Mr. EGAN. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will have to go before the Rules Committee this afternoon on Commodity Credit Corporation and Reconstruction Finance Corporation bills. The committee will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. (Whereupon, at 12:30 p. m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a. m., Wednesday, May 5, 1948.) GENERAL HOUSING WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1948 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY, Washington, D. C. The committee reconvened, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., Hon. Frederick C. Smith presiding. Present: Messrs. Smith, Gamble, Kunkel, Talle, Sundstrom, Buffett, Hull, Stratton, Scott, Banta, Fletcher, Nicholson, Spence, Brown, Monroney, Folger, Hays, Riley, Buchanan, Boggs, and Multer. Also present: Hon. Ralph W. Gwinn, Representative, New York. Mr. SMITH. The committee will come to order. We will resume the hearings on S. 866. We have as our first witness this morning Mr. John T. Egan. Mr. BUFFETT. Mr. Chairman, I wonder if there is any effort being made to get the statements by witnesses to the members of the committee the day before the witnesses appear, so that we have a chance to go over them and so that we will be able to ask questions representing more study and appraisal of the situation. Can we do that? Mr. SMITH. I do not believe that has been done. I will have a talk with the chairman about it and see if it can be done. Mr. BANTA. I think we should insist on that, Mr. Chairman. It is an important thing. Mr. SMITH. I will be glad to take the matter up with the chairman. Mr. FOLGER. You want the opportunity to read it the night before? Mr. BUFFETT. Yes, sir; so that we have a chance to digest the statements and so that we can ask considered questions instead of trying to do a horseback job of inquiry. Mr. MULTER. Mr. Chairman, before we proceed with this witness, I would like to have permission to put into the record a letter I have received from the Honorable William O'Dwyer, mayor of the city of New York, dated April 28, 1948, urging the speedy enactment of this legislation we are now considering, and together with that, I would like to have made a part of the record the two brochures he submitted to me, one entitled "Statement to the Joint Committee on Housing, Congress of the United States, by Mayor William O'Dwyer of the City of New York, November 12, 1947," which he says is still applicable to the situation as it exists today. The other is entitled "Report to Mayor-Elect William O'Dwyer by the Emergency Committee on Housing, December 17, 1945," which is still applicable to the situation as it exists in the city of New York today. Mr. SMITH. Without objection, they may be inserted in the record. (The three documents above referred to are as follows:) Hon. ABRAHAM J. MULTER, CITY OF NEW YORK, Member of Congress, House Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN MULTER: Now that the amended Taft-Ellender-Wagner housing bill has passed the Senate and has been sent to the House for consideration, I write to urge your active support of this bill because it is of primary importance to the city of New York where the low-cost and low-rental housing situation is still extremely serious. Attached are two brochures which give a very conservative picture in considerable detail, one dated December 17, 1945, and the other November 12, 1947. Besides provisions of this act to aid and encourage private construction, there is provision for an additional 500,000 units of low-rent public housing, spread over the next 5 years. New York City's share should be about 6,000 units each year, or a total of 30,000 units, accommodating approximately 120,000 people. Despite huge city and State programs, there is still a desperate need for this type of housing which cannot be supplied by, and which does not compete with, private construction. The act also authorizes Federal aid for genuine slum clearance on a reasonable scale. These public housing and slum clearance sections are, as you know, the special target of real estate lobbies and other reactionary forces. I strongly urge you to aid in every possible way and vote for the passage of this bill in its entirety and particularly to resist all efforts to eliminate its lowrent public housing and slum clearance provisions. Very truly yours, WILLIAM O'DWYER, Mayor. STATEMENT BY MAYOR WILLIAM O'DWYER, OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK JOINT COMMITTEE ON HOUSING, CITY OF NEW YORK, Congress of the United States, Washington, D. C. GENTLEMEN: I am glad to take advantage of your hearings in this city to bring our housing picture up to date. New York City is still in desperate need of additional dwellings to provide for more than a half million of its population living under trying and often demoralizing conditions. On any reasonable assumptions and here I propose to be ultraconservative-there remain at the very least 150,000 families in this city who have no homes of their own, are doubled up with friends and relatives, and in many instances are split up among other families with all the attendant maladjustments and miseries which accompany such overcrowding. The New York City Housing Authority, in a memorandum to the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, at a hearing on the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill on December 18, 1945, estimated the shortage at that time to be 187,000 family units. In March 1946 the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Housing and Multiple Dwellings, headed by Senator McNeil Mitchell, estimated that the needs of New York City by the end of 1946 totaled 211,000 units. The same committee published a further report on June 15, 1947, in which it was stated that the number of families living doubled up on that date was estimated at 360,000, of whom 265,000 were doubled up against their wishes. Whatever set of figures is taken, whatever the precise measure of overcrowding, it is clear that the situation