HOUSING AMENDMENTS OF 1955 MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1955 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 a. m., the Honorable Brent Spence, chairman, presiding. Present: Chairman Spence (presiding) and Messrs. Brown, Patman, Rains, O'Hara, Fountain, Ashley, Wolcott, Talle, Kilburn, McDonough, Betts, and Nicholson. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. We will resume hearings on H. R. 5827 and related bills. Mr. FINK. The first witness is Mr. Walter B. Mills, president, National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have your views, Mr. Mills. I understand you come from a district which is represented by Congressman Rains. Mr. MILLS. That is right, sir. The CHAIRMAN. A very able, very industrious, and very efficient Congressman, and a real authority on the subject on which you are now about to give your testimony. Mr. MILLS. Thank you, sir; we appreciate that very much. Mr. RAINS. Mr. Chairman, Walter B. Mills is from my hometown. He has spent a great many years in the housing business, and I sincerely believe there isn't a housing director in the United States who knows more about the business. He is president of the National Association of Housing Officials, and I am sure he has done a good job. He is one of the outstanding leaders in my hometown, and I am very proud to have him here this morning. Mr. MILLS. Thank you very much, Mr. Rains. The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed just as you desire, Mr. Mills. STATEMENT OF WALTER B. MILLS, JR., PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT OFFICIALS Mr. MILLS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me this morning Mr. John D. Lane, executive director of the National Association of Housing and Dedevelopment Officials, and Mr. John Searles, who is president of the redevelopment section of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials who is supposed to be here, and I am sure he will be before my testimony is concluded. As you know, our association is broken up into sections, primarily to concern themselves with special problems and special interests, and that is the field of urban renewal and urban redevelopment. In addition to being president of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, I am director of the Greater Gadsden Housing Authority at Gadsden, Ala. I am appearing this morning as president of the association. The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials is a nonprofit, professional association of citizens and local public officials interested in furthering good public administration in the fields of housing and urban redevelopment. The members of our organization are by and large those who are administering the public housing and urban renewal programs in cities throughout the United States. We have a real interest in the legislation, therefore, for we are anxious that it provide the best possible tools to enable us to assist in carrying out its objectives. Public housing: In our analysis of the current public housing scene, five basic issues arise in considering H. R. 5827 and related bills. 1. The relationship of this program to the overall urban renewal program. 2. The number of units that the program should cover. 3. The number of years allowed for planning. 4. How to adapt the public housing program to meet the special and growing needs of the aged. 5. How to adapt the public housing program to meet the special needs of single person families, with no reference to age. In the comments that follow we shall indicate our position on all five points in commenting on the specific wording of the bills. An official analysis of S. 1800 says that the provisions on public housing are geared to "maintain the basic purpose of meeting the relocation needs of families of low income displaced by slum clearance and urban renewal projects ***” Under the new concept of "urban renewal," public housing programing should certainly be geared to the displacement plans of code enforcement agencies, private enterprise, redevelopment projects, and such public programs as highway construction, school building, etc., all of which will entail clearance and rebuilding. At this very early stage in the urban renewal program, however, we are convinced that public housing should be encouraged to move forward as quickly as possible in order to develop an adequate relocation housing resource for the time when the renewal program really begins to take hold and roll. Specifically, we would like to see some further modification than that proposed in H. R. 5827 of the limitations on the public housing program carried in the 1954 Housing Act. In that act, it will be recalled no public housing could be authorized except in communities in which a federally aided title I redevelopment project was being carried out. That limitation has been liberalized in H. R. 5827 by (1) permitting public housing in communities without such projects in process but (2) requiring that the "workable program" requirement of the 1954 Housing Act be met, and (3) waiving the workable program requirement for communities where title I projects were being carried out prior to passage of the Housing Act of 1954. We are pleased with the first provision, since it opens the way for public housing assistance to communities that are carrying on either city, State, or privately aided redevelopment and renewal projects. The second provision, however, does, in our view, require some temporary, and we emphasize the word, softening. Many of the elements of a workable program require many months to initiate-and years to achieve. For example, a community without a housing standards code may well take 2 years to get such a code drawn, adopted, and installed. In that interval a public housing program can be put underway and an inventory of low-rental units can become available just when the first code displacement families need relocation housing. Also, it is not hard to anticipate that there will be many communities in which there as an urgent, immediate need for low-rental housing where none of the components of a workable program have been given attention. It seems to us that this community should be given financial assistance for low-rental program and, concurrently, encouraged to begin work on a workable program. The law could carry a stipulation that such a community would not be given assistance for additional projects, and assistance might be halted short of the actual contributions contract, if evidence were not available within a year or 2 years that work had been started to qualify the community under workable program standards. In short, it seems to us that many communities can be completely discouraged from doing an urban renewal job if they can see no immediate help coming to them to meet their key problem in removing substandard housing and in relieving overcrowding; that is, the provision of an additional housing supply for families of low income. As Public Housing Administration Commissioner Slusser has already pointed out to this committee, it takes 12 to 18 months to plan and acquire land for a public-housing project, and an equal period to complete it for occupancy. Any delay in starting a community on this 2- to 3-year job is a delay in the entire renewal process. Specifically, then, we should like to see H. R. 5827 provide that a community may qualify for Federal assistance for public housing under the criteria of need developed in the United States Housing Act of 1937 and the Housing Act of 1949, provided that it simultaneously begins to develop a workable program for the community. Administrative latitude should be given Housing and Home Finance Agency for determining a reasonable time limit by which such a program should be submitted and, further, it