Chairman PoWELL. Already there is the Haryou Act program, under Mr. Wingate, who is with us today.

Mr. Wingate, served as the special assistant to the chairman for years and now the new special assistant is Chuck Stone, who used to be editor of one of our New York City newspapers.

Do you have any Negro subcontractors on this job?

Mrs. GABEL. Thirty-five percent of all the business, the contracts, is going to Negro subcontractors. In addition, we have one of our most prominent structural engineers in the city who is doing the structural engineering. We have the Dean Protective Service doing all of the protective work on the block.

I believe, Mr. Chairman, that both in terms of participation by work crews and participation by Negro subcontractors, this is the first and the highest percentage in the city of New York in which Negroes are involved as businessmen and workers.

Chairman PoWELL. I know that is true because it has been one of my fights for years to have this come about. I would like to read into the record that the masonry work is being done by a Negro corporation called the White Brothers; the electrical wiring is being done by Niles Electric, Inc.; the painting and sheetrock by the Day Contracting, Inc.; stoves and refrigerators for all the 37 buildings being done by a Negro corporation just 2 blocks away, the New York Gas Maintenance; the protective security by the Dean Protective Association, 307 Lennox Avenue; the structural engineers, Mr. Ewell Finley; Mr. Joseph Beacham, a resident of this block, has been hired to handle all the temporary relocation moves.

At least half of the maintenance repairs are being done by a Negro firm, including the Rawlings J. Bisesar firm. I would like to point out the Haryou Act program has opened an afterschool study center on 114th Street and has an enrollment now of 30 youngsters.

A cadet corps unit under Haryou Act has been organized in this block and has 95 in that cadet corps now. I think this is a very fine record. It is the first time that this has happened that I know of in the city of New York or anywhere else I can think of.

Mr. Roosevelt, the gentleman from California,

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mrs. Gabel, I would like to congratulate you on what, on the record, is obviously a very fine example for many, many other cities. I am glad I am here because I want to be very honest with you. My good city of Los Angeles is way behind you on a lot of these projects.

Mrs. GABEL. If the good Congressman from Los Angeles will invite me out I will be glad to help him set it up.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. I think Congressman Hawkins and I would like to do that.

Chairman PoWELL. If the gentleman will yield, on August 7 there will be hearings in Los Angeles conducted by the gentleman from California, Mr. Hawkins and the gentleman from California, Mr. Roosevelt. If the city is too poor, maybe we can find enough money to send Hortense Gabel out with you.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. That is fine. Now that the chairman has gotten us the money, we will go ahead and do it.

Let me just say to you that I particularly want to endorse your suggestion that we look into the feasibility of setting up a national revolv

ing fund. The national revolving fund can come back and will come back.

I think it is feasible. As far as I am concerned, and I don't mean this in any sense in a critical way of our national policy, if we are going to spend billions of dollars and American lives on trying to tell people how to run their lives in other parts of the world, I would like to see some of that money and more of it put to work right here in the United States.

Thank you very much.

Chairman PoWELL. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Reid.

Mr. REID. Mrs. Gabel, I would like to compliment you on your thoughtful and extremely pertinent testimony and also the initiatives of the Frederick Richmond Foundation and the Carol Houssaman Foundation for making it possible. It seems to me this is a creative program. You have talked about the possibilities of rehabilitating some 500 blocks in Harlem.

Mrs. GABEL. Not in Harlem. All over. We can do more. just aiming for the first year.

I am

Mr. REID. You talked about rehabilitation all over. What do you think are the costs for rehabilitation? You talked about a revolving fund. Have you examined what a national program might be or what a wider program in the city of New York might be?

Mrs. GABEL. I think basically, Mr. Reid, if I may say so, we should walk before we fly. Within the next year or two we will have some 30 or 40 projects hopefully going in the metropolitan area. We still have much to learn. We have a lot to learn about management. We have a great deal to learn about tenant involvement. We no longer can think of, when you have these nonprofit sponsors, of the usual antagonistic relationship between landlord and tenant.

