Senator BUCK. Over the life of the project. General GRANT. Over the period for which the tax exemption is granted by local law. Nobody can be sure that that is the actual saving because nobody knows what the actual taxes would be. Senator BUCK. They would certainly be higher. General GRANT. They certainly would be higher, and you don't know exactly how much you are contributing. Senator TAFT. Thank you very much, General Grant. (The following letter from Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant 3d:) AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ASSOCIATION, Washington, D. C., January 18, 1945. Hon. ROBERT P. TAFT, Chairman, Subcommittee on Housing, Special Committee Post-War Economic MY DEAR SENATOR TAFT: The following statement, supplementary to my testimony of yesterday, is respectfully submitted to clarify my answers to some of the Senators' questions and to explain further the basis for this association's recommendations. While no general formula appears to have been found to relieve the Federal Government of its rapidly mounting war debt, there is almost universal agreement that a prosperous Nation with full employment and an exceptionally high national income is absolutely necessary to avert financial disaster after the war. The association has been convinced by policies actually adopted by Congress and approved by the President, that the Congress would consider favorably any program which would help to create such favorable conditions. The association therefore recommends Federal aid, and especially Federal leadership, in the urban redevelopment program under specific conditions which in its opinion will make this program ultimately self-liquidating and by helping the economic revival of our cities will result in materially enhancing an important source of Federal revenue. The conditions thought necessary to accomplish this purpose are: 1. Federal aid to municipalities for the acquisition of land in blighted areas that are in need of redevelopment to save the municipality from continued economic loss and deterioration by stopping decentralization and the spread of slum conditions. The advances so made can be substantially repaid over a period of years from the proceeds of sales and leases and the increased taxes justified by the redevelopment, if the latter is wisely planned. 2. The write-down in the cost of the land to its new use value for sale or lease to private enterprise, so as to induce the maximum use of private capital in the construction on and management of the land redeveloped. 3. Limitation of public housing authorities to the minimum purchase of land and construction of houses necessary to shelter decently the lowest income groups, which are unable to pay the lowest rents that private enterprise can offer even with a reasonable reduction in land cost to a fair new use value. Such participation by Federal aided public housing authorities to be financed in accordance with the Federal housing program established by Congress. 4. Conditioning Federal aid to urban redevelopment upon the existence or establishment of a competent local planning agency and the close integration of urban redevelopment projects with the city or metropolitan area plan. 5. Similar integration of other Federal and Federal aid projects in the locality with the plan and with the urban redevelopment projects, whenever they are related or can mutually affect one another. Lacking the means of urban redevelopment and in the emergency conditions of the last 4 years, many Federal and Federal aid projects have had to be so located and designed as to increase the tendency to decentralization and blight. 6. The inability of most of our cities to assume the additional indebtedness necessary to assemble the land for needed urban redevelopment is the chief impediment to its being initially financed by them. However, it is believed that in many cases the increase in taxes or even all the taxes on the particular areas redeveloped could be made available, in addition to the proceeds from sales and leases, to pay back the advance made by the Federal Government, as proposed in 1 above. Several States have passed legislation to bring about urban redevelopment and it is probable that State participation or aid could be obtained if required. 7. The adoption of a Federal urban redevelopment policy in time for the large amount of house construction that will inevitably take place after the war, both by private enterprise and by public housing agencies, shall be in the blighted areas and a contribution to municipal improvement, rather than on cheap land in the suburbs and a further impetus to decentralization and municipal decay. The Federal interest in urban redevelopment lies in the production thereby of more good and prosperous citizens and in the rehabilitation of the citi s as a most important source of Federal revenue. A study of 5,800 selectees recently rejected in the District of Columbia as unfit for psychiatric reasons shows a definite majority from the areas recognized as due for redevelopment. The other costs of slums and decaying neighborhoods to the Federal Government as well as to the local municipalities have been recognized by Congress and need not be repeated. But it is believed the experience gained to date proves that building new houses for low income groups alone does not remove the slums; only well planned urban redevelopment can do this. We believe that urban redevlopment, as outlined, constitutes a program the promising results of which in husbanding and enhancing national wealth especially merit your consideration. Respectfully submitted. U. S. GRANT, Major General, United States Army, (For the American Planning and Civic Association.) Senator TAFT. Miss Ware. STATEMENT OF CAROLINE F. WARE Miss WARE. Mr. Chairman, I have been asked to present this. statement on behalf of the following national organizations: American Association of University Women, American Home Economics Association, Consumers Union, General Federation of Women's Clubs, League of Women Shoppers, Inc., National Board, Young Woman's Christian Association, National Consumers League, National Council of Catholic