waste of capital spent for new, permanent houses, built for the working classes. But, apart from this incongruity, there is another serious drawback to be considered in regard to the housing of defense workers in the usual permanent buildings. In the race with time which usually occurs when a war boom starts, governmental agencies or private contractors are in most cases unable to keep pace with the rising want for new dwellings if they try to supply this demand by building new, permanent houses when these are especially "made to order," as usual. The following evaluation of war housing during the first World War, where about 360,000 workers had to be rehoused, gives a clear evidence of this fact: 1. Private builders cared for about 30,000 workers, or about 8 percent of the total. 2. Governmental agencies cared for about 46,000 workers housed in new dwellings, or about 13 percent of the total. 3. The home registration service placed in existing dwellings about 100,000 workers, or 28 percent of the total. 4. Through transportation improvements in the environments of plants about 184,000 workers, or 51 percent of the total, could stay in their homes and travel to work. (From Conference on the Expansion of Industrial Communities, University of Michigan, November 29, 30, 1940; p. 9.) These figures and the fact that many of the housing projects planned and built by the United States Housing Corporation were not ready to be used until 3 months after the end of the war show impressively that the present methods of building permanent houses for the working classes cannot keep pace with the need, either in quantity or in time. Although the authors have not reliable figures at their disposal for the defense housing need in the present war, they assume that the housing shortage in localities for defense work surpasses all figures of the first World War, and this presumably all the more since the defense orders have doubled and tripled in this time as compared with 1917-18. SHIFTING OF WORKING PLACES NECESSITATES MOVABLE HOUSES Our present technological age tends to uproot working places, shifting them from town to town, from region to region, and from State to State. This fact has become especially apparent in the last two decades in agricultural as well as industrial regions and begins now to endanger the working places in almost all the bigger and smaller towns. This process of technological new orientation in industry and agriculture seems not to be slackening. On the contrary, being The diagram referred to above appeared in American Architect and Architecture, February 1938, accompanying an article by Dr. Gropius entitled "Toward a Living Architect." As reproduction of the diagram in this volume was not feasible, the information it contained has been restated in tabular form, as follows: From the article which accompanied this diagram, the following explanatory material has been excerpted: "In 1928, I discovered in this country a most illuminating diagram, roughly comparing the trend of prices for building and for automobiles between 1913 and 1926. It shows the remarkable fact that, within the same period (13 years), the average costs of building were doubled, whereas the price of the Ford car was halved. The greater proportion of hand work involved in building increased the price in accordance with the increasing labor Refinement of mass production methods, on the other hand, considerably lowered the price of automobiles. A decent dwelling became unattainable for the poor, yet the car became an everyman's tool. The up-to-date completion of the diagram shows that the price of the average car has steadi'y declined, whereas the cost of the average dwelling has been only slightly lowered since 1926. This diagram reveals that our building methods-being far behind the times-are not fit to solve the problem." costs. in its first stage only, it might easily get a new impulse when the whole impact of new post-war world economics may be felt in its full strength in this country. In such a period it may not be wise to build dwellings of a 50-year life span for men whose working places may last perhaps only for 5 years. It seems to us that a new type of house is urgently needed which is not definitely fixed to the site during its whole life-span but could be dismounted and built up again in locations where shelter facilities are lacking. Dwellings of the future should be made more movable in order to follow the migrating working places. There seem to be neither technical nor financial reasons serious enough to hinder the designing and building of fully serviced demountable houses. We have the necessary technical means today to mass-produce such houses in factories specified for high quality for perhaps only half of the cost of the present permanent "made to order" houses. These dwellings must by no means be provisional in character regarding their workmanship and size. On the contrary, in all their details they should comply with up-to-date requirements of technique and equipment. They have to be of light but durable construction, alterable, time-saving, economical, and highly efficient for their occupants. Man and the various functions of his life at home-living, sleeping, bathing, cooking, and eating are to be the basis determining the type and appointments of the dwelling. The criterion is the ratio of expense to living value to be measured from the degree of success attained in reducing the onerous features of every-day life to a minimum. Being built as demountable units, such factory-built houses would have also the advantages of being mobile of being put on stock-of being bought and sold second hand and third hand; hence, of being produced and traded as a commodity. As long as the house was inseparably fixed to the noncommodity "land," it could not be traded as a commodity. We are even inclined to go a step further, advising that schools, hospitals, and shops composed of standardized room units be prefabricated also and be put on stock in order to be shifted to all those places where they are needed. If such an adaptable system of prefabrication had already been developed in the past, no acute housing shortage could have arisen anywhere caused either by dislocation of working places or by sudden defense measures which call for extension or contraction of existing residential quarters. That a steady demand for movable houses truly exists even in peacetime is evident from the House Report No. 369 of the Seventy-sixth Congress-on Interstate Migration. According to the figures given there, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands, of movable shelter units seem to be needed in the present period of economic transition. MILITARY REQUIREMENTS FOR MOVABLE SHELTER PROVISION In addition, modern mobilized warfare has its bearing not only on arms but also on buildings for military purposes. In the present time of total warfare the civilian and the military way of life are no longer strictly separated as in the past. The battle lines are no longer front lines. The whole hinterland of the country has become a battlefield. These and other changes indicate that the types of shelter for both military and civilian purposes begin to assimilate each other in purpose, shape, and function, for (1) Modern warfare exerts so much strain upon the body and the nerves of shock troops, aviators, parachutists, etc., that they ought to be housed at least as comfortably as civilians. (Compare the "villas" of the German aviation corps with the old-fashioned mass encampments, where 60 or more persons are forced to share 1 room in a barrack.) The housing provision of the modern army should be based on smaller units, fully serviced, that would fit small groups of a few men only. Such units could correspond more or less in size and type with the dwelling for a civilian family. (2) Aerial bombardment constitutes great danger for civilian settlements as well as for military camps. Therefore, for both of these, adequate shelter provision points to adopting a more decentralized pattern of shelter that ought to be built up of small, detached, one-story units rather than of highly visible and therefore vulnerable barracks which are more easily hit and difficult to camouflage. (3) Steady changes in othe organization and location of military formationsespecially if they are built up for defense call for interchangeable and movable shelter units which can be taken from stock and be put back on stock. Such a system of building movable houses to be assembled or dismounted at will, for the needs of the Army, the Navy, and the working classes combined, |