Mr. ZEIDLER. Concerning the amendment dealing with farm activities, I am not too familiar. I worked on a farm once myself, but that does not qualify me as an expert.

As to the other portions, I trust and hope that if they are passed, they will give that spur to private enterprise which I feel is necessary. I happen to be a trustee of a mutual savings bank. I know the difficulties that the bank is encountering in finding satisfactory home loans under present conditions, and we hope that the other provisions of the bill will provide the necessary security for lending agencies to encourage every segment of the building industry to develop itself to the fullest capacity.

Mr. COLE. I appreciate your statement, but from it I assume, therefore, that you are not necessarily endorsing each and every one of the other titles of this bill.

Mr. ZEIDLER. No, I am not. I cannot pose as an expert on any of them. I am chiefly interested in the parts which affect urban communities directly, the parts dealing with low-rent housing and urban redevelopment.

Mr. COLE. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mayor Zeidler.

Mr. ZEIDLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. We have next Mayor Eugene I. Van Antwerp of Detroit.

Mayor Van Antwerp and I have been quite close friends for some yaers, and I wish to say that he approaches his problems with the maximum of reasonableness, tolerance, and courtesy.

Mayor Van Antwerp has had the almost immediate task of commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Mayor Van Antwerp, we are happy to have you proceed.

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Smith would like to have you give the Committee some of your background.

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a civil engineer by profession. I have recently, since the first of the year, assumed the office of mayor of the city of Detroit.

Prior to that, for 16 years, I was a member of the 9-man Detroit City Council. I have served as chairman of the board of supervisors of the county of Wayne, and as chairman of the ways and means committee, for several years, of the board of supervisors of the county of Wayne, and as chairman of the ways and means committee of the common council of the city of Detroit.

I am the father of eleven children, six girls and five boys. Three of those boys were eligible for military service in the last war. They all volunteered and served in the face of enemy fire. Thank God, they all returned.

I have a daughter whose husband served in the Navy, and who is living with me now, due to housing conditions.

Of my six daughters, three are married-and their husbands were all in the military service, or allied services. One of them was in the Navy, one of them served in the occupation of Alaska and in the South Seas as a specialist on the LCT boats, being a Diesel engine expert, and the third one was a designer for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in California-and still is.

Mr. PATMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am compelled to go to the floor because the House meets at 12. I have known the mayor for 15 years, and I know about his very fine, outstanding public service to his city, his State, and his Nation. I am sorry that I cannot remain to hear your testimony personally, Mr. Mayor, but I will certainly read it.

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. Thank you, Mr. Patman.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Were you supported in 1947, in your election for mayor, by the United Automobile Workers, CIO?

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. The United Automobile Workers, CIO, endorsed my opponent in the last election.

Mr. SMITH. What connection, if any, do you have with your local housing authority?

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. I appoint the members of the housing authority and they, in turn, appoint the director, who sits on my right.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, Mayor Van Antwerp. You may proceed. Mr. VAN ANTWERP. I might say that we have a peculiar form of city government in Detroit, and the mayor appoints all the commissioners, and they are subject to his pleasure, except the civil service, the assessors, and the rapid transit commission. All others serve under his pleasure and are all appointed without recourse to confirmation to the council.

Mr. KUNKEL. You mean the commissioner of public safety, and so forth, whatever you call them?

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. We have a commissioner of police and a fire commissioner. I appoint both of those officers.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

STATEMENT BY MAYOR EUGENE I. VAN ANTWERP, OF DETROIT, MICH., ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES H. INGLIS, DIRECTOR, DETROIT HOUSING COMMISSION

Mr. VAN ANTWERP. Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank the committee for this opportunity to testify in favor of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill.

I am here today because I consider the severe housing shortage Detroit's most serious unsolved problem.

The failure of this productive nation to provide an ample supply of standard housing units for its returned war veterans and other homeless citizens is illogical and inexcusable.

The housing shortage in Detroit is worse today than at any time since VJ-day, 211⁄2 years ago.

The federal housing survey of Detroit a year ago showed a vacancy rate for rental units of one-tenth of 1 percent.

Although no survey has been taken since that time, all indications are that we have a zero vacancy factor today.

The Detroit Housing Commission, with more than 12,000 rental units under its control, is in a position to judge the severity of the shortage. A special study of the turn-over rate in three temporary war housing projects shows clearly that the pressure for housing has been increasing steadily right up to the present moment.

The three projects selected consist of 1,568 units of poorly constructed, temporary apartments heated with coal stove and equipped only with coal-fired cooking stoves and hot water heaters.

There is a serious fire hazard at these projects. They are flimsy construction, drab and uninviting in appearance and stand on barren mud flats. Although constructed by the federal government as part of the war effort and now operated by the city, these units are pretty close to the level of slum housing.

They are the least desirable public housing units in Detroit and the first ones in which a vacancy factor would be noticed in the event that the housing shortage eased even slightly.

Total turn-over in these three projects were as follows: 1945, 867; 1946, 332; 1947, 240.

For the first four months of 1948 the rate has remained at the 1947 level.

Total turnover for the 12,000 units of public housing in Detroit has been less than 100 units per month for the past year and a half. In addition, there has been a sharp increase in applications for housing at the commission's tenant selection office, in spite of efforts by the department to discourage applications.

With a total of 3,651 qualified applicants for public housing now on file with the housing commission, the department could lock up the doors of its tenant selection office and still have a backlog of prospective tenants that would take 3 full years to accommodate.

The backlog of applications would top 5,000 except for the fact. that 2,365 were canceled out 3 months ago because they had remained inactive in the files for periods of 2 to 4 years.

Applications for housing are only accepted from the very lowest income group and from veterans of World War II.

