designations. This section also adapts to the rural housing title the provision with respect to land and utility projects contained in the urban low-rent housing title (section 906).

The proposed section 206 ties in this proposed new Title II of the United States Housing Act of 1937 with the present provisions of that act, which are to become Title I.

Section 1102

This section includes the technical amendments to the United States Housing Act of 1937 made necessary by the addition of this new rural housing title.

TITLE XII. DISPOSITION OF PERMANENT FEDERALLY OWNED HOUSING

This title is designed to bring up to date the legislation already enacted by the Congress with respect to the disposition of permanent war housing and other federally owned housing.

Section 1201

This section provides that, when the President finds that any permanent type war housing provided with appropriated funds is no longer needed for war purposes, and the local governing body finds that it would be in the best interest of the community or of the families of local servicemen and veterans to make such housing available to families of low income, the FPHA may dispose of any such project to a local public agency for low-rent housing purposes. The proceeds from any such sale would be handled in the manner provided in the Lanham Act with respect to war housing, which sets forth the provisions relating to the time for covering balances into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. The section further authorizes either administrative loans or use of disposition reserves as may be appropriate, to correct war-caused deficiencies in construction. Families of veterans and servicemen would have the same preference in admission to war-housing projects sold under the provisions of this title as is provided in section 902 with respect to low-rent housing projects assisted by FPHA.

So that war and other Federal projects sold under this title may serve the purposes intended, the price of the project may consist of the payment of all the net income from the project during its useful life.

This section makes clear, however, that none of its provisions are to be construed to prevent the sale of permanent war housing at its fair value on a homeownership basis (with preference to servicemen and veterans) wherever feasible.

TITLE XIII. MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

Section 1301

This section vests in the National Housing Administrator, and the Administrators of FHLBA, FHA, and FPHA, the usual administrative powers necessary for efficient operations, such as powers relating to personnel, travel, purchase of supplies, etc.

Section 1802

This section contains the standard provision" providing that the provisions of this act shall control in the case of inconsistency with other legislation.

Section 1303

This is the usual separability clause.

Senator ELLENDER. When the general housing bill, S. 1592, was introduced in November of 1945, I pointed out that I took particular satisfaction in joining with the distinguished senior Senator from Ohio and the distinguished senior Senator from New York in introducing this bill. I gave as the reason for that satisfaction the fact that I regarded the housing problem as perhaps our most important single postwar economic and social issue.

I also pointed out that the bill was one that catered to no one special group or interest, but encompassed within its four corners programs designed to be of material assistance to the great mass of our citizens,

whether they live in the city, in our rural communities, or on the farm; whether they have a high, middle, or low income; whether they live in the North, South, East, or West; whether they require aids to enable them to undertake home ownership, or whether they need or prefer rental housing. The variety of programs contained in the bill were, therefore, effectively designed to reach, once and for all, down to the very roots of our housing difficulties.

I hope that you will not consider it naive of me to state that originally it has been my real hope and expectation that this type of overall housing bill, far from giving rise to any controversy, would be one in support of which all groups would actively unite. I had this expectation for two reasons:

I had it, first, because the proposed legislation had been developed and prepared on the basis of a completely nonpartisan and painstaking study and investigation of all facets of the housing problem, and after careful hearing of all the groups and consideration of all the interest involved. As a matter of fact, every interested group and interest was given, in 1944 and 1945, at least two full opportunities to present its case by the Taft Postwar Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Redevelopment, and your committee last year, through its intensive hearings, provided a third full and adequate opportunity to each such group to make known its needs, desires, and opinions.

Secondly, I had this expectation because the general housing bill contained the very programs in aid of private enterprise that the socalled private enterprise groups that organized in opposition to it had urgently been seeking. In fact, the bill, as does S. 866, went immeasurably beyond any of the limited proposals that had previously been advanced by any of these groups in assuring that private enterprise had every encouragement and every opportunity to do as much of the total postwar job as it possibly can.

I emphasize the first reason particularly because one of the fundamental premises upon which the opposition based its case last year was that consideration of a comprehensive housing bill ought to be deferred until further "study" can be given to it, and because this issue will again undoubtedly be raised this year. The fact is, as your committee has itself fully realized and soundly decided, if any error has been committed, it has been that the Congress has been too zealous in the thoroughness of its investigation.

