Mr. COLLOMS. Well, that is true. But there are plenty of other Federal projects into which the State certainly cannot go, and therefore it does not have the high per capita tax. Mr. SMITH. Have you been before your State legislature for relief? Mr. COLLOMS. Yes, we have. Mr. SMITH. On this project? Mr. COLLOMS. We have. And the Republican assembly and senate there, and the Republican Governor, have not come through with as much aid as we think they should give. We have had substantial loans there, or grants, and bonds sold in aid of housing, but not enough. Mr. SMITH. How did the Democratic administration act politically? Mr. COLLOMS. They appropriated more. Mr. SMITH. And the Progressives, if they get into power, will appropriate still more; is that it? Mr. COLLOMS. We hope so. Mr. SMITH. If the Socialists get into power— Mr. COLLOMS. We may then raise the taxes, Dr. Smith, a little bit in order to take care of housing. Mr. SMITH. A little bit? Mr. COLLOMS. Well, we feel that a great deal of the housing which can be proposed is what we call self-sustaining housing-where there is not much required. There was a bill proposed here in 1945 by the New York City Housing Authority. General Butler introduced it at that time. It was called self-sustaining housing. That is where only the credit of the government is pledged and actually no money. Under that form of housing the income groups which cannot go to the veterans' project, which Mr. Stern and I just spoke about, and the people in the lowest income group who require subsidized housing— that dark area where you do not have private building or public building-would be taken care of. We are not proposing, at this time, an amendment to the TaftEllender-Wagner bill for unsubsidized housing. We do not want to clutter up the works. I think it would be a perfectly splendid thing to include such an amendment. I think it should go into a bill of this kind, but at this moment we feel that the thing which should go through is the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill-the one now before you gentlemen for study. The CHAIRMAN. Possibly we can go along a little faster if Mr. Colloms makes his statement before we proceed with further questioning. Mr. TALLE. May I ask a question of Mr. Stern, Mr. Chairman? Mr. TALLE. On page 3 of your statement, Mr. Stern, you state: At this very time, the British Government, despite severe economic obstacles, has launched a bold and farsighted program to replace crowded urban conditions with planned, integrated, livable communities for its people. If our junior partner can afford this, why can't we? Now, I have in my hand a photostatic copy of an official British document. It carries the seal of Great Britain, and the title is "Capital Investment in 1948," and also the legend "Presented by the Chancelor of the Exchequer to Parliament by command of His MajestyDecember 1947." Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that Appendix "A" of this document be inserted in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be done. (The document above referred to is as follows:) APPENDIX A. BUILDING AND CIVIL ENGINEERING A-1. HOUSING 1. At the end of the war there was practically no new house building, and works of maintenance and repair were rigorously controlled; the only active housing service was the repair of war damage, on which over 200,000 of the total housing labor force of 343,000 were engaged. 2. Over the last 2 years a wide range of housing work has been undertaken in the endeavor to meet urgent housing needs as quickly as possible. The main burden of war-damage repairs has been completed; a program for building 160,000 temporary houses has been undertaken and substantially completed; another 55,000 homes have been produced by conversion and adaptation of existing premises, and a further 126,000 brought back into use by the repair of unoccupied wardamaged dwellings. But special attention has been concentrated on the organization and execution of new house building, which must always be the main source to which the country will look for improved housing conditions. Since the middle of 1945, 149,000 permanent houses have been started and finished. 3. Some 460,000 homes have thus been provided since the end of the war, a substantial contribution toward the 750,000 which were estimated at the end of the war to be required to enable a separate home to be offered to each family who wanted one. 4. There are also at the present time a further 260,000 new permanent houses under construction and a further 90,000 houses in tenders approved but not yet started. Moreover, during these 2 years a substantial part of the building labor and materials has necessarily been expended on the repair of occupied war-damaged houses; it is estimated that if the labor and materials so expended had been available for new construction it would have been possible to build at least 100,000 additional permanent new houses, which would have brought the total number of new houses up to 560,000. In the 2 years after the 1914-18 war the number of new houses recorded as completed was approximatley 5,500. A far greater proportion of the national resources have thus been devoted during the last 2 years to the better housing of the people. 5. The Government has decided that the 260,000 houeses under construction and the 60,000 houses in tenders, approved but not yet started, should be completed as quickly as possible. The amount of softwood timber that can be imported will be the limiting factor in the rate of progress, but for most of the houses already under construction timber is already in the houses or in the country. In order to insure that as many houses as possible are built with the timber available, alternative material has been substituted wherever possible, and the amount of timber has been reduced to 1.6 standards per house (compared with a normal prewar figure of 21⁄2 standards per house). 