Knoxville, Tenn.

The housing

You may quote me as being in favor of the passage of this bill. problem in Knoxville is most acute and the returning soldiers are desirous of securing proper housing accommodations.-E. E. Patton, mayor. Charlotte, N. C.

The housing situation is most critical today and Charlotte is most concerned over having no place for returned veterans.

We hope conditions will be better after the first of the year when materials will become more available. We are about to go into extremes by getting some temporary trailers or temporary fabricted houses to relieve this terrible situation. We have requests from over 500 veterans for places to live, and it is pretty hard for me to answer their questions daily. "Mr. Mayor, we have been fighting for you from two to four years and come home to find no place to meet our wives and families. What have we been fighting for?" The answer to this question will have to be something radical for immediate help as these boys will not take no for an answer from month to month.-H. H. Baxter, mayor.

Bethlehem, Pa.

Assure you of my support of housing bill S. 1342 pending in the Senate.Robert Pfeifle, mayor.

Manchester, N. H.

The housing situation is getting more critical in Manchester as the cold season sets in. Construction is almost impossible, due to lack of materials and supplies. Of course we know that the housing problem is a national one at present, but we feel that the situation could be improved here if at least one rent-control regulation could be lifted or eased up now that the war is over.

Manchester has one of the highest percentages of servicemen in the country, 12,000 out of about 80,000 population. Approximately half of them are back, and hundreds of new families are vainly looking for rooms, apartments, tenements, homes. This can't go on much longer.

Our municipal government is also definitely in favor of Housing bill S. 1342 now pending in the Senate, as the only way to rid our city of some of its 4,000 slum dwellings in low-rent areas of Manchester.-Josephat T. Benoit, mayor. Atlantic City, N. J.

I agree implicitly that the situation is serious, and from what I read, all cities are affected in similar manner.-Joseph Altman, mayor.

Des Moines, Iowa

We, in Des Moines, are particularly interested in low-cost housing. By that I mean homes for many who are earning under $2,100 a year and which can be paid for in a lifetime.-John MacVicar, Mayor.

East St. Louis, Ill.

Please be advised that the housing situation of our community at present is in a very critical stage, and the problem is becoming worse with no relief in sight, except recourse to Federal aid.

Personally, I think this is a good bill and if enacted and put in operation should go a long ways in solving our housing problems, as it gives opportunity to private enterprise in housing and, above all, Federal aid to cities and housing authorities for low-rent projects in the redevelopment of slums and blighted areas.

With these thoughts in view, our city heartily endorses this bill.-John T. Connors, Mayor.

Fresno, Calif.

I can only say that we are not affected by slums and blighted areas here but I heartily agree a bill should have our united support.

My chief problem, at present, is attempting to secure from the War Department the use of some of their barracks in three camps about to be discontinued here so that we can temporarily house returning veterans and their families until new homes can be erected.-Z. S. Leymel, Mayor.

Pontiac, Mich.

The city of Pontiac is now experiencing a very severe and difficult housing shortage.

It is my opinion that this situation will not be properly cleared up in this city, or any of the others in the United States until such time as proper legislation is set up on the Federal level to aid the cities in solving the problem.

I

The housing bill (S. 1342) appears to be the best and most reasonable aid to the problem which has an opportunity of an enactment at the present time. can, therefore, only offer my full support to get the bill through Congress.

I have instructed the city manager to follow the legislation closely and write the proper parties concerning its enactment.-Arthur J. Law, mayor.

Columbus, Ga.

You may record me definitely in support of any slum clearance the local housing authorities in our cities can or will promote within the Federal aid housing program.

Columbus can be cited as a good example of what slum clearance means to a city. We have three projects and need more. These of us who are acquainted with the improved conditions accruing to our cities from slum-clearance progress cannot do otherwise than to vigorously support the Federal housing program. I am happy to join with you in this progressive effort.-Sterling Albrecht, mayor. Rockford, Ill.

The officers of the Traveler's Aid in Rockford recently informed me that in October they had requests for 705 apartments or rooms with kitchen facilities. About one-half of these requests came from veterans.

The Winnebago County Housing Authority also has been flooded with requests for housing that they have been unable to fill.

The housing shortage in Rockford, with 90,000 population, is very acute, and there appears to be no prospects for any immediate improvement.-C. H. Bloom,

mayor.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Gentlemen, in S. 1592 we find for the first time. the most realistic approach to the national housing problem. It is a national problem today. At one time it was only in the larger urban centers, and now there is a shortage of dwellings in every section of the country. I believe that packed into this bill we find reflected the experience of many years, and the bill profits by that experience.

