programs, metropolitan planning grants, or massive beautification There should be no dobut that ultimately, perhaps in a decade or hence, such ideas will prove helpful and wise to enact-but we are i a trouble spot now to concentrate on the distant future while the in and present hound us in terms of filth, crime, and social distemper. Another example of ill-advised legislation may be found in tha percent interest loan program under section 312 of the 1964 Hou provided up to $10,000 for rehabilitation in urban renewal projec law stipulates that an applicant must prove that he was "unable funds from other sources ***"; as everyone knows, a potential be turned down from "other" (conventional) sources for one of either the property is not an acceptable risk or his credit picture factory (or both). But the law also states that an applicant m ability *** (in the judgment of the agency) to repay the loan" property must furnish satisfactory security for the loan amount. in a nutshell, that the applicant will be turned down by FHA for t reasons that made him eligible for the loan in the first place. quick inquiry into the number of such loans made since inceptio gram will better than any comment demonstrate the futility of s program.

Another object of concern can be found in the topic of rehabilitati of urban rejuvenation that has caught the headlines and attenti us in the more recent past; we ourselves have pounded on this issu in every subsequent testimony thereafter before this committee. final acceptance of the principle by nearly every housing official a the land, we do not even have a definition of the concept in any publ or regulation. The term is applied loosely and vaguely to suit th the position of the user; we find it mentioned in code enforcement ban renewal language, modernization projects for the carriage tra rehabilitation"), eligibility rules for FHA financing, public housin rules, and in a great variety of other activites. We strongly urge at this time, that Congress establish and maintain the true meanin cept by incorporating a clear and legal definition in the National of 1966. We suggest the following version (which was favorably financial associations and civic groups such as ACTION and the Institute):

Rehabilitation is the repair and improvement of existing hou purpose of

1. Restoring safe, sound, and sanitary conditions throughout t 2. Providing satisfactory functioning of modern conveniences: 3. Establishing reasonable livability commensurate with t the occupants; and

4. Securing for the property, under reasonable maintenance, economic life of not less than 25 years.

This leads us to the related subject of the "rehabilitator." With of some large-scale projects that can be handled by big contracto whelming majority of housing improvement operations must be ca that rare species, the small business-type rehabilitation contractor vanishing trades of our time. His function is a very special and hi fied one; he must know many facets in many fields in order to corre structural, functional, environmental, economic, and social cond ailing structure, its rate of decay or obsolescence, its potential for or conversion, the financial standing of its owner and the monetary a resources available for action. On top of all that, he should also with local projects and State or Federal programs that might play a role in the handling of certain properties.

I

There are probably not more than 50 knowledgeable operators of be found in the whole United States-and we need 5,000 or more. these trade specialists (or specialized tradesmen) cannot be trained from other fields in a matter of weeks or even months; to make m nobody so far has given it any thought that we need an immedi program where these professionals can be indoctrinated and made the hundreds of communities where they will soon be needed, to thousands of other tradesmen that must be recruited and trained special skills that rehabilitation requires, and who cannot be trans other occupations or professions because working in older structu

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special knowledge, treatment of materials, and processes that are not applicable anywhere else. No effort at widespread rehabilitation in this country will succeed, whatever the laws, the oratory or the paper projects, unless we first procure the kind of specialists that can carry out the job efficiently and competently; this is a need which affects every community that is or becomes conscious of its ailing inventory and wants to do something about it-with or without Federal assistance.

I would go one step further and suggest that we provide, in the National Housing Act, for a "certified rehabilitator" who, by force of his certification (by FHA or a related agency) would be considered qualified to deal with lenders, owners, housing officials and civic or public agencies as an expert on all matters involved in rehabilitation. We have certified engineers, title I dealers, surveyors, and other professions that require specific qualifications to perform important financial or technical functions; why not accelerate rehabilitation by selective validation of proven skills and knowledge?