I emphasize both reasons, because they help to indicate the reason for the opposition to S. 1592 last year and such opposition as may be forthcoming with respect to S. 866 this year. It is that a number of groups, due to their mistaken opposition to any public-housing program whatsoever, had decided to oppose S. 1592 because it included some public housing. This has led to a distortion of their views on the whole bill. It has also led them into palpable inconsistencies, since all the provisions of the bill, except those relating to public housing, have in substance been advocated and urged for many years. by some of these groups.

Frankly, I have always found such an attitude extremely distasteful. In the instant case, I find such an attitude very disturbing, involving as it does a complete callousness to human values and needs. For, in effect, it is a recommendation for the condemnation indefinitely of millions of our citizenry, through no fault of their own, to lives of

squalor and disease, and in an environment of a thoroughly depressing and antisocial nature.

In line with the desires of your committee to avoid further repetition of the mass of the materials and documentary evidence on housing that has been presented to it and to the Taft subcommittee in the past, I shall essentially confine my testimony today to two of the titles in the bill, particularly so, since my views with respect to the various other programs contained in the bill and the basis for them are set forth in detail in the Congressional Record of last year, beginning at page 3559, to which I would like to refer your committee.

The two titles of S. 866 I should like to concentrate on today are title II, relating to the organization of the housing programs of the Government, and title IX, relating to urban low-rent housing. I have selected title II because it probably is the title in S. 866 which departs more than any other from the corresponding title in S. 1592. Also, it is around this particular area, together with low-rent housing, that most of the controversy with respect to postwar housing legislation has centered in the past, and it will probably be these two areas, treated in titles II and IX of S. 866, that will be the focus and basis of such opposition as may appear against this bill.

First, as to the postwar organization of the housing agencies and functions of the Government. As a result of my active participation in housing legislation for almost a decade, both as a member of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor and of the Special Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Redevelopment of the George Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning, I have become acutely conscious of, and particularly sensitive to, the prewar chaos and confusion that has characterized Government housing policy.

This chaos and confusion was due to the fact that there was no one agency or individual that we as Senators and Members of the Congress could look to for responsibility in setting and guiding the housing policies of the Government pursuant to the intent of the Congress, and also the hodgepodge created by the fact that every agency having housing functions went its own individual way without any special regard for the relationship and impact of its program with respect to the programs of the other housing agencies and the extent to which they might be overlapping, inconsistent, or working at cross purposes. With respect to both points, I think it is the trade groups themselves that have most effectively and succinctly summed up the situation. It was one of them-the National Association of Home Builders, which, in its Washington letter of February 1944, pointed out that prior to the present NHA-and I quote:

Nearly a score of governmental bodies had a finger in the housing pie. No one was sure as to the size of the war job, or how it should be done. Priority procedure was something of a mystery, the wildest sort of rumors existed, and red tape ensnared everyone in a chaos of confusion. The outlook for private enterprise doing a part of the war housing program was dubious, and the accomplishment of the total job seemed doubtful. Alphabetically we had the following: DDHC, FHA, FHLBB, HOLC, FSLIC, USHC, USHA, FWA, PBA, TVA, FSA, and DHC. These stood for the Division of Defense Housing Coordination, Federal Housing Administration, Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Home Owners' Loan Corporation, Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, United States Housing Corporation, United States Housing Authority, Federal Works Agency, Public Buildings Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Farm Security Administration, and the Defense Homes Corporation. In addition to all of this the Army; Navy, and maritime departments were very much in the building picture, as were other agencies of lesser importance not listed here * *

*

And, of course, there is now to be added the Veterans' Administration.

Likewise, it was another trade group, the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which in its February 1942, newsletter statedand again I quote:

The urgent need of coordinated Federal housing agencies was high-lighted last week in hearings before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor when the $50,000,000 District Housing Bill was under consideration. Members of the Committee gave up in despair after hearing representatives of 20 different housing agencies offer a description of how they thought the $50,000,000 for emergency housing in Washington should be spent.

I may add that I was a member of that committee at that time, so that I can vouch for the complete accuracy of this descriptive

summation.

