availability of money, pension funds may well be better outlets than the insurance companies.

Also, I might add, that in order for the insurance companies to get into the act, so to speak, many laws and regulations would have to be revised. These insurance companies are governed or regulated by State commissioners of insurance and their investment and other practices are under close scrutiny. On the other hand, pension funds-while they are supervised and regulated in general by the Labor Departmenthave much greater latitude in what they do.

Senator Moss. Thank you very much, Dr. Chen. We surely appreciate having you come and give us the benefit of your study and we look forward to having you supply some of the things we have asked for that will be in the record. We look forward to having further consultation with you. As Senator Gurney was indicating, this is a new idea, it seems to have a lot of aspects that recommend it. We are still circling around the edges to see what the problems are.

Thank you very much.

Mr. CHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has been a privilege. Senator Moss. Now I am going to have to leave. There is one gentleman who has been here for 2 days who has prepared a statement and was not indicated as a witness. We will be glad to receive his statement for the record. If you care to make any oral remarks, you may do so but I am going to have to leave. I have had a delegation waiting up there since 11:30 and they sent a note to me just now asking "How much longer?"

I can turn the gavel over to Senator Gurney if he would like, to make this introduction and include the statement after which he could adjourn the hearing.

Would you do that for me, Senator Gurney?

Senator GURNEY. Be glad to, Mr. Chairman. I do have to leave myself at 5 minutes of but we have 10 minutes.

Senator Moss. All right.

Mr. TIPS. I can get through in 5 minutes.

Senator Moss. Thank you, sir. We appreciate your preparation of this statement. The whole statement will go in the record, of course.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES R. TIPS, DALLAS, TEX., PRESIDENT,

HOMEOWNERS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Mr. TIPS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity of being here listening to the things that were said and talking a little bit to you and put my statement in the record.

I do want to congratulate the committee on the very fine work that the committee has done. Over the years I have been familiar with it by having been one of the national vice presidents of the American Association of Retired Persons who testify on most of the things that come up. I am particularly interested in the Older Americans Act in which I think you did a good job.

Senator GURNEY. I might say, Mr. Tips, you probably had better identify yourself so it does appear in the record.

Mr. TIPS. I am Charles R. Tips from Dallas, Tex. I am president of the Homeowners of the United States of America.

Senator GURNEY. Delighted to have you here, Mr. Tips.

Mr. TIPS. I might say that my experience in this field extends over a period of more than 50 years. I have been interested in housing, had direct experience working in the various capacities, including housing for the elderly, as well as general homeownership.

One of the most interesting things about the conference here to me has been the repeated statement about the number of homeowners. Of the older people some 9 million are owners or occupants of homes at the present time of which they say 70 percent were occupied by the owners, and of that 70 percent I believe 80 percent were free of mortgages.

Now figuring the 9 million occupied by owners at $10,000, which is a normal basis for it, that would be $90 billion of homes owned by homeowners who are occupying them. I think when we figure that this has been provided over the years here by the free private enterprise system it shows where they can come from. That is being added to every year as people pass the age of 65 and come into the older citizens class. So that number is increasing. I am sure that the next census will show a very great increase over what that is.

This shows one other thing. It shows that the time for an elderly person to purchase a home is not after they get past 65 but when they are young, when they are first married and start raising a family. They buy it because they can then pay for it during the period when they have the highest earning capacity. In solving these problems I think one of the things we need to consider most is the overall picture of homeownership with it.

ACTIONS ABROAD

I have had the opportunity of studying some of the things they are doing in foreign countries. I was one of the Texas representatives to the White House Conference on Aging in January 1961. I made a trip on my own expense to Europe to see what they were doing in these other countries in housing for the elderly. I found that one of the things that they are united on, and I am glad you mentioned this today, there about the Scandinavian countries-I did not get up that far but I did study in Italy and in Germany and in Holland and in England.

I found particularly that in Germany and in England that they were copying a good deal of what had been done in Holland but they were building housing for the elderly immediately adjacent to the high rise buildings that they were building for workers there on reclaimed land but they were immediately adjacent.

