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ress, but then this rider to the appropriation bill for the 1952–53 fiscal year reduced that further to 35,000 units. But the program kept going, and it kept going to the full limit of that authorization.

The following year, however, the 83d Congress, in the first Independent Offices Appropriation Act for the 1954 fiscal year starting July 1, 1953, contained this further restriction:

* 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 new agreements, contracts, or other arrangements, preliminary or otherwise, which will ultimately bind the Public Housing Administration during fiscal year 1954 or for any future years with respect to loans or annual contributions for any additional dwelling units or projects unless hereafter authorized by the Congress to do so.

Now this, of course, completed the hatchet job on public housing through riders on appropriations bills. From 35,000 units a year—a cut in half from the Truman budget-we then went down to no units— no new units-as the law of the land.

H. R. 377, therefore, repeals the continuing prohibitions on public housing from both the 1953 and 1954 appropriations acts.

The third legislative provision on public housing which H. R. 377 would repeal in section 401 (I), Housing Act of 1954:

Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the Public Housing Administration may, with respect to low-rent housing projects initiated after March 1, 1949, enter into new contracts, agreements, or other arrangements during the fiscal year 1955 for loans and annual contributions pursuant to the United States Housing Act of 1937, as amended, with respect to not exceeding 35,000 additional units: Provided, That no such new contract, agreement, or other arrangement shall be made except with respect to low-rent housing projects to be undertaken in a community in which there is being carried out a slum clearance and urban redevelopment project, or a slum clearance and urban renewal project, assisted under title I of the Housing Act of 1949, as amended, and the local governing body of the community undertaking such slum clearance and urban redevelopment project, or slum clearance and urban renewal project, certifies that such low-rent housing project is necessary to assist in meeting the relocation requirements of section 105 (c) of title I of the Housing Act of 1949, as amended: And provided further, That the total number of dwelling units in low-rent housing projects covered by such new contracts, agreements, or other arrangements shall not exceed the total number of such dwelling units which the Administrator determines to be needed for the relocation of families to be displaced as a result of Federal, State, or local governmental action in such community.

This provision gives the impression that we have a public housing program but as a practical matter we know that virtually none of the 35,000 units it purports to authorize has actually been approved for construction. Many of us warned last year that it would build no housing and of course it has built no housing. It should be repealed in toto.

And rather than settle for this very inadequate number of 35,000 units a year recommended by the President, I urge you to go back to the 1949 act, as my bill would do, and let us have once again a public housing program that builds public housing, that builds enough publice housing to make at least a dent in the serious needs of our cities. As the spokesman for the American Municipal Association, Mayor Clark, of Philadelphia, told you earlier in these hearings, Philadelphia alone needed 70,000 new units all by itself as of 1950. In the case of Baltimore we have been working steadily at the problem of expending our housing facilities and our housing authority, which

is one of the best, has had a number of projects waiting in line for authorization and for construction committments, projects which have been held up because of the restrictions in the 1954 act.

The redtape, the statistical analyses, the studies and surveys required under the 1954 act before a community could get any part of the 35,000 units which were supposed to have been authorized by the act have made a frightful and chaotic situation out of public housing everywhere. Even a city like Baltimore which has been on top of this whole problem over a period of years and which has had certainly one of the best "workable programs" in the country has been put to tremendous work tied up in the most elaborate kind of redtape. For these and other reasons well known to this committee, I urge you with all the emphasis I can command to repeal these bad mistakes which Congress has made on public housing in the last 2 years and, as I said, give us a real program, a workable program, an effective program which will help get people out of slums and into decent accommodations at rents they can afford. Bring sunlight into the lives of people living in dark alleys.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well. This concludes the open hearings. The committee will stand adjourned until the call of the Chair.

(Whereupon, at 11:34 a. m., the committee adjourned until the call of the Chair.)

(The following communications were submitted to the committee:)

Hon. BRENT SPENCE,

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CHAPTER,
Washington, D. C., June 13, 1955.

House Office Building, Washington 25, D. C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN: In view of the fact that hearings on H. R. 5827 have apparently been closed, I should like to submit the enclosed statement on behalf of the District of Columbia Chapter, American Association of Social Workers. All of us are aware of the great efforts you have expended to provide the Nation with an adequate housing program. We applaud you for it and urge you to continue to do everything possible to relate us back to the Housing Act of 1949.

Sincerely yours,

PHILIP SCHIFF, Chairman, Federal Legislation Committee.

STATEMENT ON H. R. 5827, FOR THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CHAPTER

For many years the American Association of Social Workers has been concerned with housing conditions in our Nation. We are therefore gratified that the Senate has passed its bill, S. 2126, which will once again provide a real basis for the housing so badly needed for a large segment of our people and hope that H. R. 5827 now under consideration by the House will be related to the bill passed by the Senate. We believe that the housing problem which confronts the Nation deserves full bipartisan consideration since the economic health of all of us is concerned with decent housing conditions. We believe we can therefore build upon the principle accepted by the administration that public housing is essential for certain segments of our people. But the administration recommendations have not gone far enough in terms of the total number of units requested.

