CONGRESSIONAL RECORD – SENATE


July 25, 1967


Page 20118


THE RENT SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM


Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, without resolute support by the Senate for the rent supplement program, this promising new concept for meeting the housing needs of poor Americans may be lost. With it would go the aspirations of thousands of slum dwellers. Left would be frustration and anger, not only in those persons for whom the program was designed, but also in hundreds of city halls across the country.


In 1965, when the rent supplement program was authorized, and in 1966 Congress appropriated a total of more than $30 million for 405 projects in more than 250 communities. When completed, the projects will contain nearly 35,000 dwelling units for more than 100,000 persons.


This year, President Johnson requested $40 million in additional funds to house another 100,000 persons. At best, this represented only a modest extension of the program. However, the House Appropriations Committee cut the request to $10 million, and the House itself eliminated even that.


Mr. President, the appropriation sought by President Johnson for this program would represent only 0.0003 of a percent of total Federal spending for the year. Housing is one of the most personal and immediate needs of any family. If a public investment of this fractional amount can materially improve the quality of life for 100,000 of America's most impoverished citizens, that benefit is worth every cent of the investment.


Furthermore, if we allow this program to expire, after Congress has funded it for 2 years and after the initial response to it has been positive and encouraging, what Federal program is safe from irresponsible appropriations cuts? How can we expect cities to support other urban programs of social rehabilitation?


The most discouraging aspect of the House action is that it came after the program has begun to generate genuine enthusiasm and progress. Positive reaction to the program has been reported in newspapers across the Nation.


For example, last May 19 the Paterson, N.J., Morning Call said:


The rent-supplement proposal is worth a decent trial ... At zero, which is what the House has now voted, it is a demonstration of the democratic process to encourage summer heat, slums and cynicism.


Here in Washington, the Post, on the same day, said:


The House has broken faith with mayors and city councils all over the United States. The issue now is whether the Federal Government intends to uphold any part of the bargain that it has offered the American cities in the last three years' legislation creating massive and complex joint ventures in social renewal.


On May 22, the Washington Evening Star made this appraisal:


The rent Supplement program's goal is to encourage a wholly new approach to subsidized public housing – a sounder, healthier and possibly cheaper approach than the huge institutionalized public housing projects.


Mr. President, many other favorable editorials and stories on the need for and progress of the program have been published in metropolitan newspapers across the country. I ask unanimous consent that a sample of these, from Denver, New York, Minneapolis, Lorain, Ohio, and elsewhere, be printed in the RECORD.


There being no objection, the items were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:


[From the Washington Post, May 19, 1967]

BROKEN BARGAINS


The Nation's housing policy has been severely damaged by the votes in the House of Representatives this week. The House has broken faith with mayors and city councils all over the United States. Last year, in passing the Demonstration Cities bill, it promised them broad new sources of Federal aid to carry out what amounts to social renewal of the slums. Now, in passing the appropriations, it has reduced the actual funds to a point at which they amount to little more than a derisory gesture.


No doubt the Senate can increase somewhat the money for Demonstration Cities; perhaps it can even revive the rent supplements. But the real damage has been done: Congress obviously does not understand it and even the Administration seems to perceive it only dimly, but the massive new Federal urban programs are turning out to be very dangerous for the cities. The Federal Government keeps reneging on its promises of money, leaving the big-city mayors with staffs, plans and local commitments that they cannot sustain. It is the mayors, not the Appropriations Committees, that will pay the political price for the failures.


Building cities is not like building dams or aircraft carriers. Cities are not Federal operations to be authorized today and carried out whenever money becomes available: Under the Demonstration Cities Act, a city must sign a binding agreement that will run a decade or more into the future. It must commit itself to a plan that will run beyond housing to involve new roads, transit, schools, parks or hospitals. It commits local budgets and local bond issues. The plan will specify new social policies that may seem, to the mayor's constituents, highly unorthodox. He can justify them politically only with the additional Federal funds that they will bring. When Congress whacks off the appropriations, the mayor is stuck with all of the policy and all of the commitments but none of the money.