I talked to the chief architect of the Bonn Republic and he told me of the plans he was making for Frankfort, and I had the opportunity to see that development in 1967 when I made a trip around the world to study housing and homeownership in 20 different free countries. They were building the housing project with the apartments there. They were building immediately adjoining it a playground for children and building apartments on it for families that would have four bedrooms. These were restricted to these people because they figured it was similar to the home that they liked and enjoyed.

I found the same thing. I am the owner of the Ambassador Hotel in Dallas, Tex., which was a pioneer in that part of the country of homes for retired people. It is immediately adjacent to City Park where they have a children's playground and it has been quite an attraction for the older people.

So one of the specific things I would say is that an isolated retirement village is not the answer to the housing problem for the older people.

I think one of the other important things, of course, the vital thing for the older people, is the income that they have. The project we have just been talking about is fine as far as it would go, but according to the statement it would provide maybe $25 a month income for the people who feel $25 amounts to a good deal sometimes to a person, but there are a good deal of complications with it.

Now the thing that I think could be done here and very much so is to encourage the older people to continue working when they can. Now the way the law is designed it strictly discourages the people because when you get up to 62 and 65, as the case may be, if they work even for a small amount of work there is a deduction from their social security payments. If they get over a certain amount, it is cut off altogether until they get to be 72.

I am drawing social security but I am past 72 so there is no problem on it. I think one of the biggest things we could do for the whole economy is to eliminate this deduction that we have for work that they do. Our country is built on work and I think that creates the wealth of our country. This was put into the law back when we had 20 million people unemployed when the social security first went in and they were trying to make jobs for younger people and to get the older people out of the way. We have not got that situation now. We have a shortage especially of skilled labor.

I know in particular from direct experience that there is a great scarcity of registered trained nurses over the whole United States at the present time, and I know some of them who will not work over 1 or 2 days a week, if they work at all, because it would deduct from their social security. So we are deprived of skilled work that is very much needed at the present time.

Senator GURNEY. I might say I thoroughly agree with you, as do other Members of Congress. I have a bill in to accomplish that. I subscribe wholeheartedly to your point.

Mr. TIPS. I would like to have a copy of the bill then. Maybe I can bring a little influence to some other people to help support what you are working on. This is tremendously important, I think, and would certainly add a great deal more than some of the other things that they have talked about here.

Now another important thing is what the free enterprise system is doing with the JOBS program for the hard-core unemployed started by the National Alliance of Businessmen. I believe it is doing a good job. I have been working with them and my understanding is that they put 100,000 of these hard-core unemployed to work during the past year. There is no reason why that program should not be encouraged.

We have with our homeowners organization an idea that we can do

a great deal in the same capacity by using the hard-core unemployed people for work in maintenance and for beautification work and any kind of services where there is a shortage of workers. I think that we could get to where those people can be employed.

I think that aging homeowners should be encouraged to stay in their homes. A good deal of that is done by private charity. I know in Dallas they have this and I am sure they have in nearly every other place where they have Meals-on-Wheels and visiting nurses, and other programs that are taken care of by local charity. This can be done without calling on the Federal Government necessarily for any help in connection with it. They need help on maintaining the home but the cities can do a great deal of that also by maintaining the streets and seeing that the utilities are there.

Now that matter of financing of cities is, of course, difficult. I know there is a big problem all over the whole United States. At the same time it ties in with things that the Government is doing and can be tremendously helpful with that.

ROLE OF PRIVATE INDUSTRY

I have mentioned what private industry is doing. I saw in Hong Kong in 1967 when I was there a project getting underway. The Mobil Oil Co., had an island where they had some vacant land and were putting it into housing. They are building condominium apartments that they are selling to low-income workers.

I have talked this last week to Mr. W. W. Keeler who is the chairman of the board of Phillips Petroleum Co. They have a worldwide operation. He tells me that originally they built homes for their workers where they opened up an oil field and had to have facilities. They built homes for them and furnished them. The people didn't like it. Now they have gotten entirely away from that. They buy land and they guarantee loans, if necessary, so that the workers themselves can build the home. He said on the last place they have opened up they have bought enough land to take care of 5,000 homes for people to be near where their industry is. I think if other people would do this it would be helpful.

One of the things that the homeowners of the United States and Homeowners International want to do is to encourage this idea of home ownership, not only for the elderly people but all of them because it ties in together and it should be considered pretty much as the same thing.