I remember the time, gentlemen, when it was considered quite radical, and even irresponsible, to suggest Government assistance for housing. I first learned of terrible living conditions in New York City. It was just about 40 years ago I was American consul at Fiume, and I read Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Live. I didn't know it, because I had been raised in the West. We have plenty of room there, had no luxuries but plenty of air and light, space. didn't realize it until I came back in 1906, and the conditions were just as Mr. Riis had described them, only so much worse for additional age of the buildings.

At that time, as you know, Senator, there were committees and organizations and groups interested in housing, and nothing happened. Nothing happened in 1920 when I went to the City Hall as president of the board of aldermen. Nothing happened until about 1933 when President Roosevelt first sent the message on housing, on the Wagner bill; and even then, when we sought to avail ourselves of the Federal funds, some of the people in my town who were interested in housing-oh, urged caution, not to start to build; we had to continue to study and survey. It was very popular as long as it wasn't possible, and when it became possible we found all these public-spirited people who had been talking about it for 25 yearsthey sort of drew back and wanted to study the subject further. I think New York City was the first to avail itself of the provisions of the Wagner bill, and we have about 20,000 families now in low-rent, publicly owned, publicly operated houses.

The CHAIRMAN. They are blessed, too.
Mr. LAGUARDIA. I should say.

The CHAIRMAN. Except a lot more is needed.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. But, generally, you just can't visualize the transformation that takes place. I don't mean in the physical condition of the building. In the family. Take a family from an old, long tenement house railroad apartment-middle room, no windows, a kitchen dark and drab, crowded, insufficient light. That family is depressed. Children are running around unkempt. The poor mother just bedraggled, does the washing in the kitchen, trying to keep the children. You take that same family and you put them into one of our low-cost housing, and you have really created new human beings. There is a new family. The mother is clean. The bright little decorations in the room. There is cheer and sunshine in every window, and a window in every room. It certainly is so gratifying, worth while, worth all the efforts and heartaches involved in getting proper low-rent housing going. I wish you would go

Senator Buck. Pardon. May I ask, in your case in New Yorkexcuse me for interrupting, but let us take the case that you cited of some family going out of one of these dark, dreary places. When they move out, doesn't somebody else move in?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Oh, no.

Senator BUCK. Have you stopped that?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Oh, no; if you make a tour of our city you will just find thousands of buildings boarded up. We have now, sirSenator BUCK. Let me. Just in your case, if you take a family out of one of the apartments, is that closed then for future use?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Not as mathematical as that, but we have some 37,000 vacant apartments in these undesirable buildings at this time, and we have torn down, in my time, during the past 12 years, over 130,000 units, apartments. We have torn them down. We just condemned them and vacate them, and we have now any number of vacant apartments-no water, no heat, dreary, unsanitary, and people won't live in them. You can't blame them. We were interrupted in our demolition program, and we are picking it up again now. You see, when we condemn a building, we order it to be demolished, and then if the owners do not demolish it we do, and it becomes a lien.

Senator BUCK. Still you are a step ahead of us. At home we have two of these Federal projects. They have been very well built, and they are occupied. There hasn't been a single slum house that has disappeared.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Is that so?

Senator BUCK. No.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. I would like at this point, then, to put in the exact number of buildings and the exact number of dwelling units that we have torn down, demolished.

Senator BUCK. I think it is a very important part of the operation to see that those things are done away with as you take the families

out.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Exactly.

Now, we have reached the point, gentlemen, that the responsibility of life and health is fully recognized by government at each level: Local, State, and Federal.

Senator TOBEY. Mr. Mayor, when you are speaking about New York, and the Senator from Delaware, you do not have to go any further than the sites they have right across from one of the good

hotels of the city, places you wouldn't keep pigs in, people living there, within a mile of this spot.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. I know.

Senator TOBEY. And we might say, "Physician, heal thyself," Senate control healing the situation here.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. It was terrible, Senator, 29 years ago when I first came to the Congress; oh, those alleys were something terrible. They were cleaned up a little bit after the last war, but still bad. You know, I always say this, and maybe I have said it to the committee before. When we have a distinguished visitor coming to New York we always parade him up Broadway and show him the high buildings so he won't look on the side streets. We want to clean that out now, and we are cleaning it out fast.