Most of the votes against the housing appropriation were Republican, but the most influential opposition came from Congressman Mahon of Lubbock, Texas, who thinks poorly of investing public money in Demonstration Cities or, for that matter, in any cities. The voting in the House this week was particularly disquieting because these roll calls were the first and precedent in a series that will include the destructive Quie Amendment to the Education Act next week, and beyond that the appropriations for the Education Act and all of the annual legislation for the war on poverty. These three great programs bring essential resources to the distressed centers of the big cities. The central cities are not heavily represented in Congress; reapportionment is mainly benefitting the suburbs.


The war on poverty is currently being funded at hardly more than half the level that the cities had originally been told expect. Now, after some 200 cities have signed plans under the Demonstration Cities Act the money is cut to barely a third of Congress's own promise last fail.


The coming battle over allocation of school money has been gathering momentum in the House for weeks.


The issue now is whether the Federal Government intends to uphold any part of the bargain that it has offered the American cities in the last three years' legislation creating massive and complex joint ventures in social renewal. The present pattern of congressional votes forces the cities to ask themselves whether any of these vast Federal urban operations are viable under the traditional capricious style of congressional appropriation.


[From the Denver Post, May 18, 1967]

DENVER TO FEEL EFFECT OF RENT PLAN'S DEATH

(By John Toohey)


Denver's elderly and poor will suffer if Congress fails to pass a rent supplements bill, Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) officials and others concerned with the problem agreed Thursday.


Lee Johnson, special aide to Mayor Tom Currigan on urban renewal, called the House scuttling of the rent subsidies bill Wednesday "a tragic thing, especially for the old people in the Skyline area.


"We were just beginning to function in this area (rent supplements)," Johnson said. "But now, with the program cut out for next fiscal year, it will be most difficult to carry on."


AVONDALE, WHITTIER


J. Robert Cameron, DURA executive director, said rent subsidies in the Avondale and Whittier School urban renewal areas will be saved because reservations for supplements have been made under present funding.


Cameron said the Good Americans Organization already has made application to the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) to build housing in the Avondale district with the financial help of Mortgage Investments Co. of Denver.


He said DURA and FELL also have been working with a group in the Whittler area for subsidies there.


Robert Boucher, a vice president of Mortgage Investments Co., confirmed his company has been working with the Good Americans Organization on an application for rent supplements in Avondale.


"From our standpoint as mortgage bankors." Boucher said, "We support rent supplement programs, because they provide an alternative for private enterprise to take part in the serious problem of housing for the poor.


"Needless to say, we were very disappointed to see the program beaten down Wednesday," he said.


The problem of providing housing for the poor and elderly "is there and it won't go away" without a great deal of constructive action, Boucher said.


LAST ALTERNATIVE


The only alternative left now, Boucher said, is for federal government financing of public housing "to which mortgage bankers are philosophically opposed. The program would subsidize people, not real estate.


"What precipitated this drastic attitude in Washington, I don't know." Boucher said. He said he was going to Washington next week to discuss the problem with Sen. Gordon Allott, R-Colo., and with other congressional leaders.


Cameron said, "Our concern in DURA is that this may have far-reaching effects on any efforts we may make for the poor and elderly in Skyline."


Rent supplements, he said, were supposed to be the answer for private enterprise to get involved in the problem of housing.


"We're going to house these people and do it decently," he said, but added that most of the work now must come through federal public housing loans at 3 per cent interest over 50 years.


"This action is most unfortunate for those who need it the most," he said.


[From the Washington Evening Star, May 22, I967]

EMPTY VICTORY


On its third annual try, the House Republican leadership has finally managed to shoot down the administration's rent supplement program – and it is a victory in which no one has gained anything.


The rent supplement program's goal is to encourage a wholly new approach to subsidized public housing – a sounder, healthier and possibly cheaper approach than the huge institutionalized public housing projects which too often in the past have proved to be dead-ends for the poor. It does not broaden the scope of public responsibility for the housing needs of the poor. It does not, as Representative Scott of Virginia foolishly charged during the House debate, constitute a threat to "home ownership" or to "family life." And it surely does not, as Representative Ford, the minority leader, implied, impose an oppressive additional burden on the national economy.


The full extent of the "burden," as curtailed by the House Appropriations Committee, would have been a $10 million bequest for all of next year. Ironically, this modest sum was part of a multibillion-dollar appropriation bill that provided no less than $275 million in new dollars to finance traditional forms of public housing – and the larger amount was never so much as questioned.