All of us have been quite thrilled with putting some men on the moon. I think we have the complete capacity here now to help all of our people to buy homes. With the minimum wages that are in effect now and with long-term financing that is available and some additional Federal help through the FHA-those things can make it possible for every worker to own a home. I think that is what we should aim at and what we should try to do in the United States.

I think if the Government will cooperate with private industry, we can solve the problem of housing not only for the elderly but for all of our people.

I thank you for the opportunity of being here with you. (The prepared statement of Mr. Tips follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES R. TIPS

Gentlemen, your invitation to talk to you today about Housing for the Elderly is greatly appreciated. I thank you. I am familiar with the great work your committee has done for us older Americans in the past.

My talk will be based on my personal experience over a period of more than half a century, and my study and observation on a world-wide basis. In the beginning it is important to remember that the vast majority of elderly people live in homes they either own or rent.

My first experience in providing housing began when I was twenty years old. In 1913 I founded and began the building of the City of Three Rivers, Texas I lived in a tent until we could build a small two story hotel in which I lived until I married and built a home. The first lots I sold were to elderly people who had the money saved up to build a home. Some of their children and grandchildren are still living in Three Rivers.

The best thing I did in building the town was to employ Harland Bartholomew, great City Plan Engineer of St. Louis and later of Washington, D.C. and many other cities to make a City Plan for Three Rivers. Mr. Bartholomew is a member of Home Owners of the U.S.A. and I prize his friendship and advice greatly.

Military housing was my concern for two years, 1917 and 1918 in the first World War as an infantry officer. Again during the second World War, 1941 through 1945, as a regimental commander, as a camp commander and as chief instructor of a group of Chinese Armies, I was responsible for the housing (among many other things) of thousands of men.

Between the two World Wars, as president of a glass container manufacturing company at Three Rivers, Texas, I helped in providing housing for our employees. We brought in skilled mechanics, mould makers, and machine operators and department heads from the north. Nearly all of them purchased homes, rather than renting, and became good citizens of the community. The same thing held good for the Mexican workmen. We put in a special subdivision for their homes, which they liked. This experience in building low cost housing for a minority group worked out very well. They all took pride in being home owners. This building program was brought to a grinding halt by the great depression of 1929 through the nineteen thirties. The factory was shut down. Many people lost their homes. I lost everything I had.

As conditions improved during President Roosevelt's administration, I did some building in Houston. These were low cost homes that were sold for from $4.000.00 to $6,000.00. One of them was awarded a national grand prize in a contest conducted by General Electric Company. After the war some of these homes were sold by their owners for more than double the amount we got for them. This building program ended when I was called back into active duty in the army.

In 1946, after the war, I bought a small tract of land in Dallas and started some building. There was a great demand for low cost GI housing for returning veterans, who could get long term financing under the GI Bill passed by Congress. My son, who had also been in the Army, and I built and sold about 500 homes. We bought land at $500.00 to $1,000.00 per acre. We kept buying adjoining land as we could. In addition to residential subdivisions, we developed two small shopping centers and an industrial district. Land in Dallas has kept increasing in value. Some that could be purchased twenty years or less ago for $1,000.00 or less per acre, is selling, when zoned for apartments, at $10,000.00 per acre. When oned for business some of it is sold for $40,000.00 and much more per acre.

One tract of land we developed, adjoining the municipally owned Cedar Crest Golf Course, was purchased from the Miller family for $1,000.00 per acre. William Brown Miller came to Texas from Kentucky on horseback and brought his family in a covered wagon. In 1847 he purchased 1280 acres of farm and grazing land for one dollar per acre in what is now the central part of Dallas. He built a log cabin in which he and his family lived. As he prospered, in 1855 he built a typical Southern Colonial two story mansion, mostly from hand hewn cedar and other timber cut off of his own land. The log cabin and the mansion are now preserved in City Park, by the Dallas Heritage Society, as historical landmarks.

Cedar Crest Country Club Estates on the Miller land was developed by us for luxury homes in the $20,000.00 to $60.000.00 class. This became one of the best communities in Dallas or any other place, all home owners, of all ages from newly married couples to Mrs. Minnie Miller in her nineties, still living in