All these are new techniques. I believe that if this committee would consider doing 500 demonstration blocks throughout the country so that we can learn as we do, not just sit around and talk about it, so that we can make mistakes, even, and learn from the mistakes, we will be on the road to new and masive programs.

Chairman POWELL. The gentleman from California desires the gentleman from New York to yield.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mrs. Gabel, in Los Angeles one of our biggest problems has been that when we do a renovating job, we unfortunately move the people out of their homes and we do not bring them back. If I understood you correctly, you said that every family that would be moved from this block during the rebuilding would be brought back to the block if they wanted to come. Is that correct?

Mrs. GABEL. Mr. Roosevelt, no family is being moved from the block. We were fortunate enough to find two buildings here [indicating] and two buildings down there which were empty, which had been vacated by the city because of the exploitative practices of the previous

owners.

We only had to move some 10 families to other vacant apartments on the block. These families, those who have been moved first, will go back to these houses so that they are not moving away from the block.

There were four lines of apartments and they moved in a checkerboard pattern right in the building, in our initial FHA experiment,

52-702-65--3

on West 15th Street. Our first renovation was a difficult one. This came through without poverty funds or HHFA funds. There we had to use conventional financing so that we skimped, there is no question of it.

I had such a desire to keep the rents down. We didn't put the new sash that you see here. We tried to fix up. Sometimes we really have to celan things out. We tried to keep the families in the apartments. That meant that we didn't get rid of all the soggy plaster. So we learned. What we did there was to keep the families in.

The walls are rough, the bathrooms are gorgeous. Somehow everyone wants a beautiful bathroom. But in terms of living, it is better to actually I hope you will have time to see what we are doing insideto actually strip down, to rebuild the walls, so that except for the very solid masonry construction you have here--we don't build them that way in terms of structural soundness--you will have an improvement to a brand new apartment.

This is why the poverty program is so important. We do know that even though we are building or rebuilding at only half the cost of public housing, it costs money.

We just can't do it without it. You need good architects. You need well-trained workmen. You need union workmen, I might say. That is why it is important for Negroes to get in the unions. The unionman does have greater productivity in the long run.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Then it is much better to rebuild these buildings than tear them down, as they are doing in many parts of the country? Mrs. GABEL. I would say there are some buildings which are so far gone that nobody in his right mind would want them to stay up. We do need, for example, in a long block like this-and I hope the next time we can do it-a green corridor through to open some light and air. This is again what I mean, Mr. Reid, about learning through doing. I would be foolish to say that there shouldn't be some re

moval.

But the strengths of the people like this shouldn't be dissipated and where they can be saved, they should be.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Thank you.

Mr. REID. One final question. The housing legislation which was passed in the House a week ago, which I think is important and perhaps a breakthrough in imaginative new planning and rent subsidy, has one provision in it that I would like to ask if it could be applied here.

Increasingly, God willing, with an expanding economy and greater job opportunity, the families in the new housing programs will be able to not be evicted but to purchase their own home and live in it. I think that is pretty important.

What about that here?

Mrs. GABEL. I do, too. We have been working with a group of Negro businessmen who are considering a kind of investment-type co-op, rehabilitated, which would eventually give the families in these apartments the opportunity to purchase their apartments.

Mr. REID. Thank you very much.

Chairman PoWELL. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Dent. Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, let me congratulate the young lady on her testimony.

I think you have been very helpful. You have put your finger on the third basic need of all human beings. The first is food, the second is clothing and the third is shelter. From these stem all the other. Education comes along after these three have been satisfied. There are so many amongst us who would confuse the situation and who are attempting to orient the main part of our efforts in the antipoverty program toward the orientation of a better education. This we need, this we must get. But first let us do what you are doing here, after we have satisfied, and apparently this country can satisfy, all its needs for food and clothing. We have been way behind in satisfying the third greatest need, that of a decent place in which to live and raise your children.

Mrs. GABEL. And raise your children.

Mr. DENT. I think your testimony will be also helpful to us. Again I want to say that, like Jim Roosevelt, if you have time to come out to Pennsylvania, I assure you we will pay your expenses.