is still serious, Practically every family in the city can testify, from bitter personal experience, to the need of further prompt, drastic action. These This shortage in New York City, and elsewhere, was caused by a combination of factors, most of them in one way or another arising out of the war. include obsolescence, cessation of civilian residential construction, marriages and increases in population, shortage of materials, high prices, labor difficulties, exorbitant bids, mass migrations and movements of people to and from war industries, concentration of GI students in cities, general increase in employment, and other postwar causes. New York City, of course, has not, officially or otherwise, ignored this problem. We have not left the problem to Uncle Sam although many phases of the cure are on the Federal, not the local level. Even before taking office on January 1, 1946, I appointed an emergency committee on housing, headed by Robert Moses, our construction coordinator, to formulate a program. This committee included outstanding leaders among labor leaders, businessmen, architects, engineers, insurance executives, builders, realtors, bankers, and public officials. These were hard-headed, civic-minded people, with experience in housing and related fields. Their report to me on December 17, 1945, gave a minimum, rock-bottom program of construction which we have followed with some success and some disappointment. The committee, for example, counted on a fairly early resumption of largescale private speculative building, but this has taken a long time to pick up. Let me review what that program provided, show where we succeeded and where we did not, and why we need more help. The program was divided into permanent housing and emergency housing. New York City's capacity to erect permanent housing before the end of 1948 was estimated at 127,000 family units; for emergency housing by the end of 1947 at 43,300 units. Of the proposed 43,300 emergency units, 19,000 apartments for veterans in Quonset huts and other converted barracks units were to be produced by the joint efforts of New York City, New York State, and the Federal Government. The remaining 24,300 units were to be provided by private builders through rehabilitation of abandoned buildings, conversions of one- and two-family houses, and the all-year-round use of summer-resort bungalows. The rehabilitation of boarded-up buildings, except where buildings have been condemned and rebuilt with public funds, amounted to little because of impossibility of agreement on a local law. The conversion of summer-resort bungalows to all-year-round use was unsuccessful because this type of housing was exempt from rental limitations and because the owners could realize more money from summer than from all-year rentals. Another disappointment came in the field of emergency conversion of one- and two-family houses as distinguished from new permanent housing. The expectation that private capital would be attracted to this field, through legislative and administrative encouragement by the State and city of New York, was not realized primarily because of inflationary costs. As a result, only about 1,000 apartments were produced in this part of the emergency program. A better record, although also not up to our earlier expectations, was by city, State, and Federal cooperation in the plan to provide 19,000 Quonset and converted barracks units for the emergency use of veterans. In this category the Federal Government provided 8,600 units. These have been erected by the Federal Government on land provided and prepared by the city of New York at an expenditure by the city of about $10,000,000. The State of New York also has participated in the program to the extent of furnishing 3,200 additional units. Some of these units were put on former military installations, such as the Coast Guard and maritime bases at Sheephead Bay and Fort Tilden in Rockaway, and some were erected on city-owned property. The combined total of emergency units under both Federal and State sponsorship thus amounts to about 11,800 units. Recently the State of New York, through an additional appropriation, sponsored some 1,000 more of these units in cooperation with the city, which provides the sites. It must be noted that these emergency units were intended for occupancies lasting from 3 to 5 years. By 1949 a start will have to be made toward relocation of some of the veteran families in these projects. These projects must not be allowed to become overcrowded and cannot be continued indefinitely. We had hoped that within 5 years at the most, sufficient permanent housing would be available to absorb these veterans. However, unless considerably more housing than is now in prospect is undertaken, we shall have a serious problem on our hands in maintaining these emergency projects in accordance with reasonably high standards. However, we must expect the growth of families in these projects and anticipate wear and tear on these temporary structures. Quonset huts, for example, now house two families each. At the end of another year or two, each Quonset hut will be needed for and should be used to house only one family. The barracks are generally in excellent condition. The wooden demountable houses, on the other hand, will not have a long life and should be taken down within a maximum period of 5 years. As to our permanent housing program, the 127,000 units called for by our minimum program consisted of 34,500 public housing units to be provided under then existing and anticipated appropriations and provisions of law; 16,000 units to be erected by insurance companies and savings banks through redevelopment housing projects; 54,000 units to be provided by private speculative builders; and 22,500 units of additional public housing to be provided under the proposed Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. Of the estimated 54,000 units to be provided by private speculative builders, about 13,600, units were completed between January 1, 1946, and October 1, 1947. |