should be within the province of Housing and Home Finance Agency to refuse additional public housing assistance if no progress on the workable program has been made. There is no lack of evidence as to the extent of need for a publichousing program. Perhaps the best statement comes from the report of the President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, which estimates that something like 10 million families may have to move if we are to do an adequate urban renewal job. It is further estimated that half of these families will qualify, incomewise, for public housing. In the face of this need, an annual public housing program of 35,000 units for the next 2 years is a totally inadequate program. Further, to allow the program only a 2-year life span is totally unrealistic. Again, as Public Housing Administration Commissioner Slusser has already testified, no agency, Federal or local, can adequately staff itself or plan its program without some "fixed and definite goals *** toward which it could work at a uniform rate over a period of several years." We should like to revert to the terms of the Housing Act of 1949; a 6-year program, with the President to exercise authority to vary the volume between the 200,000 and 50,000 annual rate scaled to fit into the economic picture as of any one year. Under this heading of program size, we should like to refer to Senator Sparkman's bill, S. 1642, the proposed annual program of 50,000 public-housing units for aged families over the next 5 years. With the 35,000 units proposed in S. 1800, and with the new 2-year deadline for getting units under contract, we have as an annual program of 85,000 units with 1958 and 1960 as terminal dates. This combined picture is, of course, a decided improvement over the provisions of H. R. 5827 alone. However, we should like to comment more extensively on the Sparkman bill under the specialized heading of housing for the aged. And here, Mr. Chairman, I would like to digress from my testimony to say that I probably better than most people who have spoken to this committee know the great problem that the Public Housing Administration has had in recruiting and keeping qualified, competent people to assist local communities. The short life span of the housing program from year to year, dependent upon appropriations in the acts of Congress, has made it unattractive for competent people to seek employment or to continue employment in that agency, rather than in trying to go to programs with a continuing life span. We recognize that a great deal of Federal assistance is necessary, but not Federal dictation, and to have competent people who are big enough to realize that and to keep them in a program, certainly you should breathe the breath of life of a long period of time into the program so that a Federal employee who is competent will seek employment and will work for the Federal agency who cooperates with local communities. Having said that, sir, I will go back to the text of my testimony, and I would like to speak for a moment about housing for the aged. This association takes some pride in the pioneering efforts that public housing has already exerted in this field. Local housing authorities have long recognized the pathetic, often tragic, needs of aged couples and single persons for housing. They have tried to meet these needs in spite of the limitations of the present public-housing law. In New York and Massachusetts, State help has been available. In other instances, in Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Providence, St. Louis, San Francisco, housing authorities have exerted considerable ingenuity in adapting their federally aided programs to assist aged families. They have built, or are planning to build, units especially designed for older people; they have worked with community service agencies to develop programs that bring health, housekeeping, social, and financial assistance to such families. Housing authorities, however, see a tremendously growing set of problems in this area of special assistance and, of course, they see a continuously expanding need for the housing itself for aging families, to meet the mounting proportion of our population in the "over 65" category. Therefore, the association expresses real appreciation for the proposed legislation that would qualify single aged persons for occupancy in the present public-housing program, thus solving one of the very special and very unfortunate problems of the existing program. The association's position on these bills can be stated as follows: 1. The provision of housing for the aged is inextricably interwoven in the whole question of the economic and social needs of the aged, and it is our hope that any long-range public housing program would be developed as a part of a program focused on the entire area of need. Meanwhile, however, public housing should certainly be serving these families without the restraints of present legislation. 2. Rather than have a supplementary program, we should like to see the public-housing program increased in size with a certain percentage allocated to aged families. In the New York State program, 6 percent of all housing built by an authority is allocated for the aged and for certain types of invalided persons. For the time being, we would accept this percentage as workable, pending the time when the general problem is more clearly understood and a general program is developed. 3. We should like to have the basic legislation amended to give occupancy preference to the aged on 6 percent of all vacancies in existing units. 4. We should like to have the basic legislation amended to permit single aged persons to be accepted for occupancy and continued residence in public housing. 5. We should like to have the basic legislation amended to overcome a very special eligibility problem of aged families. The present law requires that, to be eligible for public housing, a family must not only meet the income requirements of an authority but must come, except in the case of veterans, from substandard housing. Local housing authorities in all parts of the country find that aged families are frequently living in standard dwellings, family homes where they have lived for many years. Such homes are frequently too large for the family's needs and economically too expensive for them to maintain. Further, as the families grow older, the upkeep of the property is completely beyond their abilities. Hence, it is proposed that for aged families the substandard housing requirement be waived and that special eligibility criteria relating to the physical and economic capacity of a family to continue living in its present housing be developed. 6. The association endorses the provision of the Sparkman bill that would make it possible to provide housing for the aged in remodeled existing housing as well as in new or existing projects. There is nothing in the basic law that prevents local authorities from rehabilitating properties for public housing use, but there has been a strong administrative bias against it on the grounds of economic infeasibility. With the smaller units required for aged families, and with the special management problems that such housing may pose, it is quite possible that a remodeling and rehabilitation program for such families might well prove to be economically sound. Therefore, we should like to see the law amended so that local authorities would be encouraged to give such an approach careful, analytical attention, when they plan a program for the aged. As more and more urban renewal programs get underway, more and more special relocation housing problems develop. One such problem is providing relocation housing for single-person families other than aged persons. For example, in Sacramento, the redevelop |