We believe that those who represent rural and suburban areas in the House must realize by this time that the economic well-being of the Nation depends upon the complete integration and understanding of city and farm representatives concerning each other's needs. They are surely aware that adequate shelter and a decent environment in which to rear one's family are needs common to all our people. They know that aside from all the social evils which result 63137-55-40

from slums and substandard housing, that slums consume 45 percent of the municipal and county budgets. We believe all members of the House surely realize that S. 2126 is not a city versus farm bill, but is a bill for all Americans and prejudice and bias of one segment of the population toward another, if they exist, have no place in consideration of such a bill. If anything, a combination of city and farm votes in the House will help dispel forever any ideas that there exists a conflict of interests between our rural and urban communities.

An article from the American Banker of December 16, 1954, from which we quote, will, we believe, indicate how unfair and misleading are the attacks on the public housing program by such organizations as the National Association of Real Estate Boards:

"Unrealistic indeed would be the man, who, after examining with any understanding the living conditions in the slum or poorer districts in most of our larger cities, would contend that housing facilities do not need substantial improvement. "There is involved far more than a desirable betterment for general social and welfare purposes. Public health which quite directly concerns our body politic, is clearly threatened by the absence of sanitary precautions; contagious diseases and avoidable illnesses are fostered by conditions prevailing in some of these areas.

"Public safety is also endangered by the old and dilapidated buildings creating serious fire hazards as well as being a menace to proper moral and social standards and concepts."

Congress, itself, established a national policy of decent homes for the average American family when it passed the United States Housing Act of 1937. The Housing Act of 1949 reiterated this policy and provided for an expansion of the program. We're dealing here with a program which has always had bipartisan backing. The late Senator Taft was a leading spirit in the passage of this act and his comment in April 1929 is worthwhile recording when he said, "The housing situation is one of the most important social and economic problems before the people of the United States. * * * I think the reason why our system has not provided decent homes arises out of one basic fact-that the cost of housing is too high for the income of the people."

We urge the House to think in terms of rooting out this moral cancer of substandard housing from the body politic of the Nation and in its place provide the life-giving qualities of our vibrant and pulsating democracy.

STATEMENT OF FERN M. COLBURN, SECRETARY, SOCIAL EDUCATION AND ACTION COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS, NEW YORK, N. Y.

The National Federation of Settlements has 263 member houses located in 31 States and 87 cities.

The National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers has long been concerned with the need for good housing for every family. It has favored public housing from the beginning. Many public housing projects are located in settlement neighborhoods. The Vladeck houses in the Henry Street Settlement neighborhood of New York and the Jane Addams houses in the Hull House neighborhood of Chicago were our first experience with this program. Since that time as more public housing has been built, the majority of our member houses work with families who live in public housing. In addition, a sizable number of settlements operate programs in the tenant activity space of public housing projects. We, therefore, have a firsthand connection with this program and know whereof we speak when we discuss this situation.

The Congress should be proud today that some 360,000 families of our country who previously occupied slum hovels are today housed or about to be housed in decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings. We are proud that we have had a part in helping to bring this about. We know firsthand the benefits of good housing.

Every day of delay in passage of the legislation before this committee adds to the number of slum units in our country. The reason for this is that through various programs both public and private, we are rebuilding our cities. There are few of these programs that do not displace families, and most of them displace a sizable number of families. Since nearly half of all families displaced in slum areas are in the income group eligible for public housing, that exists in too scanty a degree for today's needs, where are they going? The settlement workers are finding them crowded into single-family houses far too often living 1 family to

a room, or at best the 6- or 8-room single family house cut up into 2 or 4 apartments with a family in each. These houses are usually illegally divided and are almost always without basic sanitary facilities for more than one family. In too many cases the facilities were not in good condition to begin with. When we began the fight for decent housing in the early 1900's, Jacob Riis wrote a vivid description of the tenement that aroused the Nation. Today we have many of the same type of tenements-the difference is that these buildings, which have long been worn out, are housing more people and housing 1 family to a room instead of 1 family to a tenement. These are the kind of conditions we are calling upon the Congress to correct. Thousands of today's families live in houses completely unfit for human habitation.

The East Akron Community House in Akron, Ohio, witnessed the tearing down of some 600 houses in their neighborhood in 1954. Accordingly, they made a study as to where these families went. The study is titled, "Where Will They Go?" We quote the following from this study.

"FINDINGS IN BRIEF

"The effect of this move on the white families and their present living conditions are very different from those of the Negro families. For that reason the findings are reported separately for Negro and for white.

"Profile of the Average White Family Interviewed

"1. The average white family required 7 weeks to find a home after they had started to look in earnest. Almost 80 percent of the families found the home through a real-estate agency or the want ads of the Beacon Journal. Ten percent of the families that are renting have moved at least once after their initial move from the 'mobile houses.'

"2. Sixty-two percent are paying between $50 and $75 monthly as rent or mortgage installments. Only 16 percent have monthly payments that are under $50. The balance (22 percent) are paying $75 to $100.