It was to meet these problems which were just as aggravating to industry, labor, our local communities, and the public generally as to the Congress, that title I of S. 1592 was drafted so as to combine into a single, unified National Housing Agency all of the agencies whose functions were predominantly housing, together with all direct Government housing functions of other Government agencies. The result was an agency of three constituent units, each of which was subject to general policy supervision by a National Housing Administrator, but otherwise autonomous and to a large extent exercising independently the power vested in it by the Congress.

This solution did substantially meet the need. However, during the past year, several areas have been high-lighted in which still further improvement was possible. In the first place, S. 1592, under its title I, still did not provide for the general policy coordination of substantial housing functions lodged in other Government agencies. The most obvious example is the home-loan guaranty program of the Veterans' Administration. Other obvious agencies are the Department of Agriculture and RFC. Also, during the consideration of S. 1592, the interest manifested by the Treasury, and also the Federal Reserve Board, as well as the testimony of various groups, indicated a close relationship between the housing and fiscal policies of the Government that suggested the desirability of an agency which could more effectively provide a liaison between such policies.

Finally, over the past year, a definite fear has been indicated by some groups that the type of organization provided in title I of S. 1592 might somehow lead to prejudicial interference by the National Housing Administrator in actual operations of the constituent units. This fear, in the opinion of all three sponsors of the general housing bill and of both Senate committees, was clearly unjustified, but whether justified or not, the fear was there and so has to be recognized.

It was in order to preserve the basic contributions that title I of S. 1592 was designed to make toward the proper coordination of the Government's housing activities and at the same time to meet the objections and deficiencies that had been indicated over the past year, that the National Housing Commission form of organization provided in title I of S. 866 was evolved. This title, like title I of S. 1592, still carried out the basic principle of the recommendation of the Taft subcommittee report. That is, that the function of the unifying agency is not one of operations but of resolving questions within the scope of policies established by the Congress; of insuring the consistent

execution of these policies; of maintaining harmonious working relationships among the several agencies and resolving conflicts that may arise in their operations; of reporting to the Congress on the progress of the program; and of recommending modifications which experience indicates are desirable.

Together with title II, it likewise recognizes the basic need for consolidation of many of the housing functions of the Government, and so like S. 1592 places in a single Federal Home Loan Bank Administration, under a single Administrator, the functions of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the Board of Trustees of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, and the Board of Directors of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, and including also the system of Federal Savings and Loan Associations. Also like title I of S. 1592 it consolidates into a single Federal Public Housing Authority all of the direct housing functions of the Government scattered prior to Executive Order 9070 over a multitude of Federal agencies.

At the same time, title II of S. 866, unlike title I of S. 1592, takes cognizance of the important housing functions lodged in other agencies-notably, Veterans' Administration, Agriculture, and RFC— which should be brought within this unifying function if it is to be fully effective. Also, it takes cognizance of the importance of consistency between our housing and fiscal policies.

Title II of S. 866 therefore provides for a permanent National Housing Commission composed of an Administrator, his staff, and a Coordinating Council. The latter consists of the Administrator, the heads of FHA, and of FHLBA and FPHA in their consolidated form, and representatives of the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, the Veterans' Administration, and RFC. This Council is an advisory body and represents a sound means for working out harmonious relationships with respect to the housing functions of the participating agencies.

The agencies represented on the Coordinating Council have the duty to cooperate actively in the work of the National Housing Commission, and to coordinate and administer their housing programs consistently with the general housing policies and programs developed by the Administrator under the bill and with their other responsibilities and policies established by law.

At the same time, S. 866 recognizes more specifically and unmistakably than S. 1592 that there are to be no directive controls or detailed administrative supervision by the Administrator over the agencies represented on the Coordinating Council, or other Federal agencies, and that such agencies are to have full operating responsibility for the functions and activities relating to housing vested in them by the Congress.

Coming now to urban low-rent housing, even though the basic plan provided in S. 866 is essentially the same as that provided in S. 1592, I should like briefly to discuss this program because it will undoubtedly prove to be the most controversial of all the titles of the bill.

While I do not want to-and shall not-repeat the detailed analyses made of the various features of this program both by the Taft committee and by your committee last year, I should like to refresh the recollection of the members of your committee as to the clear findings of fact by a unanimous membership of the Taft postwar subcommittee, and by your committee last year, on which the urban low-rent housing