Women, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of Negro Women, National Federation of Settlements, National Urban League, and National Women's Trade Union League. (The statement is as follows:) JOINT STATEMENT ON HOUSING On behalf of our respective organizations, we wish to express to this Committee, our conviction that good homes in good neighborhoods for all the people must be a major objective of public policy in the immediate post-war years. We speak as representatives of citizen organizations, concerned with housing from the point of view of American families who live in houses and raise their children there-the consumers rather than the producers of housing. It is not our purpose to go over the ground already covered by the several agencies and interests engaged in housing production, or to set forth in detail the ways by which the need for good homes should be met. It is our purpose, rather, to stress our belief that the need must be met and to state some of the criteria by which, in our opinion, measures to meet it may be judged. In asserting that decent homes in good neighborhoods must be provided for all the people we are not simply expressing a pious hope; we are stating what, in the views of our organizations, is a paramount principle of public policy to which problems and lesser principles must be made to yield. As a nation, we have demostrated in war that we can achieve the impossible when it is sufficiently important to us to do so. Surely we can achieve the infinitely smaller and easier goal of good homes for all the people if we give this objective number one priority in post-war public policy. There is no need to repeat the basic data on the housing situation which has already been presented to this committee. It is a matter of common knowledge that household rent and household operation take, on the average, 29 percent of the family budget, a larger item than anything except food; that enough decent dwellings do not now exist to house the American people properly, even if all families had enough money to rent decent homes, and that a large proportion of American families could not afford a decent home even if houses were available at rents which represent adequate standards under sufficient present conditions of private construction. This committee has before it sufficient evidence of the high correlation between crowding and disease, and between slum conditions and such indexes of lack of family well-being as infant deaths and juvenile delinquency-the human cost of bad housing. It has evidence, too, that cities are losing money on their slums, receiving in revenues from slum properties only a small fraction of their expenditures for police, fire, health, and other services in slum areas. The National Housing Administrator has presented a graphic picture of the estimated needs for new housing construction after the war and has shown how far short we shall fall if we revert to the building pattern of 1940. He estimates that unless we use better techniques than our 1940 construction pattern, we shall have an annual deficit of some 666,000 new homes (exclusive of badly needed farm housing) representing an expenditure in 1940 prices of over one and a half billion dollars. This estimate defines quantitatively the problem of providing good homes for all after the war. Without attempting to specify the means by which this housing problem may be met, we should like to list some criteria by which the adequacy of housing measures may be judged. .1. Sufficient decent housing must be available for all. 2. Housing standards consistent with good living must be achieved and maintained. 3. There must be good neighborhoods as well as good houses. 4. Local communities and the National Government must both assume their share of responsibility. I. Sufficient decent housing must be available in each community for all income groups, for all family sizes, for members of minority as well as members of dominant groups, for both rural and urban dwellers. It will obviously require the united efforts of all construction agencies, private and public, to meet the needs of all the people. Just how much can or will be supplied through one means or another will, of course, depend on many factors. The level of national income and the distribution of family incomes after the war will affect the amount which families can pay in rent. Changes in the cost of housing construction in the coming years will influence the proportion of the housing need which can be met by private enterprise and the proportion which will have to be supplied by public means. The one fact which seems to us incontrovertible is that the needs of all the people for decent homes cannot be met by either public or private construction alone, but must depend upon both a high level of activity in the private building industry and substantial public construction for low-income groups, accompanied by continued research and technological development. It is our hope that research into new methods of production and the development of more economical methods of financing will combine to reduce the costs of private construction, thereby enlarging the proportion of the housing need which can be met by private industry. We consider it the responsibility of the Federal Government to contribute to the development of the private housing industry, both through the promotion of research and through the development of improved methods of financing. At the same time, we believe that failure of private industry to build suitable homes for all income groups should not stand in the way of the provision of decent homes through public effort. Furthermore, families whose incomes fall in the "no man's land" between the top of the income brackets for which public housing has been built and the bottom of the private housing bracket should not be overlooked, but must be provided for in one way or another. Measures should be sufficiently flexible, too, to apply to families whose incomes change, so that, for example, families would not have to go house-hunting and children be separated from their playmates and forced to change schools because of an increase in the family income. While the shortage of decent homes and the inability to afford existing rents affects lower income families of all types, the problem is accentuated for some groups, and their special needs must not be slighted. Large families, for example, find greater difficulty than small in meeting their housing needs. The following table shows that in 1941, larger families in lowincome brackets spent, on the average, less for housing than did smaller families although they needed larger housing accommodations. TABLE 1.