There has been a wide distribution of pamphlets designed to discourage applicants for public housing and the tenant selection office. has been moved to a remote address near the edge of the city.

In spite of these steps, the flood of applications continues and seven out of every eight qualified applicants for public housing in Detroit at the present time are being turned down.

The department cannot even consider the plight of the nonveteran factory worker in Detroit whose income makes him ineligible for public housing.

The tremendous cost of this housing shortage in terms of money and also in terms of human suffering is not easy to estimate.

The city is now looking for a large vacant store or factory for the establishment of its seventh emergency housing shelter to care for the homeless families that find themselves on the street with their furniture in a pile.

In spite of primitive sanitary facilities and communal living quarters, these emergency shelters have filled up rapidly and taken on the character of permanent housing projects.

May I cite the case of one typical Detroit factory worker to show how costly the present housing shortage is?

Andrew Adams is the head of a family of nine and is employed at the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. at a weekly wage of approximately $65. Mr. Adams was a self-supporting citizen who had received no welfare assistance or charity until his eviction from a rented home on December 15, 1946. The family was evicted because the home was purchased by a veteran.

For the past year and 5 months the Detroit Welfare Department and several private social agencies have worked continuously trying to find a place for the Adams family to live. All these efforts have failed because there were no cacancies for a family of this size.

The situation of the family today is this: Mrs. Adams and four of the children are living with a sister at one address. Mr. Adams and the oldest son are living in a room at another address. Two of the daughters are being board out at two other addresses.

The complications due to breaking this family up into four segments because of their housing problem made welfare assistance by the city of Detroit necessary.

The taxpayers of Detroit are now paying a total of $134 a month in rent alone to keep this family going in four separate establishments. Due to this unusual arrangement other costs were added to the family's budget and further supplementary financial aid was required from the welfare department.

Due entirely and exclusively to the Adams family's housing problem, the taxpayers of Detroit during the past 17 months have had to provide a total of $2,446.30 in welfare assistance.

The official report of Mrs. Viola Wickstrom, the Welfare Department case worker, has this to say:

The separation of this family into four separate units has had serious consequences. Mrs. Adams talks of suicide and Mr. Adams visits his wife less and less as their visits result in constant quarreling over the lack of a home. The entire family have been growing further and further apart. Mrs. Adams, who is a motherly and very domestic person, has keenly felt the loss of her home and family.

I cite this case for the purpose of illustrating the double-barreled effect of the housing shortage-first, the cost to the public in dollars and cents, and second, the demoralizing effect on one of the city's productive factory workers.

Many instances come to mind of husbands who have been forced to ship their wives and children to distant parts of the country and take residence in a hotel or rented room.

up

Every sort of shack, shed, and trailer has been pressed into service in Detroit by families who are struggling to maintain some semblance of a home.

Hundreds of applicants for public housing bring signed statements by competent medical authorities stating that the health of one or more members of the family is in serious jeopardy. Yet the city is powerless to help them.

A sizeable portion of the absenteeism from the city's factories has been attributed to the long, fruitless efforts of families to find rental housing vacancies.

An instance was brought to my attention a few days ago of an unfortunate truck driver who lost his job because of the housing shortage. He had the temerity to permit his wife and three children to use his employer's truck as a place to sleep at night. They had no other home.

The official census figures show that 37,360 families in Detroit are living doubled up or in make-shift housing.

So much for the picture as it exists today.

What are the prospects that the problem will cure itself without any federal assistance?

They are very dim.

In Detroit during the 14 months ending March 1, 1948, a total of 6,900 new dwelling units were completed as compared with a total of 25,175 new families created by marriage.

Thus we are moving toward a solution of the problem in reverse gear, leaving entirely untouched the job of unscrambling the 37,000 Detroit families that are living doubled up and providing standard housing for the 46,000 Detroit families living in slum conditions.

The sad postwar record of the private home building industry hardly needs amplification from me.

The industry as a whole is seriously sick, just as any industry is sick when it fails in its primary purpose, namely the sale of an acceptable product in sufficient quantity and at a price within the reach of a majority of its potential customers.

In the face of the most serious housing shortage in the nation's history, the home building industry is producing in small quantity for the higher income groups only. The complete facts about this unfortunate condition have been described in detail by analysts of such publications as Fortune magazine and the Wall Street Journal.

Very few of the new-home buyers in Detroit during the postwar period are happy about the transaction they have made.

The typical comment of the man in Detroit who has just purchased a new home goes like this:

"I shouldn't have bought the house because I cannot afford it. But what else could I do? I didn't have any place for my family to live.

Most of the new-home buyers in Detroit have acted under pressure of a serious personal housing problem.

A worker at the Dodge plant came to me about his housing problem last week. He was spending $45 a week out of a $65 weekly pay check to keep his family of five in two rooms of a second-class hotel.

He was in an extremely upset frame of mind and could easily have been led into making an unwise purchase of a home priced far beyond his means.

New homes being built in Detroit, therefore, represent only about a third of the current demand, and with prices at their present high level . it appears likely that the needs of most of the potential customers will never be satisfied.

There are several other facors that will make our housing emergency particularly critical during the years immediately ahead.

The Housing Commission operates over 6,000 units of temporary war housing which is rapidly wearing out and, under the law, must be torn down starting July 25, 1949.

The impossibility of turning these families out in the street under present conditions should be obvious. Very few of these families have accumulated the funds to make a down payment on a new house. Another problem that haunts us is the plight of the 7,220 families that will be made homeless in Detroit during the next 3 years by the construction of the Dodge and Ford Expressways and other public improvements that have been programmed and money appropriated for.

It seems almost incredible, yet entirely within the bounds of possibility, that our great $60,000,000 expressway construction program