The situation is such, with the recognition of government and this responsibility, we have reached a point, accepted that we can provide proper, cheerful, sanitary dwellings for the lowest-income group. Now, in my city they are provided for, and with our program, which I will give you in just a minute, we are attacking that end of it rather successfully, if nothing happens to retard our program.

Then we have the top. There is no trouble there, people who can afford to pay, but in between we have this great big group that is now caught right in the middle. For instance, take a family, we will say, of four or five children, and the income is $1,800. He will qualify for one of the low-rent subsidized apartments. But you take a family of equal size with an income of $2,000, $2,500, and then they can't qualify for the low-rent subsidized houses, and they must live in substandard homes, or if they live in a standard home they cut into other necessities of life-proper food or proper clothes, and, of course, no recreation. And I go up to about $3,500 or $4,000; $4,000 today isn't what it used to be; that group is badly in need of additional homes, and under existing economic conditions private capital cannot provide those homes.

Senator BUTLER. Why, Mayor? For what particular reason or reasons?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. The financing, the cost of money, cost of land, and the cost of building brings the rent too high.

Senator BUTLER. We have rent ceilings now. Is that of any help there?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. We have no building, no construction.

Senator BUTLER. Is it partially for the reason that returns are unattractive and therefore people are not interested in constructing buildings?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. The required returns under present expectations are too high, to commence with, and a reasonable return with existing cost of money and existing land values in my town, and cost of constructions, they can't provide the per-room rent that this group can afford to pay.

Senator BUTLER. Maybe there are too many people who want to live right in New York.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Well, isn't that fine? I hope they all do, in my country.

Senator BUTLER. With an income of $4,000 or $4,500, as you indicate, is a person of that kind unable to finance his own residence? Mr. LAGUARDIA. $3,500? $4,000?

$4,500..

Senator BUTLER. $4,000. Mr. LAGUARDIA. Yes. I don't believe he could build his own little home without the kind of assistance provided in this bill at this time. I will come to that in just a moment.

Now, if I may take certain features of the bill, I want to repeat and make it clear that this is the most hopeful piece of legislation I have seen in a long, long time. And of course you can't move a family into a Senate bill; it requires a Senate bill to be translated into action and to build homes, and this bill ought to be passed at the earliest possible moment. I can think of nothing more important.

Gentlemen, I want to make sure that anything that I may say is intended to be just helpful criticism and not to be taken in any way as opposition to the whole bill itself. I am not enthusiastic at all about Title II: Research, Market Analysis, and Local Planning. Senator BUTLER. Page?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. Seventeen, sir. There is provision, I think, for $25,000,000 and $12,500,000. I believe you will find enough experience and analysis and surveys and studies and thinking and planning and pictures and statistics existing to put the whole $25,000,000 right into building. I am so afraid that that will be sort of piddled away and you will have a bunch of pretty renderings and pictures and diagrams, and what we need is houses. I would like to save that $37,000,000 and put it right into houses; and if no other city can take it, New York is ready to go ahead with it right away.

Now, on the long insurance and yield insurance the provisions of the bill are excellent, but I do want to stress that this is 1945, going to 1946, and the rental value of money isn't what it used to be, and it never will be again.

Senator TOBEY. Never is a long time, of course.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. What?

Senator TOBEY. Never is a long time.

Mr. LAGUARDIA. It never will be again. This provision here will provide an escape, a place, for a great deal of idle money. When money is invested with risk-I am not talking about speculation, but risk-it has one rental value; and when money is placed without risk, the same standards of the value of the rent of that money cannot be applied. Now, a loan here of 95 percent is insured. There is a 5 percent equity there, the interest is insured, the loan is insured, and that should be slightly under 2 percent. It is far better to get 2 percent assured than to be promised 6 percent and not get it.

I predict now, gentlemen, that you are going to hear an array of witnesses coming here and crying about the interest rate. I wish you would ask those same gentlemen what happened to those beautiful financing plans they had following the First World War. Remember? No matter where you went, in my subway or in the country bus, these ads, "Secure your future. Be sure of old age. Guaranteed mortgages, 6 percent, 7 percent." And every one of them blew up. When I took office in '34, in pension funds, in relief funds, police relief, fire relief, there were millions of dollars of those perfectly no good guaranteed mortgages, guaranteed by the same gentlemen, financed by the same gentlemen that come here crying. The rain is nothing today to the tears you are going to see here about the interest rates. [Laughter.] You watch it; you will be floating in tears here.