Senator Joseph Tydings recently said that, "While business and residential growth in suburban areas is certainly desirable, all of this growth must not be concentrated in the suburbs while the center city becomes a massive poverty-stricken zone ***This unbalanced developmen in the metropolitan area is inherently undesirable, and will severely damage the entire area by creating a stagnating slum at the heart of the Nation's Capital."

Gentlemen, I think this is exactly what is happening in the city.

As a matter of fact, in their letter of this past weekend, the District Commissioners lambasted the 1985 Plan and, according to a report in the Washington Post, said, the Commissioners said "that downtown jobs are crucial for 'the District's predominantly Negro low-income families' who cannot get housing in the suburbs or adequate transportation to suburban employment centers."

Now, the District Commissioners painted a grim picture of the situation created as a result of the condition arising because the District's low-income Negro families cannot get housing in the suburbs or adequate transportation to the jobs. And they said that the city is "a city where more than one-third of the population needs assistance in order to be adequately housed, where poverty reduces life to a subsistence level, where the crime rate prompts national headlines and where educational needs go unmet year after year".

A subway runs two ways. It can bring people in and take people out to work. This Committee can adopt H.R. 11395 so that this $500 million subway can aggravate the bleak and dismal picture sketched by the District Commissioners, or it can amend or reject H.R. 11395 so that the Columbia Heights Subway will be built to serve the 500,000 people of north central Washington, as well as the suburbs.

A day or two ago in this very Committee Room, Congressman Joel Broyhill said that he was inclined to doubt very much if the Congress would vote an added $40 million which would be required to extend this subway into Maryland and Virginia at this time. If this is so, shouldn't this Committee question whether Congress is willing to vote more than $40,000,000 required to provide the four stops for the Independence Avenue loop, that is, at the Federal Triangle, Agriculture, HUD, and HEW stations, which would be respectively three, six, four and three blocks from stops which have already been approved by the Congress in the authorized plan. Isn't it possible that the Congress may be attacked, if it approves the $98 million Independence Avenue line,. for favoring the private developers of the Southwest Urban Renewal Project? The Independence Avenue line will add $40 million to the total cost of the $500 million subway. As a matter of fact, we may find that by the time the thing is built it will cost $600 million. This huge sum may scuttle the entire project, and former Engineer Commissioner Charles M. Duke warned that this might happen if the project were tinkered with in any way.

We would certainly urge, if there is to be an additional $40 million appropriation, that it be used to extend the subway lines into the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, including the Columbia Heights subway, as set out in the Comprehensive Plan for 1985. We think extending this subway into the suburbs would be an enormous step toward eliminating the "stagnating slum at the heart of the Nation's Capital," to use the striking phrase of Senator Tydings.

This Committee can and should require that the subway be built to serve all of the people 24 hours a day and not just some of the people part of the time. And this is the only way an additional $40 million appropriation can be justified.

What is proposed in H.R. 11395 fits the description used in Life Magazine of August 25 in the editorial entitled "Needed: a poverty plumber" and this is the article "Needed: a poverty plumber" which points out that, "After decades of ignoring the deterioration of its cities, the U.S. at last is trying to save them by pouring in billions of tax dollars (somewhere between $10 and $40 billion a year, depending on which of several conflicting federal accountings you accept). The trouble is that precious little of the money ever actually reaches the urban poor *** funds are *** diverted to projects like middle-class housing and superhighways, which help some people, but hardly the urban poor."

Now, note that "diverted" is the key word here. It is most unfortunate that the low-income white and Negro citizens of the inner city areas of the District do not have a powerful lobby of Cabinet officers and real estate developers to fight to retain the Columbia Heights Subway, the only leg of this $500 million project serving them and meeting their needs. This Committee must consider the total costs of welfare, unemployment and other payments which support the ghetto, when what is needed-and wanted-by the low-income Negro citizen is jobs for ghetto citzens which, as Senators Percy and Kennedy and President Johnson, and others, realize today can end the slums and the violence.

Let me read from an article by Richard Severo in the March 15th issue of the Washington Post entitled "Slum Areas Bypassed by Subway."

Mr. WHITENER. I do not believe it would be necessary for you to read it.

Mr. FRAIN. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To return to the charge made by Life Magazine that funds designed for the suburban poor are diverted to projects like middle-class housing the southwest Urban Renewal Project where Vice President Hubert Humphrey lives is a classic example of this.

The Federal Government helped take the 530-acre site in 1953 with the massive infusion of over $100 million into the Redevelopment Land Agency of the District of Columbia, and Congressman John Dowdy of Subcommittee No. 3, I believe it is, held extensive hearings on what took place there.

The promise there was that it would provide that over 40 percent. of the housing units that would be built would be low-income and moderate-cost housing units.

Not one single unit of this promised housing has ever materialized. Instead, the housing units provided rent for up to $500 a month. Luxury housing and commercial office buildings are seen everywhere.

Seventy percent of the displacees were low-income Negro citizens, yet the promise was it was going to serve the poor people.

Subways, historically, in other cities, are designed to serve all the people. This will be the only subway in history to serve the classes instead of the masses.