As another item in our review of existing problem areas I would like to repeat an earlier suggestion: the creation of an "urban housing agent" at the option of any community with a population over 50,000. This proposal was outlined recently anew in a trade bulletin of our association and I would like to quote some excerpts from it. We stated there that "an urban housing agent is an equivalent to the agricultural county agent. The idea is based on the fact that private citizens, businessmen; civic leaders, service organizations, community officials, public planners, architects, contractors, lenders, and a host of others with an interest in housing are unable to secure all the necessary or desired information about the varied and countless programs, facilities, means, and processes pertinent to their activities, plans or functions. It is also based on the expectation that Government may no longer be able to improve and increase the housing supply, especially for lower and moderate income groups, without a growing participation of, and assistance to, the private sector above and beyond the habitual operations of homebuilding, real estate transactions, and conventional lending on a competitive market. Here are the major conditions which create the urgent need for such an agent:

1. The necessity to use federally assisted programs that are quite complicated, different, hard to interpret and select for each individual plan or project (at least for the majority of small and inexperienced operators who are needed to participate in urban improvements);

2. The growing complexity, strictness, and divergency of local codes, projects, and other regulations affecting housing;

3. The inability of private enterprise-with few laudable exceptions-to assume its role as a participant in publicly initiated projects due to the absence of a well-equipped central source of information that would cover all aspects of Federal, State, municipal, and private resources and processes that should be brought into a concerted drive to improve and increase the existing housing supply."

The urban housing agent, therefore, is needed in practically every community; he is needed to assemble information on the widest possible scale, to dispense it to a great variety of groups and individuals for a great variety of purposes. He should have authority to carry a housing inventory, to act as coodinator among local agencies and between local and State or Federal departments; most of all, he should have access to, and influence with, the many segments of private enterprise, their resources and operational capacity for participation in housing programs. He should be able (and equipped) to guide private citizens or entrepreneurs, civic leaders, venturesome pioneers, lenders and borrowers, private and public programers, urban and suburban antagonists, social or professional service groups and many others, and feed their capabilities into the common effort to raise the standards and the supply of housing. He should not duplicate existing functions or functionaries but fill the wide and complex gap of communication that separates sophisticated laws and facilities from willing but uninformed or misinformed potential participants. He should not be federally employed, locally elected, or restricted to certain cities, certain programs, or certain qualifying conditions such as, the existence of a workable program or Federal assistance in other than renewal projects. His office should be a joint venture between local funding (and authority) and Federal facilities (and grants) for equipping it with the tools, personnel and material needed to fulfill its variegated functions.

Such an urban housing agent or agency should be available upon reqeust by a municipality or representative metropolitan governing body; the program might

be funded by a 50-percent grant from HUD to be matched by an equ (in funds or services) from the municipality. Eligible personnel cruited from the locality (subject to professional qualifications) ar a federally instituted comprehensive training program that wou all facets and aspects of Federal and local resources, facilities, and could contribute to the solution of local housing problems. The a appointed by the Secretary of HUD from a list of candidates sub local government body and he should operate under the authority subject to control by the Secretary.

To more fully evaluate the potential of such an agent or age metropolitan areas-it may help to look at a typical illustration: t contractor who ordinarily deals with remodeling and housing impro is, as a rule, unorganized (professionally), disorganized (financia oriented as to public programs and Federal agencies. Yet, if he reliable, and knowledgeable in his field, he should qualify as a reh very backbone of our national objective to improve existing hou areas. Unfortunately, the average contractor is very much set he abhors FHA programs and procedures of which he knows v resents public housing-for no genuine reasons of his own; he o renewal (usually because someone else he knows does so, too), an want to get involved with city officials any more than necessary reluctant to deal with local lenders, Federal officials, new programs groups and social agencies. How could he, the ever so important rehabilitation, be made to change his mind and attitude and becom working partner in the scheme of things to come? Certainly not stale clarion calls for the challenges of yesteryear or by promoting tions and programs more complicated and restrictive than those he away from. It is truly appalling to see the lack of sensible and pract tation and communication between the administrative and the o of housing, and the situation gets worse with every new law that i every new program or agency that is cerated to implement those laws. In summing up the ailing conditions of the existing apparatus, w following remedies:

1. Review and reshape some present programs criticized above. 2. In doing that-and, in preparing new proposals establish ma sultation with private industry and national public-interest organi to the formulation of legislative material.