During its three-year life, however, rent supplementation has been a constant source of confusion and controversy in the House. The basis of opposition, in our view, is entirely invalid. But the fact is that the dissension was sufficient to make this element of the Great Society program singularly vulnerable to attack. And the Republican leadership, with a coalition of solid southern support, could hardly wait to cut it down.


This is a strange way to build an image of Republican interest in urban problems, and to break the party's coalition with southern Democrats in Congress. Both goals were loudly proclaimed by Gerald Ford no less than a week ago.


The victims of the House action that concern us are not politicians, however, but the cities which have counted on the rent supplement program's continuation. New applications for participation are pouring into Washington at the rate of 5,000 a week, and the small sums made available previously to get the program started are all committed. The only hope of salvage rests now with the Senate.


[From the Paterson (N.J.) Morning Call, May 19' 1967]

NO RENT MONEY


Only a few days ago the Republicans were trumpeting that as a theoretical proposition they are going to end their coalition with Southern Democrats. Strategy for next year's elections, they explained. Now, as a practical matter, they have joined with Southern Democrats in the House to defeat the niggardly rent-supplement program. The program would enable the Department of Housing and Urban Development to make commitments to nonprofit sponsors of new or rehabilitated housing projects under which the agency would pay a portion of the rent of poor tenants. The tenant would commit at least a quarter of his monthly income to rent, and the difference would be met with federal funds. The bill defeated in the House 232 to 171 carried an appropriation of $10 million – remember what Vietnam is costing – which was $30 million less than President Johnson sought. The 232 votes to defeat the bill came from 163 Republicans and from 69 Democrats of whom 63 were from 11 Southern States.


If we are going to eliminate slums and long hot summers, if we are going to give thoughtful young people reasons for embracing the principles of the society so many of them now reject, an attack on subhuman living conditions is imperative. President Johnson's rent-supplement plan was small even at $40 million. At $10 million it was hardly more than a tentative nod at a critically important problem. At zero, which is what the House has now voted, it is a demonstration of the democratic process to encourage summer heat, slums, and cynicism. Yet it does have a rationale. New Jersey's representative on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, John F. Betts, put it this way:


"The predominant need, in the face of Vietnam and economic hazards at home, is for a stricter definition of today's necessities. We must abandon the crash psychology that we can solve all human ills by massive doses of instant money."


Mr. Betts was dealing with the situation in general, not with the rent-supplement proposal, and the kernel of his plaint was that more of us ought to be writing our congressmen demanding frugality.


The slums are not good enough for the people who are caught in them. The rent-supplement proposal is worth a decent trial. We can still hope that the Senate can save the program and provide the House a chance to redeem itself. As Mr. Betts suggests, a note to Senator Williams and Senator Case might be in order.


[From the Washington Afro-American, Feb. 25, 1967]

RENT SUPPLEMENTS KEY TO HOUSING


There are many groups in the Washington area which like to provide decent housing for the unfortunate. The federal rent supplement program in the District still has funds available.

 

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has some $128,000 on hand for use in the Washington area. Any non-profit, limited dividend or cooperative organization is eligible for these funds.


The funds will be used to pay a portion of the tenant's rent and will permit FHA to contract with sponsors of privately owned, low-income housing.


Rent supplement is the key word in this program. FHA allows the family that would not ordinarily be able to get decent housing at low rates to do so and pay only 25 per cent of its total income in rentals.


FHA will see that the landlord gets the balance. Two groups that have already capitalized on the program are a United Church of Christ unit in Silver Spring, and the Presbyterians Incorporated to Conserve Housing (PITCH).


PITCH has won approval for $27,600 in rent supplement funds for a 26-unit apartment building it is renovating in the 1400 block of W St., NW.


The apartment house, known as The Susquehanna, will feature spacious and redecorated units, with modern kitchens and baths.


Target date for the completion of the renovation project, which started February 1965 is next September. Some residents still live in the building, while other apartments are being remodeled.

PITCH – comprised of groups from the Fifteenth Street and Georgetown Presbyterian Churches – hopes to renovate more housing, after the Susquehanna is completed.


But the next supplement program is not restricted to remodeling. The Church of Christ group is engaged in construction.


With bright colored interiors and modern equipment, PITCH does not feel that its sole responsibility is the provision of shelter.


With Mrs. Clarence McMillan appointed as chairman of a Tenant Relations Committee, the group has seen fit to see that tenants take pride in their residence.