Chairman PoWELL. The gentleman from California, Congressman Hawkins.

Mr. HAWKINS. Mrs. Gabel, I want to join Congressman Roosevelt in inviting you out to Los Angeles. Certainly we did not come back here to steal your poverty, but certainly we would like to steal a few of your ideas.

Mrs. GABEL. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Mr. Chairman, I have been very remiss in not acknowledging a remarkable man who lives on this block. He is going to testify later on, Mr. Curtis McFarley. If I may be blunt, gentlemen, without the help of the city of New York, this resident organized his own tenant association. He has been a rock of strength to us. He is a partner in every social endeavor on the block.

Chairman PoWELL. Thank you, Mrs. Gabel.

At this time I would like to call before us Mr. Rawlings J. Bisesar, a general contractor, with offices located at 152 West 138th Street, New York City. He has been in the construction business for over 16 years. He has owned his own firm since 1961. He has been a contractor for these many years.

He has supervised hundreds of jobs. He does have high-quality work. He is also the chairman of the Association of the United Contractors of America, Inc., which is an organization of Harlem contractors.

I understand he has testimony which will be of great interest to all of us.

Mr. Bisesar, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF RAWLINGS J. BISESAR, GENERAL CONTRACTOR, NEW YORK CITY, CHAIRMAN, ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED CONTRACTORS OF AMERICA, INC.

Mr. BISESAR. Mr. Chairman, I am here today to testify. My name is Rawlings J. Bisesar. I am a general contractor, with my office at 152 West 138th Street. I have been in the construction field for about 16 years as a supervisor and also since 1961 I have had my own business

in New York as a general contractor and have done quite a number of major construction jobs in the area. I feel I am qualified to do any type of alteration work which I have done in the past.

I am also chairman of the Association of United Contractors of America, Inc., an organization of local contractors.

I am here today to protest the rank discrimination now being forced on Negro and Puerto Rican contractors and artisans and laborers in this city.

Specifically do I call your attention to the rebuilding of Harlem and related_communities. I refer to both private and public construction. I call your attention to the whole aspect of urban renewal in Harlem, public housing and rehabilitation of this area. We are not getting a square deal in this field, and neither are our architects and subcontractors.

Specifically do I refer to the project on West 114th Street to rehabilitate several buildings there being sponsored by the Richmond Foundation with the explicit cooperation of the Rent and Rehabilitation Administration of the City of New York.

On March 17, 1965, I submitted a bid for $231,000 to H.R.H. Construction Corp. for alteration of three houses in this project at 273, 275, and 277 at West 114th Street. My second bid on this house was submitted April 16, 1965 for $201,300.

My third and final bid for $209,150 was submitted on May 3, 1965. I did not get this job despite my ability to provide the skills, personnel, and bond to meet the contract. I later learned that my final bid was only $4,000 over that of my nearest competitor.

I understand that white contractors got the job in question plus the work on the other 34 buildings, a total of 37.

Chairman PoWELL. The H.R.H. Construction Co. is the company that has the contract for the building and you bid to H.R.H.`as a subcontractor?

Mr. BISESAR. No; general contractor.

My second bid was when I was called to H.R.H. Construction on April 16, and they asked me to resubmit my bid. I then submitted a bid for $201,000. I would like that to go into the record.

Chairman POWELL. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BISESAR. Also, I have another telephone call, I have had a num ber of telephone calls.

On May 3, 1965, I submitted a bid for $290,150 for the three buildings.

Chairman POWELL. Without objection, it is so ordered to be placed into the record.

(The document referred to follows:)

RAWLINGS CONSTRUCTION CO., INC.,
New York, N.Y., May 3, 1965-

H.R.H. CONSTRUCTION CORP.,

New York City.

H. L. HOROWITZ & W. F. CHUN, ARCHITECTS,

New York, N.Y.

GENTLEMEN: Proposed alterations at 273 West 114th Street, New York Cit according to plans drawn by H. L. Horowitz & W. F. Chun, Architects.