3. Authorize the certification of rehabilitators and the establishm housing agents.

4. Institute training programs for rehabilitators and urban housin 5. Define, through legislative act, the term "rehabilitation" and r gibility rules for rehabilitation grants and loans now on the books. I come now to the part of my testimony concerning legislation pe you. Let me comment first on the Demonstration Cities Act of 1966 to have received overwhelming approval by most witnesses. I can suspect that some of these well-meaning supporters apparently d realize exactly what they supported for, a closer look at the text reveals some disturbing facts.

(a) Congress is to "find and declare" that the "most critical de lem" in the United States is "improving the quality of urban life. thought that urban life is a thousandfold manifestation of soc economic, emotional, and cultural forces that find their way into and doing of people, something that can be gradually changed or imp endless variety of individual actions on the part of a teacher, a stre neighborhood leader, a new teacher group, a newspaper, mayor, minister to name a few. Does the Congress really want to usurp tions? Shouldn't we believe that the most critical domestic pro United States is the war against poverty, or the lack of enough ade tion, or of decent housing, or the need for fighting discrimination in The quality of urban life is founded on the freedom of choice and the discretion to use or ignore the fruits of liberty in his pursuit of hap there is, in a democracy, very little that Congress, the President, captain can do about that.

(b) If the preamble is considered bad, what comes afterward is To begin with. it states that cities "do not have adequate resources t tively with the critical problems facing them***". This is the admission-purported to come by congressional declaration-that we

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years of renewal programs and billions of dollars, all designed to arouse and sustain those resources in our cities. Even the most biased critic of Federal housing programs would resent such a flat defamation of national and local efforts to improve urban ills. The bill then proceeds to authorize "comprehensive city demonstration programs." I wonder what has become of our comprehensive community renewal program as established by Congress many years ago: has it been abolished, found unworkable or wrong to such an extent that we must now start it all over again on a "demonstration" basis? Section 4 of this bill repeats by and large-although with semantic deviations-the original objectives of the old community renewal program and it makes sure, as an additional "incentive," that all existing Federal and/or local programs are obligatorily integrated into the new umbrella concept-which sounds very much like slapping a brandnew 10 gallon hat on an old head full of sores: it will cover them up allright for the Fourth of July parade, but it certainly will not cure them.

To illustrate the repulsive featherbedding of this proposed machinery, let's look at sections 5 and 6 of this bill. They provide, as the proverbial carrot in front of the ass' hungry i, "financial assistance"; naturally, everybody likes that but that assistance is not offered to improve existing housing, create better lending tools, stimulate local participation or private initiative. It is merely "financial assistance for planning." Now, we have such planning assistance in force in the form of grants or loans for

Small areas.

Localities in redevelopment areas.

Metropolitan, regional, and other areas.

States for comprehensive planning.

Interstate planning.

Advisory services to small communities.

Preparation of community renewal programs.

Planning of general neighborhood renewal projects.

Specific project planning.

Open space land planning.

Urban renewal demonstration projects.

And this is not a complete list of all planning assistance schemes now available under legislation enacted prior to 1966. As you can see, the bureaucratic octopus is gradually growing into an enormous centipede—and this is just for “planning" facilities. To think that some of these existing planning aids might help improving urban conditions seems no longer correct for, we are now getting a new supertool to pay cities 90 percent of the costs of planning comprehensive city demonstration programs. The stated purpose of this monstrosity is to enable cities to rebuild or revitalize large slums and blighted areas, to participate more effectively in existing Federal assistance programs, to coordinate activities aided under existing Federal programs, or, in plain words-the erudite details of the bill's language notwithstanding-to duplicate most of the objectives already covered by existing programs with the addition of a new Federal coordinator who would certainly be of utmost importance-if for no other reason so as to determine what money would come from which source for what program by whose authority in what amount for which time.

