with you, that there is a lot of good housing there if it can just be uncovered and done over. Senator MONDALE. Mr. Chairman, this particular area had a lot of wonderful residents there, some of whom have moved. In 1952, this area voted overwhelmingly for Stevenson and Sparkman. The CHAIRMAN. You expect such movements as this to come out of that. Thank you very much, ladies. We do appreciate it. Our next witness is Mrs. Rose Wylie, chairman of the National Tenants Organization. Mrs. Wylie, we are very glad to have you. We have your printed statement and that will be printed in full in the record. You may present it as you see fit. I do want to say this: I need to leave here at 12 o'clock, and we have one more witness after you have finished, so if we can divide that time, unless Senator Taft will be willing to stay and carry on if we have to run over, but you move right ahead and present your statement as you see fit. We welcome you, and if you will identify the two gentlemen who are with you for the benefit of the record, we would appreciate it. STATEMENT OF ROSE WYLIE, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TENANTS ORGANIZATION, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN HAMPTON, STAFF MEMBER, NATIONAL TENANTS ASSOCIATION, AND KENNETH F. PHILLIPS Mrs. WYLIE. I have with me Mr. John Hampton on my right. He is a staff member for the National Tenants Organization, and your next witness, Mr. Phillips, on my left. We also have in the audience Mr. Sternberg, who is our attorney, and can answer the technical points of our presentation on the position paper if there is a need for it. The National Tenants Organization links poor and oppressed tenants in private and public housing across the Nation. Some 250 tenant organizations are presently affiliates of NTO and elected its policymaking body, the executive board. Affiliates must be comprised of tenants, democratically governed, and engaged in organizing tenants for housing reform. It is the only national organization whose membership is primarily composed of persons eligible for Federal housing programs. I wanted to say that so that you would understand who we are. I am going to basically just say some of the things that I feel we need to say here today. I hope that you will go through our position paper. If there are other points in our position paper that you would like for your staff or someone to talk to, we have staff here in Washington who would be ready and willing to sit with your staff at any time and discuss them. The CHAIRMAN. Fine. Mrs. WYLIE. Tenants across the country have feared for some time that the bills and all of the things that are happening in Washington are getting lost when it gets down to providing the services that they need. When we talk about the removal of income limits, naturally, we do away with housing for poor and begin to house people of more affluent means. -་་ In our statement we recommend that the prorities for the neediest be retained, and that income limits for admission to public housing should remain the same. In the bill, we talk about insurance risks and wonder how it is we define the need in the more declining areas; yet changes in the law make homeownership and project insurance unavailable to those who - need it. While there are those of us who have not agreed, in a sense, to some of the homeownership programs as they are set up for low-income people, the part of the bill that omits counseling, homeownership or rental assistance makes it more of what we continue to fear-that the bills that have been passed, that the tenants across the country had hoped would relate to their needs, have not happened. În Philadelphia, less than a month ago we had a scandal in the 235 program, on the sale of houses which do not meet the code requirements. That these essential protections need to be preserved and extended to construction in projects, whether they are FHA or public housing, brings again to the forefront for us the need for HUD model laws and grievance procedures. Low-income tenants can no longer agree with Federal subsidies that create larger and bigger slum areas, and yet these measurements, these safety codes, have been dropped in the new bill presented here. When we talk about the limitation of modernization funds-and that is what most of the tenants across the country have learned to use in organizing, in becoming a part of whatever system it is that has oppressed them, and tenants are beginning to chart those for themselves when we look at what is happening with the modernization program in this bill, then we begin to fear a lot of the things we feared at first. Now they are talking about doing away with public housing. When we look at housing in Philadelphia-I talk about Philadelphia because that is where I am from and we work with modernization there when we look at the housing that low-income people have to live in, and realize that they are still living in the conditions that they have been living in for years, and the act of providing decent and sanitary housing and a decent living environment to low-income people no more relates to us now than it did when the act first came out. Because it is not providing that kind of housing, then when we do away with the things that we think are so essential. When we look at the subsidies that have been provided under the Brooke and the Sparkman amendment, and when we look at what has happened to this bill, we wonder what is going to happen. Where the help is going to come from that is really needed, for these low-income people just to be able to survive. We talk about a percentage of people's income for rent. We look at what is happening across the country to people who are on welfare, who pay so much more than a percentage or the 25 percent of their income for rent, and so then we look at housing as being unavailable to those people who really need it; then we have fears of what the new bills are doing and where they are relating There are many things that we would like to bring out at this time. and many things that we would like to see done that are so important to the needs of low-income people. The needs of just supplying them their basic needs of providing shelter, which the bills here do not relate to. We also looked at a bill, S. 1871, that talks about providing child care facilities in both new housing and old housing. We look at that as a good bill because that is one of the things that is needed and very vital to people who live in public housing, and can really provide them a service that they need so very badly. Mr. Hampton, who is on my right, has worked on our position paper and may have something that he would like to say about the bill. I am sure that Mr. Phillips, on my left, has some things that he would like to bring out about the bill. Mr. HAMPTON. Mr. Chairman, I have two points to make very clear. We are very concerned about the possibility of low-income public hous ing ceasing to serve low-income families. In the administration's bill. both in the section dealing with income limits and priorities, and with the section dealing with the conditions placed on the subsidies under the Brooke and Sparkman amendments, in our opinion both of these sections in the administration's bill would have an effect of raising the income of the family as a qualification to get into public housing. thereby, in a sense, increasing the number of people in