Mrs. McMillan said she will work with them on the many ways to keep their homes looking attractive. Only in very serious cases, she said, will any one be evicted for failing to care for the apartments.


All the PITCH personnel are optimistic about their project, anxious for the day when work is completed and tenants are actually benefitted.


Others interested in sponsoring low-income housing through the rent supplement program may contact Mrs. Gwendolyn Brooks, at the FHA Issuing Office, 400 First St., N.W., Washington, D.C., 20412; telephone 386-6146.


"This new supplement program," said Fred A. Mann, FHA District Insuring Director, "will give many low income people a chance to live in decent, safe and sanitary housing without being isolated from the rest of the community and without threat of eviction, when their incomes increase to the level where they no longer need assistance."


He said the housing units will be insured under the FHA's Section 221(d3) program and will be privately built, owned and managed by nonprofit limited dividend or cooperative organizations.

Housing for the elderly under this program may also be financed under a Section 202 direct loan program or under the FHA Section 231.


"We are looking," said Mann, "for a substantial amount of private capital to flow into the construction of low income housing under the program, which President Johnson has described as the most crucial new instrument in our effort to improve the American city."


To be eligible, a project must contain at least five dwelling units located in detached, semi-detached, row, walkup or elevator structures. The housing may be new construction or major rehabilitation of existing structures.


All rent supplement projects must meet the FHA Minimum Property Standards. Also, they must be of modest design in order to keep construction costs at a minimum.


Basic maximum limits on gross rentals for units of different sizes have been established as follows: $85 for no-bedroom units, $105 for one-bedroom units, $120 for two-bedroom units and $140 for units with three or more bedrooms.


In areas where suitable housing can be produced for lower rentals and the basic limits, this will be done. In high cost areas the maximum rentals may be increased up to 25 per cent above the basic limits where necessary.


[From the Minneapolis Star, Jan. 20, 1967]

RENT SUPPLEMENT PLAN FINDS TAKERS

(By Dick Caldwell)


Several Minnesota organizations have been quick to take advantage of the rent supplement program now getting under way across the country.


Eight existing housing projects in the state are already in the program and proposals for three new projects are being reviewed by the Minneapolis office of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the agency responsible for the program.


All three proposed projects would be in the Twin Cities. One of them, still quite tentative, would be built by a labor union and consist of about 200 units. Another, of 96 units, would be church- sponsored. The third, 141 units, would be built by a limited dividend corporation.


Several other applications were Submitted to the Minneapolis office Thursday, an FHA representative reported.


The rent supplement program is one of President Johnson's Great Society favorites. He once described it as "the most crucial new instrument in our effort to improve the American city."


It is tailored for low-income families and individuals. They must pay 25 per cent of their income for rent and the government then makes up the difference between this amount and the full market rent for the unit in question. The Federal payments are made directly to the project owners, who can be a private nonprofit organization, a co-operative housing corporation or a limited dividend mortgagor.


The eight Minnesota projects that have come into the program all house elderly persons. Most are sponsored by religious organizations and all were built under a Department of Housing and Urban Development program for the elderly, financed by 50-year loans at 3½ per cent interest.

Two of the projects, Redeemer Arms and Central Towers, are located in St. Paul. The others are in Duluth, Elk River, Glenwood, Montevideo, Litchfield and Austin.


Because they were not built under the rent supplement program, only 20 per cent of the 148 units involved are eligible for the supplements. A project started under the program can obtain supplements for all eligible tenants, but it is hoped that sponsoring organizations will open 40 to 50 per cent of their units to tenants who can pay the full market rent.


One reason for this is that the architects of the program would like a good "mix" of tenants of various ages, racial and ethnic backgrounds and income levels. They would like, as one FHA official put it, to "assimilate people of lower income groups into the mainstream society."


It may be that some experienced developers will be altruistic enough to participate in the program, but they will be tangling with a lot of restrictions. Their earnings will be limited, as in the 221(d) 3 program for low and moderate income families.


The rent Supplement program has a maximum rent limitation of $140 a month for a unit of three or more bedrooms.


The program requires that all projects be of "modest design," free of such frills as swimming pools and air conditioning units. There can be no more than one bathroom per unit and elevators will be permitted only where the project gets special tax treatment and/or reduced land costs."