"3. The average white family consists of 2 adults and 2 children living in a 5-room house or apartment. They average 1.3 rooms per member of the family. All of the families that are buying a house and one-half of the families that are renting have larger rooms than they had in the mobile houses. One-fourth of the families renting have smaller rooms.

"4. All of the white families that are renting have a private kitchen, but 10 percent have to share the bath with another family and 21 percent have to share a common entrance. One-fourth of the families have to share either the bath or the entrance with another family.

"5. One-half of the white families interviewed are buying their own home. In many cases, these are new houses. Twenty-two percent paid under $7,500, forty-four percent paid between $7,500 and $10,000, and thiry-four percent paid over $10,000.

"6. Apparently the move had no particular adverse effect on the family's health. Thirty-nine percent of the families that are buying feel that health has been improved.

"7. The white families that are buying like their new house and the neighborhood just as much or more than they did the mobile houses. One-fourth of the families that are renting like either the house or the negihborhood less.

"8. All of the white families that are buying bought a single-family house. Twenty-one percent of the families that are renting are living in single-family houses. Sixteen percent are living in duplexes. Sixty-three percent are renting apartments (including 5 percent who moved into housing units managed by the . Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority). None of the families interviewed had to double up with relatives or move into houses that have been converted to multifamily dwellings.

"Profile of the Average Negro Family Interviewed

"1. The average Negro family looked for more than 20 weeks before they found a house. Ninety percent of the families that are buying found their house through a real estate agency or the want ads in the Beacon Journal. Eightythree percent of the families that are renting finally moved into a home that they had learned about through friends or relatives. Ten percent of the families have moved at least once since their initial move out of the 'mobile houses.'

"2. Almost 60 percent of the families that are renting pay under $50 a month rent. One-sixth of these families have doubled up with relatives. Thirty-eight

percent of the families renting and fifty-five percent of the families buying make monthly payments between $50 and $75. Forty-five percent of the families buying have monthly mortgage payments of over $75.

"3. The average Negro family consists of 2 adults and 2 children. The families that are renting are smaller than those that are buying. One out of every five families have on additional relative living with them. The families that are renting have, on the average, only 31⁄2 rooms and have less than 1 room per member of the family-the only group in this situation. The families that bought average 6 rooms and have 1.2 rooms per person. Almost one-third of the families renting have smaller rooms now than they had in the mobile houses. The other two-thirds of the renters and all of the families buying have the same size or larger rooms.

"4. One-fourth of the Negro families that are renting have to share the kitchen facilities. More than one-half of the families have to share the bath. More than one-third of the families have no private entrance. Sixty-two percent of the families have to share one or more of these basic facilities with another family. One family did not have any running water and was dependent on an outside pump.

"5. One-fourth of the Negro families that were interviewed are buying their own home. In most cases, these are older homes. Twenty-seven percent paid under $7,500, sixty-four percent paid $7,500 to $10,000. Only 1 family had paid more than $10,000. Thirty-six percent of the families financed the purchase with a land contract. Twenty-seven percent of the families buying homes were able to do so only by borrowing all or part of the downpayment. The average downpayment was $1,355.

"6. Eighteen percent of the Negro families feel that the move into the present living quarters, has had an adverse effect on the family's health. Only 8 percent feel the move has caused an improvement.

"7. Most of the Negro families that are buying like their present house and neighborhood more than they did the mobile houses. One-half of the families renting like their present homes less. The main reasons cited were (1) overcrowded quarters, (2) adverse effect on health, (3) undesirable or inconvenient locations, and (4) evidences of racial prejudice.

"8. Forty percent of the Negro families are living alone in single houses. Twenty-three percent are living in houses that have been converted to multifamily dwellings. Thirteen percent have doubled up with relatives. Many extreme cases of undesirable living conditions were apparent. Several families are living in apartments heated with unvented gas stoves. One family is living in a building where 18 children and 9 adults share just 2 bedrooms. Several families are living in attic apartments and others are living in the ordinary basements of houses. In one house the wiring was obviously unsafe and represented a hazard."

The urban renewal program has great possibilities for rebuilding our cities. However, the urban renewal program will but create more slums unless we first build more houses to put the people in before we force families to seek refuge in ways described above. The public housing program is essential if urban renewal is to succeed. I cannot state this too strongly. I have visited or had reports from most of the cities wherein workable programs have been approved and I can assure this committee that not one of these cities has adequate housing whereby the families to be displaced can find safe and sanitary dwellings as required by the law. The figures on vacant units and units under construction may seem to balance with the number of families to be displaced (although I have yet to find one city where this is true), the fact remains that the available houses are not in the price range of families to be moved, or the owner will not sell or rent to minority families, or no units large enough for the large families are available.

Therefore, private housing cannot provide for approximately half of the families to be moved in urban centers. In addition there is no provision in our cities to house the families in that 20 percent gap between families eligible for public housing and the lowest market in private housing.

We do not advocate that public housing be available only to communities that have an urban renewal program. The country has witnessed the fallacy of that during this past year.

By action of our annual delegate meeting in San Francisco, Calif., May 29, 1955, we urged Congress to build annually 200,000 public housing units. May I, therefore, point out that the 165,000 units envisioned in the bill now before this

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