unable to find decent, low-cost housing commensurate financially with their limited incomes. Since this bill does not call for construction of new units, but rather implements more advantageous utilizations of existing facilities, I believe it is desirable, both economically and socially, and respectfully urge your full consideration of its specifications. PUGET SOUND CHAPTER, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOUSING OFFICIALS, Hon. JACK WESTLAND, House Office Building, Washington, D. C. April 7, 1955. DEAR CONGRESSMAN WESTLAND: At our last meeting of the Puget Sound Chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, the group unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing H. R. 3718, introduced by you, and have asked me to convey to you their support of this measure. It is apparent there is an urgent need of more housing for elderly single persons, but they are not eligible under the present law to move into Federally aided low-rent housing. H. R. 3718 would extend eligibility to such persons. We appreciate your support and interest in securing passage of this measure. Respectfully yours, PAUL D. BINFORD, President, Puget Sound Chapter of NAHRO, Seattle, Wash. Mr. WESTLAND. I have no further comments on this. I believe it is good legislation. I am sure this committee will take proper action on this bill. Thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate your views, Mr. Westland. Mr. O'HARA. Mr. Chairman, may I commend my colleague from Washington for his very fine statement and the stout support that he is giving this type of legislation. I do so much appreciate his contribution. I feel confident that with all of us working together we will make substantial and constructive progress in providing housing especially designed for our senior citizens and within their limited means. Mr. WESTLAND. I thank the gentleman from Illinois for those words, and I am happy to join him in this type of legislation. The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Westland. Call the next witness, Mr. Clerk. Mr. HALLAHAN. The next witness is Congressman Harold O. Lovre. STATEMENT OF HON. HAROLD 0. LOVRE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA Mr. LOVRE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am presenting this testimony in behalf of my bill, H. R. 6414, which would amend title V of the Housing Act of 1949, as amended, and would provide for the insurance of loans thereunder. I first want to thank the members of this committee for allowing me the opportunity to appear. There are today many farmers and ranchers who cannot qualify for loans to remodel their farm dwellings or buildings on their farms. One of the features of H. R. 6414 is to provide authority to insure loans made by private lenders for such purposes. The insured loan program is not new, and it is an integral part of the activities of the Farmers Home Administration. It is good, because it makes credit more accessible to farmers, and it provides greater fund resources than would be available through direct Government loans. There are farmers and ranchers in need of housing loans who cannot qualify because they live on small tracts of land and depend upon leasing arrangements to secure the land needed for their operations. Since the farms on which these people live are not in themselves of sufficient size to constitute family-type farms, the FHA has been unable to assist such applicants. Under H. R. 6414, a farm is described as a parcel, or parcels, of land operated the same as a unit by a person, the majority of whose time is devoted to operating the farm and who receives the majority of his income from farming. It was felt necessary to change the definition of the 1949 act, because many persons who reside in suburban areas were able to obtain loans in spite of the fact that the majority of their income came from other than farm activity. This provision of H. R. 6414 would assure that loans would be made to bona fide farmers. I hope that the committee will give favorable and expeditious consideration to this legislation. Thank you very kindly. The CHAIRMAN. Will you please call the next witness, Mr. Clerk. Mr. HALLAHAN. The next witness, Mr. Chairman, is Charles E. Bennett, a Member of Congress. STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. BENNETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to testify before this committee today on the need for amendments to housing laws to remove a technicality which has prohibited public housing in Florida. Administrator Cole has advised me that the Housing Amendments of 1955 as recommended by his agency are designed to permit public-housing assistance in communities which have workable programs for the prevention and elimination of slums, even though they are not undertaking a redevelopment or urban renewal project assisted under the Housing Act of 1949. I am advised by the housing authority of Jacksonville that while the amendments as proposed by the Housing and Home Finance Agency might be helpful to our housing problems in Jacksonville, it would be of more certain assistance if Congress enacted the provisions of S. 2126 which the Senate has just passed as the proposed Housing Act of 1955. In this connection, I would like to submit for the record a letter which I have received from Mr. R. M. Smith, chairman