public housing who have a reasonably secure income, above $4,000 or $5,000 a year, and greatly reducing the number of people in public housing who were very, very poor, either on welfare or working poor whose income is about $2,000 a year. Therefore, in effect, we are very much concerned that the adminis tration's bill would change the complexion of public housing to moderately poor, if not lower middle class, public housing. Those are our main concerns. The CHAIRMAN. Does that complete what you were going to say! Mr. HAMPTON. Yes. (NTO position paper follows:) NATIONAL TENANTS ORGANIZATION INCORPORATED 425 Thirteenth Street, N.W., Suite 548, Washington, D. C. 20004 National Tenants Organization Position Paper on the The National Tenants Organization (NTO) links poor and oppressed tenants in private and public housing across the nation. Some 250 tenant organizations are presently affiliates of NTO and elected its policy-making body, the Executive Board. Affiliates must be comprised of tenants, democratically governed, and engaged in organizing tenants for housing reform. It is the only national organization whose membership is primarily composed of persons eligible for Federal housing programs. The administration bill has two main titles: the first, a Revised National Housing Act (RNHA) and the second, a Revised United States Housing Act (RUSHA). The former deals with Federal housing insurance and subsidy programs for private sponsors and homeowners; the latter deals with Federal subsidies to local public agencies created to build and manage "public" housing. The bill, according to its title, promised only to consolidate and simplify the present confusion of differing authorities and standards an unobjectionable enterprise. If this implies that no substantive changes are intended, the bill is dangerously deceptive. Under the banner of "consolidation and simplification" the administration presents a bill which 1) allows and encourages the perversion of housing subsidies intended for the poor to substantially wealthier and far less needy families; 2) fails to build in consumer protection for low-income families that sad and recent experience has shown to be vital; and 3) ignores repeated legislative admonition that bricks and mortar alone do not constitute a housing program for low-income families but rather the creation of a suitable and supportive living environment for which they share a responsibility. The Perversion of Subsidies From the Neediest Families 1. Income Limits and Priorities The existing FHA assistance programs are clearly intended for low and moderate income families. The maximum income limites for the Rent Supplement program are geared to the public housing income limite; for $235 homeownership and $236 rental project assistance, the maximum income limits for 80% of the contract authority are 135% of the public housing income limits and up to 20% of the contract authority may be at 90% of the administratively determined income limits for §221(d)(3) Below Market Interest Rate Projects currently the median family income in the area. In the public housing program the maximum income limits are set locally and approved by HUD but in view of the gap demonstration requirements that rents be at least 20% below the economic rental at which the private market is providing decent, safe and sanitary housing the maximum income limits should also be 20% below the minimum income at which a family could afford standard housing. In addition 88235 and 235 programs each have statutory priority for families with the lowest practicable incomes to take advantage of them. The public housing program is, by definition, for families in the lowest income group with express priority to displaced families and mandatory consideration of present housing conditions, urgency of housing need and source of income. Finally up to 40% of the units in §236 projects may be reserved for Rent Supplement families. The administration bill contains a maximum income limit for all FHA assisted housing: the median income in the area, adjusted for family size, and this may be raised, in the Secretary of HUD's unlimited discretion, to account for high construction costs in the area of "other factors" (RNHA 88402(1), 502(j)(2)). This is 10% higher than the highest income limit allowed for only 20% of present moderate income (8236) project residents, (The other 80% must be within 135% of public housing limits). Even this median income limit is not applicable to 100% of tenants in multi-family assisted projects (8502) for the administration bill requires only that these projects be "primarily" for lower income tenants (8502(1)(1)). This means that up to 49% of the units could be occupied by families that exceeded the already high maximum income limits. The additional assistance payments for assisted project tenants who can't afford the basic rental (§502(f) (2) replacing Rent Supplement) are no longer reserved for truly low-income families (those eligible for public housing) but, again, any families under the median income. For the public housing program no income limits are established; the local housing authorities simply set their own income limits, as approved by HUD, with no statutory guidance other than the defenition of low-income families - "those in the lowest income group". (RUSHA) §3(2)). The gap requirement and statutory priorities referred to above are deleted as in the present language in the policy section (§1) of the Act that the dwellings in low-rent housing "shall be available solely for families of low-income". There thus appears no barrier to the adoption by the local housing authority of the statutory income limits proposed for FHA-assisted programs: the median income for the area. The potential effect on the public housing program is extraordinary. According to HUD's own figures in 1969 the median income ($3,712) for non-elderly public housing tenants was 42% of the median for all nonfarm families in the U.S. ($8,785) and only 19% had incomes above $5,000 and below the national median. Under the administration bill, 100% of public housing tenants could be in this category, and this will be to the exclusion of those whose incomes are in the lowest one-quarter. This is a gross perversion of the original congressional intent; as the public housing program's Senate sponsors stated" "it is the purpose and intent of the Congress of United States that the subsidies shall go to the most needy of our poor families." (81 Congressional Record 7981). As pointed out above, the Rent Supplement program in §236 projects is replaced by 8502(f)(2) of the administration bill which allows any family below the median income to receive supplementary payments rather than only families eligible for public housing. In addition the present maximum of 40% Rent Supplement units in any ₤236 projects is cut in half to 20% in the administration bill. Finally the new contract authorization for Rent Supplement payments ($40 million for F 71) is not transferred to the $502(f) (2) program. This means that supplemental payments have to come out of the new $236 contract authorization which is transferred (RNHA 8502(h)) and $40 million to make decent housing available to poor people through rent supplements will be lost. The administration bill, not surprisingly, also removes every statutory priority for the neediest in both FHA assisted and public housing programs, |