6. The timber imported in 1948 will govern the number of houses which can be completed in 1949. It is estimated that the amount of timber which can be imported during 1948 will be no more than sufficient for the completion of 140,000 houses. The Government is providing for the number of houses under construction at the end of June 1948 to be 210,000, and approvals of new houses during the remainder of this year and in the first half of 1948 will be granted to secure this result. Preference will be given, so far as local resources will permit, to houses for miners, agricultural workers and certain key workers. 7. Every endeavor will be made to insure that the new houses for the building of which provision is made in the Government's program are adequately manned within the limits of the available supplies of materials and components. For this purpose assistance will be obtained from the fall in the number of workers required for war-damaged and temporary houses. Only experience will show how many workers are needed to sustain the higher rate of finishing new houses that is envisaged. After June 1948 there will, however, be a progressive reduction as the number of new houses under construction falls below 210,000 with a consequent reduction in the number of people employed during the second half of the year. It is estimated that the labor force required for all housing purposes in June 1948 will be approximately 525,000. 8. As to the completion of houses, the position is that 14,000 permanent houses were completed in the month of September and at the end of that month some 100,000 of the houses under construction were already roofed. During 1948 the rate at which houses can be completed should be higher than in 1947, because of ALBERT L. COLLOMS Yale University-1925. Yale Law School-1927. Administration, United States Housing Authority, Washington, D. C., 1938–40. In charge of utility rates. Chief of enforcement of rent and consumer goods in the Office of Price Administration in New York City, 1942-46. Chairman of the housing committee of the National Lawyers Guild, 1940-43. Chairman of the Queens County Committee on Rent and Housing, New York City. Representative of the National Progressive Citizens of America and the National Wallace for President Committee. The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Stern. STATEMENT OF ALFRED K. STERN, ACCOMPANIED BY ALBERT L. COLLOMS, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL WALLACE FOR PRESIDENT COMMITTEE Mr. STERN. Congress has broken every housing promise and pledge made to the returning veterans. While millions of them are forced to live with in-laws, in trailers, rooming houses, and even in reassembled Quonset huts, the very huts which housed them during the war, Congress ignores their desperate need. This has truly been a "do nothing" Congress when it comes to housing. One disheartened veteran asked me before I came down here, "How is it this country erected thousands of Army camps and installations in a few months but cannot provide a house I can afford to live in?" This committee is certainly conscious of the total failure to make a dent in the housing need. It does not require a detailed bill of particulars at this time to show the series of steps by which this failure was brought about. A few instances will suffice. One of President Truman's first major acts on the economic front was the lifting of the regulation known as L-41, which had channeled and controlled the use of basic construction materials during the war. A Republican Congress then permitted the complete break-down of all the remaining controls and vitiated the Wyatt program for emergency housing construction with veterans' preferences. What followed was a complete victory for the real-estate interests, the materials industry, and home-financing institutions and a defeat for the people in their housing needs. The control of Congress by the Republican Party as a result of the 1946 elections and its cooperation with the aims and program of the real-estate lobby in a short time completely shattered any hope of a reasonable housing program. Here are the results of the complete elimination of construction controls and the veterans' housing program. Offering prices of homes in New York City have risen to $13,500 as compared with $5,600 ten years ago, the New York Times reported in the Sunday edition of May 9. Furthermore, Department of Commerce statistics show that this $13,500 home only 18 months ago had a price ceiling on it of $10,000. In 18 months the cost of a house has gone up 35 percent. Now construction analysts predict (also as reported in the New York Times) that as a result of the new rearmament and foreign-aid programs, the cost of housing materials are expected to rise 20 to 25 percent further this year. This situation obtains all over the country. I have further statistics to give you which just recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, if you would like to have them. In Los Angeles the typical buyer is forced to pay more than $14,800 for a home. Federal housing experts report that builder profits per house are now at least $1,500 as compared to a typical profit per house of $500 before the war. One New Jersey contractor informs me that $1,500 is a very small profit on a house these days-that actually he has made as much as $3,000 on a new $13,000 6-room frame house. The average family obviously cannot afford these prices for new homes nor can it afford to pay the excessively high rentals for new apartment houses now coming on the market in metropolitan areas across the country. Typical are monthly rentals of $110 and $120 for three- and four-room