I would like to include as part of my remarks a number of items from the newspapers in support of the views we have expressed.

I would also like to include the text of an open letter to Congressman Basil Whitener which reflects a growing consensus of citizens who live and work in the north central Washington area. This letter is signed by Mrs. Sarah E. Ellis for the Committee for the Rights of D.C. Businessmen; S. A. Abbott, Committee on the Emergency Transportation Crisis; Frederick P. Mascioli, Delegate from AdamsMorgan Community Council; Lester Clark Lewis, Assistant Minister, All Souls Church; Johnie D. Wilson, Lamond-Riggs Civic Association; Ruth R. Webster, CHANGE, Inc., president; Chauncey Thomas, CHANGE, Inc.; Luther R. Bruner, Jr., Mt. Pleasant Neighbors; Rev. Fred D. Morris, Temple Church of God in Christ; Howard Dratch, VISTA; Rev. Michael Fury, Sacred Heart Catholic Church; Donald D. Gartenhaus, Gartenhaus Furs; R. B. Rubble, Rock Creek Gulf Service Station; John Jarboe, President, 18th & Columbia Road Business Association; Alfred J. Stein, Columbia Heights Businessmen's Association; and John R. Immer, President, Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia.

Now, the letter says, in short, that:

"We, the undersigned, call on the House D.C. Committee to oppose H.R. 11395, which would delete the Columbia Heights Line.

"This line would serve 500,000 people in North Central Washington, its deletion would be a catastrophe. The deletion of this line would deprive the people of the inner city area of access to jobs. Its deletion would destroy the jobs potential sought in the Comprehensive Plan for 1985. Employment centers, 20,000 jobs, 5,000 of them Federal jobs, would be lost, as would badly needed housing. NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON WOULD BECOME A GHETTO.

"We see nothing that makes sense in subsidizing a subway for the affluent suburbs, and denying such a system to the low-income areas of north central Washington."

Mr. Chairman, I would like to incorporate into my remarks the supporting newspaper articles and a statement by the Ad Hoc Committee For The Retention of the Columbia Heights Subway, a copy of which is attached to my statement.

Mr. WHITENER. If you will submit those to the staff, we will determine what part of it will go in the record.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Frain. We appreciate your testimony on behalf of your organizations.

(The documents referred to follow :)

THE EIGHTEENTH AND COLUMBIA ROAD BUSINESS ASSOCIATION,

August 23, 1967.

I am George Frain, and I am administrative secretary of the Eighteenth and Columbia Road Business Association. I am appearing here today on behalf of John Jarboe, president, and the other members of our business association. Our position was summarized this way, in letters signed by John Jarboe, and Donald D. Gartenhaus, immediate past president, jointly, which were publlished in the Washington Daily News of August 14, and the Washington Post of August 19 under the title "Subway for the Rich?", and I quote from the letter:

"We share the concern and view of Mrs. Ruth R. Webster, president of CHANGE, Inc. (Cardozo Heights Association for Neighborhood Growth and Enrichment), and her colleagues and associates in the neighborhood centers, that the deletion of the Columbia Heights Subway would be a catastrophe.

"This line would serve the approximately 500,000 people who live in north central Washington, (and the 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 who may live there by the year 2000 if increased density is provided) and its deletion would deprive them of access to jobs throughout the city and in the suburbs. It would reinforce the ghettos in this important area, and would mean the destruction of the Comprehensive Plan for 1985 which calls for (a) new high density apartment development adjacent to rapid transit stations, and (b) employment centers at 14th Street and Park Road for 20,000 (including about 5,000 Federal employes), 18th Street and Columbia Road, and at Cedar Street and Blair Road.

"We seen nothing that makes sense in subsidizing a subway for the affluent suburbs, and denying such a system to the low-income areas of north central Washington. The Columbia Heights Subway would serve north central Washington 24 hours a day and would cost $56 million. The Independence Avenue line would serve a fraction of the expected 80,000 employes (most of whom have cars, while the Cardozo area is a poverty area with the fewest number of cars of any section in the city), and would be in demand only in getting them in to work from the suburbs in the morning, and back in the afternoon.

"The lack of good transportation has been a major cause of violence in the Watts area and other places. We urge the defeat of H.R. 11395 which Rep. Basil L. Whitener introduced at the request of the NCTA Administrator Walter J. McCarter.

Immediate Past President, The 18th and Columbia Road Business Asociation."

Congressman Joel T. Broyhill last week cited an Alexandria Chamber of Commerce survey showing "well-paying jobs going begging" in the City as evidence that no increase is necessary in Federal unemployment programs. He said, according to a report in the Washington Post of August 15, that:

"If Alexandria is any example of the situation throughout Washington, the time is at hand for poverty program administrators to start demanding a little more effort on the part of the jobless before they allow them to line up for another Government subsidy."

The Post article went on to say that:

"United Planning Organization officials argue that, while jobs are available in the suburbs, inadequate public transportation makes it difficult for unemployed persons in the District, where joblessness in some areas is as high as 14 percent, to take advantage of the vacancies."