of the Jacksonville Housing Authority. Mr. Smith's letter explains our needs in relation to pending legislation. The CHAIRMAN. That may be inserted in the record. (The information is as follows:) Hon. CHARLES E. BENNETT, THE HOUSING AUTHORITY OF JACKSONVILLE, Member of Congress, Washington, D. C. Jacksonville, Fla., June 1, 1955. DEAR CHARLIE: Your letter of May 26, to our secretary, Ray O. Edwards, was considered at a meeting of the commissioners of this authority today. Jacksonville is only one city in Florida that is interested in continuing its lowrent housing program. We believe that the Housing Amendments of 1955 sub mitted by Administrator Cole and forwarded to us by you will, if they become law, permit us to continue our program. However, the new omnibus housing bill just reported by the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency is a more honest approach to the housing problems of Jacksonville and of the Nation. At the present time, we have planned 266 additional units, which will be on a slum site, and we have an additional tentative 1,000 units recommended by the city for use in slum-redevelopment work. There is a need at the present time for many more units than the 1,266 proposed for housing Negro families in our community, who cannot be housed by other means. As you were advised in previous correspondence, all our low-rent housing will be placed in present slum areas. This letter is being written with the approval of the other four commissioners of this authority and with the hopes that you will make every effort to secure adoption of the necessary amendments to the housing bill so that this authority and the other authorities in the State of Florida may continue the necessary work of providing housing of an adequate nature for those families who have never been decently housed and who cannot be adequately housed by other means. Sincerely yours, R. M. SMITH, Chairman. Mr. BENNETT. Thank you for permitting me to testify here today. The CHAIRMAN. Call the next witness, Mr. Clerk. Mr. HALLAHAN. That concludes the witnesses we have scheduled, Mr. Chairman. (The following statements were submitted to the committee:) STATEMENT OF HON. SAMUEL N. FRIEDEL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND Mr. FRIEDEL. Mr. Chairman, it is a real pleasure to note the action of the Senate in passing the Democratic-sponsored housing bill, S. 2126, on June 7, known as the Housing Amendments of 1955. I was particularly pleased to notice that the majority of that distinguished body is getting the Congress back on the track once more. For the Housing Act of 1949 authorizes Federal contributions and loans for 810,000 more units of low-rent public housing for 6 years. Under this act, the President could use his discretion in determining the number of units of public housing that could be authorized in a given year. With the advent of the Korean war, he recommended 75,000 units. The Congress limited construction to 50,000 units. Thereafter, it was scaled down to 35,000 units and last year, by limiting the program to cities having slum-clearance programs, it practically stopped public housing. Now the Democratic-sponsored Senate bill has restored the original congressional intent, and provides for 135,000 units a year for 4 years. This is in contrast to the wholly inadequate program of a mere 35,000 units annually for 2 years recommended by the Republican administration. In addition, the Senate bill has added the wholly commendable provision of 10,000 units annually of public housing for elderly persons over a 5-year period. Mr. Chairman, I am going to call your attention to the fact that under this bill, public housing is once again on its own and is no longer hog-tied and limited to slum-clearance programs. This is a very commendable action and I expres the hope that your committee will include it. As all of us know, under previous Democratic legislation, the Federal Housing Administration program has been a real shot in the arm to our business economy. Very appropriately, the Senate bill has added $4 billion to the amount remaining on June 30, 1955, which the FHA can use to insure additional mortgages. With sound judgment and legislative discretion, the Senate has added $425 million additional to be used for city slum-clearance programs, which I heartily approved. I believe it is highly desirable that the Senate increase from $300 million to $500 million the amount of money available for loans for college housing. Mr. Chairman, I was pleased to note that the Federal National Mortgage Association legislation was amended by reducing the interest rate from 3 percent to 2 percent for stock participation. Assuredly this should stimulate additional private financing. There is another commendable feature of the Senate-approved housing bill which should be included in our legislative recommendations. This relates to loans to communities for the planning of normal public works. They are not for defense installations. Rather, they are loans to finance the cost of surveys for necessary public works. It is a source of great satisfaction to me to note that loans will now be available to cities for essential public works. Throughout the country there is a crying need for loans for public works at rates of interest the cities can afford to pay. These should prove extremely