apartments in modest suburban neighborhoods. A recent and shocking instance is the new so-called housing cooperative planned for veterans under the banner of the State of New York itself. This is supposed to be a break for veterans. Do you know how much it costs a veteran to get in? It costs him $10,000 for a fouror five-room apartment. A very small percentage of families can afford these excessively high costs. Even this State-sponsored enterprise has been able to secure-according to latest reports-only 105 veteran families to sign up for this project of about 800 suites. This condition is typical of the situation in the country at large. In our great and wealthy Nation you find families in Chicago living in cellars; trailer camps that are beginning to look like "Hoovervilles" surrounding southern cities; children in Detroit crowded into slums and general occupancy of substandard dwellings which, but for the desperate housing situation, would long ago have been demolished. At this very time the British Government, despite severe economic obstacles, has launched a bold and far-sighted program to replace crowded urban conditions with planned, integrated, livable communities for its people. If our junior partner can afford this, why can we not? America's enormous housing need is conceded. Both congressional and other studies indicate a minimum need of 3,000,000 dwellings for families now without homes or apartments of their own and at least 12,000,000 additional units for those living in substandard rural and urban housing. The "one-third of a nation" that the late President Roosevelt singled out as ill-housed over a decade ago, has increased to nearly half the Nation today. In spite of the high rate of construction in the last 2 years, with about 800,000 dwelling units built in 1946, and again in 1947, and with a comparable high rate of construction estimated for 1948, there has been little or no relief to the critical housing problem which President Truman recently referred to as "almost fatal." The reason for this crisis is that there has been practically no effort to build for middleand low-income groups. Less than 10 percent of American families can afford the housing built today. The filtering down theory-about which I am sure you have all heard that was supposed to provide housing for people of moderate means has completely failed. This fact must be frankly admitted. The record over the past generation has amply proved its failure. It has been estimated that at least 90 percent of the benefits of the proposed Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill will supply aid only to high cost and inflated housing, the demand for which is rapidly dwindling. Mr. Yale University-1925. Yale Law School-1927. ALBERT L. COLLOMS Administration, United States Housing Authority, Washington, D. C., 1938-40. In charge of utility rates. Chief of enforcement of rent and consumer goods in the Office of Price Administration in New York City, 1942-46. Chairman of the housing committee of the National Lawyers Guild, 1940-43. Chairman of the Queens County Committee on Rent and Housing, New York City. Representative of the National Progressive Citizens of America and the National Wallace for President Committee. The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Stern. STATEMENT OF ALFRED K. STERN, ACCOMPANIED BY ALBERT L. COLLOMS, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL WALLACE FOR PRESIDENT COMMITTEE Mr. STERN. Congress has broken every housing promise and pledge made to the returning veterans. While millions of them are forced to live with in-laws, in trailers, rooming houses, and even in reassembled Quonset huts, the very huts which housed them during the war, Congress ignores their desperate need. This has truly been a "do nothing" Congress when it comes to housing. One disheartened veteran asked me before I came down here, "How is it this country erected thousands of Army camps and installations in a few months but cannot provide a house I can afford to live in?" This committee is certainly conscious of the total failure to make a dent in the housing need. It does not require a detailed bill of particulars at this time to show the series of steps by which this failure was brought about. A few instances will suffice. One of President Truman's first major acts on the economic front was the lifting of the regulation known as L-41, which had channeled and controlled the use of basic construction materials during the war. A Republican Congress then permitted the complete break-down of all the remaining controls and vitiated the Wyatt program for emergency housing construction with veterans' preferences. What followed was a complete victory for the real-estate interests, the materials industry, and home-financing institutions and a defeat for the people in their housing needs. The control of Congress by the Republican Party as a result of the 1946 elections and its cooperation with the aims and program of the real-estate lobby in a short time completely shattered any hope of a reasonable housing program. Here are the results of the complete elimination of construction controls and the veterans' housing program. Offering prices of homes in New York City have risen to $13,500 as compared with $5,600 ten years ago, the New York Times reported in the Sunday edition of May 9. Furthermore, Department of Commerce statistics show that this $13,500 home only 18 months ago had a price ceiling on it of $10,000. In 18 months the cost of a house has gone up 35 percent. Now construction analysts predict (also as reported in the New York Times) that as a result of the new rearmament and foreign-aid programs, the cost of housing materials are expected to rise 20 to 25 percent further this year. This situation obtains all over the country. I |