It must safely be assumed that the President's appeal to Government workers and agencies to save money wherever possible did not in time penetrate to the originators of this bill-or it would not be before you today. Moreover, in this year, where urban renewal appropriations for existing programs run $1 billion behind schedule. how can we sanely allow additional huge sums for a shining new superstructure that is not designed to add or improve housing but to more deeply intertwine existing malfunctions and to give new funds, new jobs, and new assignments to an undeserving army of finagling bureaucrats, fledgling attorneys, frustrated social workers, and hypertrophic planning aspirants?

The Urban Development Act is a type of legislation that does not fall within the framework of our professional activities and I don't consider it proper to voice any opinion on its merits except for its title IV (grants for urban information centers). There is no question about the need for an urban information center in many of our cities; we have expressed our views on this topic earlier in this testimony. We find it rather wasteful, however, to make available Federal grants for demonstration projects on a State or metropolitan level, at least at this time. Furthermore, there is an experimental project authority now in existence which has operated very successfully in the past and could probably assume the experimental functions, if any, that might prove useful in a demonstra

tion program to precede our urban housing agent proposal. We woul see the provisions of section 404 (b) of this title reversed since no su tion center could serve any worthwhile purpose unless it could be day-to-day operations of public and private individuals and agenci I would like to close my testimony on a somewhat more encouragi respect to the Housing and Urban Development amendments. There very sound and helpful suggestions.

The provision allowing lenders to charge the insurance premium t should prove a welcome stimulant especially to lenders outside of u where title I loans are still not in sufficient use. The lenders we ha approve of this change and we hope that you will adopt it, perhaps e the one year limitation.

The increase of mortgage limits under section 221-d-2 has been r long time. Here again, I cannot help but repeat that laxity on FHA in promoting this fine lending tool, especially for rehabilitation structures, should swiftly be replaced by sincere and intensive effort this loan program at the grassroots. Its potential effectiveness could ably increased if the present limitations on nonoccupant owners a units for operative builders would be liberalized so as to give aid to t 1-to-4 unit buildings in need of rehabilitation that are not (or would or leased and therefore not eligible for this facility.

Equally recommendable are sections 104 to 106 of this bill; in sec suggest that the term "displaced families" be changed to "eligible and families" so as to cover other needy applicants, especially large i handicapped or elderly individuals.

If some of the preceding remarks may seem bitter and at times abra to make it very clear that such an attitude stems from professional ment and a very strong desire to introduce constructive elements tied to workable suggestions into the fabric of these hearings. We ov no allegiance to any party or faction, we grind nobody else's axes but and that one is needed to chop down some of the rotten wood that is public as "housing programs" and to shape new and better framing tha the stress and strain of a bulging population, a growing economy and ing inventory of decent housing for lower income brackets, especiall ing urban areas. Years ago the emphasis was laid on redevelopment have swung around full circle to rehabilitation and rejuvenation; th specialists who now belong to a vanishing profession. If your legisla cannot resurrect that profession and give it handy and effective to with we shall soon see the pendulum swing back to the bulldozer a the exodus to suburbia and the little boxes that get smaller and shab year until they will become "good enough" for the influx of margina lers and those that feed on their misery.

In closing, we recommend that Congress take a close and hard 1 existing arsenal of housing programs and in so doing concentrate in which the weapons in this arsenal are now used, abused or unu should emerge some significant discoveries which could lead to healthy needed reforms at a mere fraction of the costs that loom ahead if s bills now pending were enacted. But the advantages in savings will as essential as the fruits in better working tools and assistance funct The present housing dilemma in our cities will not be judged and how much we do but by how well we do it. It may appear that only the toolmaker but has no control over the use of the product "in We feel that, since Congress is paying for running the shop (through tion of funds), it should take an occasional look-see at the way thes used and whether the customers get their (and our) money's wor services they so badly need.

I thank you again for the opportunity to present our views befor mittee.

Senator PROXMIRE. The committee will stand in recess morrow at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 1:10 p.m., the meeting recessed to reconv a.m. on Friday, April 22, 1966.)