—Annual expenditure for housing (including fuel, light, refrigeration), 1941 (by urban families of different sizes at different income levels) Family size.... $500-$1,000 $1,000-$1,500 $1,500-$2,000 $2,000-$2,500 $2, 500-$3,000 $3,000-$5,000 Source: Unpublished data from Survey of Spending and Saving in Wartime, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Negro families, too, experience in an exaggerated form the effects of the shortage of decent homes at rents within range of low-income families. In most urban communities, Negro families, because of residential restrictions, find themselves forced to pay higher rents than other residents for corresponding accommodations, and to spend a larger proportion of their income for housing, as the following tables indicate: TABLE 2.-Relation between condition of dwelling and rental value, 1940 in 14 northern cities and 26 southern metropolitan districts for white and nonwhite occupants Monthly rental Proportion of occupied White occupants, percent Under $5 $5-$10 $10-$15 $15-$20 $20-$25 $25-$30 $30-$40 $40-$50 $50-$60 888888 Source: Unpublished analysis of U. S. Census housing data, 1940. TABLE 3.-Proportion of income spent for rent at different rent levels in 4 cities, by white and Negro families, 1933 Source: Financial survey of urban housing, U. S. Department of Commerce, 1937. Rural families, easily forgotten because urban slums are so much more conspicuous, must not be overlooked. For the United States as a whole, a smaller proportion of rural than urban families have homes that meet modern standards, and a larger proportion live in houses needing major repairs: TABLE 4.-Condition of dwellings of urban and rural families, 1940 Percent of dwellings meeting modern standards (not needing major re pairs and with private bath). Percent needing major repairs.. Source: U. S. Census, 1940. The need for sufficient decent housing is not a postponable need, but an immediate one which should be met as soon as war conditions permit. The evidence of the ill effects of bad housing shows that these bear most heavily upon children. We shall not be fulfilling our responsibility to the children now growing up if we allow them to be exposed to disease and delinquency while we work slowly toward a goal of decent homes for a later generation. Moreover, the provision of decent homes must precede the destruction of those which are unfit. It is no solution to the problem of slums to destroy bad houses if there are no good houses to which their occupants can move. To tear down slums before additional decent housing has been provided is merely to force doubling up and the spread of slum conditions. Wherever the values of existing dwellings are based upon a shortage of decent houses, as is often the case for slum dwellings which can be rented only because people have no other place to live, efforts to protect these values should not be allowed to stand in the way of meeting needs. II. In order to obtain decent housing, constantly improved standards of planning, design, construction and maintenance should be established and maintained. It will be futile to clear existing slums if we fail to prevent deterioration into future slums. Low-income families in the past have often had to depend upon houses built for a higher-income group which have deteriorated in value because of deterioration of the property or neighborhood and which have been divided for multifamily use. The process of pouring new housing in at the top of the housing market and letting the needs of lower income families be met through this process of deterioration is highly unsatisfactory, especially since such second-hand housing is apt to be poorly designed for use by low-income families. Wherever the Federal Government enters the picture-whether in providing information for use by home builders or municipalities, in insurance or loans to encourage private builders, or in the construction of housing financed with public funds-it should throw its weight behind housing standards that mean good living. Research on the use of new materials and processes and on the actual experience of families living under different conditions, which should permit continuous improvement in housing standards, is now being carried on in the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics, in the National Housing Agency, and in the National Bureau of Standards. This type of activity should be extended after the war. III. Good homes mean good neighborhoods as well as good houses. The redevelopment of blighted areas is as essential as the elimination of substandard houses. The reconstruction and even the replacement of the 38 percent of all nonfarm houses which, in 1940, needed major repairs or lacked essential facilities would still not provide conditions for good living if slum congestion remained. Even cleaning up a block here and an alley there will only serve as a palliative unless the redevelopment of blighted sections of cities as a whole is undertaken on the basis of plans which envisage all neighborhoods with sufficient space, adequate community facilities and children safe from traffic hazards. In urban redevelopment, as in the construction of decent homes, the needs of all the people must be met. Families of all sizes, all income levels, all racial and national groups should have the opportunity to live in good neighborhoods of the various types which fit their work, play, school and other needs. Whatever measures may be adopted for redevelopment, they must not allow the redeveloped areas to revert to slums again. Areas should be so controlled as to keep them in line with the city's development, and to prevent their being broken up and allowed to deteriorate piecemeal. |