helpful. Mr. Chairman, I heartily endorse the Senate bill, S. 2126, and urge the distinguished members of this committee to favorably report this bill. STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD A. GARMATZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND Mr. GARMATZ. Chairman Spence and members of the committee, I am appearing here today primarily as the sponsor of H. R. 377, which I introduced on the opening day of this session of the Congress to repeal the various restrictions adopted in recent years to cripple public housing. The evidence before this committee is clear that public housing construction has come to a standstill and to all intents and purposes is dead and buried as a program of Government. While my testimony will be devoted largely to my own bill on this one phase of housing-that is, the public housing program-I want to say at the start that I am very much in accord with other measures before you to expand and accelerate the urban redevelopment work which has been so successful in the larger cities of the country. Baltimore has been one of the leaders in urban renewal as well as in public housing and in the rehabilitation of existing housing, and so we are naturally very much interested in seeing the basic authority for all of these programs continually kept up to date with current needs. Before going into the details of H. R. 377, I will tell you first what it is I would like to see accomplished. It is this: I would like to see this committee restore the public housing program—that is, the legislative authority for public housing-to the dimensions provided for in the Housing Act of 1949. This act, which the late Senator Taft helped to write and I mention that to show that we Democrats are not the only ones to favor an effective public housing program—the 1949 act, I repeat, provided a standard of 135,000 public housing units a year. It permitted as many as 200,000 in any one year. That is what I would like to see it go back to. If this committee and the Congress should adopt that objective of H. R. 377, it would not mean of course, that the Government would have to build that many units each year. The President would have a wide amount of discretion-in fact he would have complete discretion-in putting the program into effect each year at the levels he thought commensurable with the need and with the economic situation generally. That is a very important point that is often lost sight of. When President Eisenhower says he is willing to settle for 35,000 units a year for just a few years, my bill would not force him to construct more than that during his term. It would allow him, however, to look at the whole problem of public housing not from the standpoint of what he thought he might be able to wheedle out of a reluctant Congress in any one year but rather from the standpoint of what the country needed. I think it is pretty clear that even the limited authority which now rests in the administration to build public housing has not been used in the past year or two with any degree of effectiveness or even interest. If you go through the construction statistics you find public construction of residential building hitting what appears to be new lows, with public housing starts during 1954 about half of those of 1953, which, in turn, were only about half of the number in 1951. Instead of a monthly average of 3,000 or more public housing units which we were still reaching in 1953 on the basis of previous commitments, the record since the adoption of the Housing Act of 1954 shows monthly totals of 200 units, 300 units, 700 units, 900 and so on, with few months showing more than 1,000. So obviously we are not making any kind of production record on public housing; we are not even holding our own-not coming anywhere near building the number of units authorized by the restrictive legislation now in effect. Nevertheless, I think we can now acknowledge the mistakes of last year, admit that they have resulted in the virtual death of public housing, and go on from there. The bill which I have introduced attempts not only to correct the mistakes and restrictions of last year's bill but to go back to other legislative roadblocks beginning with the Independent Offices Appropriations Act of 1953. Thus H. R. 377 would repeal this language of the 1953 appropriation act: + ** notwithstanding the provisions of the United States Housing Act of 1937, as amended, the Public Housing Administration shall not, with respect to projects initiated after March 1, 1949 * * * (2) after the date of approval of this act, enter into any agreement, contract, or other arrangement which will bind the Public Housing Administration with respect to loans, annual contributions, or authorizations for commencement of construction, for dwelling units aggregating in excess of 35,000 to be authorized for commencement of construction during any one fiscal year subsequent to the fiscal year 1953, unless a greater number of units is hereafter authorized by the Congress. Now this, of course, was, at the time, a serious blow for public housing and was one of the first big victories since 1949 for the groups which have been opposing public housing so vigorously. As the members of this committee know, President Truman's budget provided for only 75,000 public housing units a year while the Korean war was in prog |