We think that there is a great deal of merit in the position of Congressman Broyhill, as well as in the position of the UPO officials. The suburbs need city workers, and city workers need jobs.

There are thousands of jobs in the suburbs, and it is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive for people, especially low-income people, to reach them. A headline in the STAR of August 5 said that the Beltway would cost the District about 10.000 new jobs, that there would be about 10,000 fewer jobs in the District than would have been created if the Capital Beltway had not been built. Business will naturally locate along the Beltway, instead of in the District where the unemployed are. Senator Percy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and now President Johnson have called for tax incentives and other means to induce private industry to locate in the inner city areas of this nation to provide jobs where the people are in order to cure the problems of the ghettos. The question is being asked, who ever heard of a man throwing a rock through his own window, when cures to the violence and destruction which has destroyed our cities is sought. Senator Joseph D. Tydings recently said:

"While business and residential growth in suburban areas is certainly desirable, all of this growth must not be concentrated in the suburbs while the center city becomes a massive poverty-striken zone. . . . This unbalanced development in the metropolitan area is inherently undesirable, and will severely damage the entire area by creating a stagnating slum at the heart of the Nation's Capital."

In their letter of this past weekend, the District Commissioners lambasted the 1985 Plan and, according to a report in the Washington Post

"The Commissioners said that downtown jobs are crucial for 'the District's predominantly Negro low-income families' who cannot get housing in the suburbs or adequate transportation to suburban employment centers."

The District Commissioners painted this grim picture of the situation created as a result of the condition arising because the District's low-income Negro families cannot get housing in the suburbs or adequate transportation to suburban employment centers; Washington, they said, is

"a city where more than one-third of the population needs assistance in order to be adequately housed, where poverty reduces life to a subsistence level, where the crime rate prompts national headlines and where educational needs go unmet year after year".

A subway runs two ways, it can bring people in and take people out to work, this Committee can adopt H. R. 11395 so that this $500,000,000 subway can aggravate the bleak and dismal picture sketched by the District Commissioners, or it can amend or reject H. R. 11395 so that the Columbia Heights Subway will be built to serve the 500,000 people of North Central Washington, as well as the suburbs.

A day or two ago in this very Committee Room, Congressman Joel Broyhill said that he was inclined to doubt very much if the Congress would vote an added $40,000,000 which would be required to extend this subway into Maryland and Virginia at this time. If this is so, shouldn't this Committee question whether Congress is willing to vote more than $40,000,000 required to provide the four stops for the Independence Avenue loop (the Federal Triangle, Agriculture, H.U.D., and H.E.W. stations) which would be respectively three, six, four and three blocks from stops which have already been approved by the Congress in the authorized plan. Isn't it possible that the Congress may be attacked, if it approves the $98,000,000 Independence Avenue line, for favoring the private developers of the SW Urban Renewal Project? The Independence Ave. line will add $40 million to the total cost of the $500,000,000 subway. This huge sum may scuttle the entire project, and former Engineer Commissioner Charles M. Duke warned that this might happen if the project were tinkered with in this way. We would certainly urge, if there is to be an additional $40,000,000 appropriation, that it be used to extend the subway lines into the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, including the Columbia Heights Subway, as set out in the Comprehensive Plan for 1985. We think extending this subway into the suburbs would be an enormous step toward eliminating the "stagnating slum at the heart of the Nation's Capital", to use the striking phrase of Senator Tydings. This Committee can and should require that the subway be built to serve all of the people 24 hours a day, not just some of the people part of the time, and this is the only way an additional $40,000,000 appropriation can be justified. What is proposed in H.R. 11395 fits the description used in LIFE MAGAZINE of August 25 (page 347) in an editorial titled, "Needed: a poverty plumber" which points out that-"After decades of ignoring the deterioration of its cities, the U.S. at last in trying to save them by pouring in billions of tax dollars (somewhere between $10 and $40 billion a year, depending on which of several conflicting federal accountings you accept). The trouble is that precious little of the money ever actually reaches the urban poor . . . funds are . . . . diverted to projects like middle-class housing and superhighways, which help some people, but hardly the urban poor.” Diverted is the key word here. It is most unfortunate that the low-income White and Negro citizens of the inner city areas of the District don't have a powerful lobby of Cabinet officers and real estate developers to fight to retain the Columbia Heights Subway, the only leg of this $500,000,000 project serving them, and meeting their needs. This Committee must consider the total costs of welfare, unemployment and other payments which support the ghetto, when what is needed-and wanted-is jobs for ghetto citizens which, as Senators Percy and Kennedy say, can end the slums and the violence. Let me read from an article by Richard Severo in the March 15 issue of the Washington Post entitled "Slum Areas Bypassed by Subway":

[From the Washington Post, Mar. 15, 1967]

SLUM AREAS BYPASSED BY SUBWAY

POTOMAC WATCH

(By Richard Severo)

If the poor people who live in rundown areas of center-city Washington are waiting for a subway system to whisk them to jobs downtown or in suburbia, somebody, ought to tell them the wait may be a long one.