At the same time, the projects "should incorporate good design principles and not have features that will contribute to premature obsolescence."


[Letter to the editor, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Mar. 17, 1967]

RENT SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM WOULD HELP LOW-INCOME FAMILIES


Your editorial of March 13, entitled "Housing for the Poor'" has performed a real public service to your readers by pointing out the need for public subsidy if the problem of ridding our cities of slums is to be solved. We concur.


The editorial has given clear dimensions to the problem of providing good housing for the poor by reporting the sad economic experience of a New York civic group which tried, unsuccessfully, through time-worn conventional methods, to prove that an 80-year-old tenement building could be rehabilitated and rented for a profit.


The lesson of this experience, once again, only points up the necessity of bringing new ideas, new forces, and new techniques into action to solve the problem and eradicate slums in Pittsburgh and other cities of the nation.


In a previous Post-Gazette editorial on January 24, entitled "Save the Neighborhoods," you reviewed ACTION-Housing's proposal for large-scale housing rehabilitation which is aimed directly at revitalizing declining neighborhoods and ridding the inner cores of our cities of their cancerous-like slums. This proposal pays particular attention to the needs, desires and well-being of the people now living in blighted and slum areas.


Unlike the New York experience, it recommends the formation of a joint corporate venture, capitalized at $3,000,000 to $4,000,000, to engage in the rehabilitation of structurally sound but deteriorating housing in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area, on a profit-motivated basis, in cooperation with local, state and federal agencies.


It suggests a partnership between private enterprise and the public sector. Participating companies would purchase common stock or convertible debentures with policies established by a board of their selection.


The participating companies would create a development corporation on a limited profit basis for the rehabilitation of old but structurally sound housing.


As an integral part, this development corporation would also create a nonprofit research organization to bring new materials, products and innovative construction systems into application.


If the proposal for a development corporation for rehabilitation of housing is to work successfully, it must achieve two objectives: renovate old housing at rents or sales prices that people of low and moderate income can afford to pay; and provide a limited profit return to the corporation.


One way in which both of these objectives could be achieved would be to use the "Rent Supplement Program" which became available to private developers about a year ago. Use of this program would work this way:


The amount of rent supplement is the difference between the normal economic rent required and 25 per cent of gross family income. For example: a family with a gross income of approximately $35 a week (annual income of $1,820) would be eligible for a two-bedroom dwelling that would normally rent for $120. A family with a gross income of approximately $48 a week (annual income of $2,496) would be eligible for a three bedroom dwelling which would normally rent for $140.


The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh would play an important role in assisting the development corporation by acquiring and selling the old houses to the corporation. Such URA assistance is now possible under present legislation. After acquisition, the corporation would renovate the dwellings on a limited profit basis.


The corporation could then transfer titles to nonprofit organizations approved for mortgage insurance purposes by the Federal Housing Administration.


In addition, federal legislation has also been passed to make it possible to sell the rehabilitated houses to individual buyers, although so far appropriation of funds has only been authorized – not made.


After intensive review of our January 24 proposal, now being carried out by financial representatives of the various interested companies, as well as federal, state and local government representatives, the proposal will be revised for another presentation to top echelons of industry and government. It is our hope that, for the good of all, it is accepted and becomes operable.


The success of this proposal will have great bearing on the future of the so-called Model Cities Program.


J. STANLEY PURNELL,

Chairman of the Board and President,

ACTION-Housing, Inc.

PITTSBURGH.


[From the Baltimore News American, July 10, 19661

FHA RENT SUBSIDY TO CHANGE LIFE FOR FAMILY


NEW YORK, July 9 – One day later this summer, Mrs. Carmen Cambrelen will fill out Federal Housing Administration form 2501 and sign her name in the box at the bottom.


With that, this pleasant, round faced mother of four will become one of the first ordinary citizens to benefit from the controversial new federal rent supplement program.


Many critics in Congress and out have attacked these "rent subsidies" – government payments for a share of your rent – as a "boondoggle" and a "step toward socialism." Mrs. Cambrelen doesn't see it that way. Standing on the steps of the stifling, grimy brick tenement in East Harlem, where she has struggled to raise her family for the last 10 years, Mrs. Cambrelen said in a soft Puerto Rican accent:


"I think it is wonderful. At least we will have a more decent place to live. All the people here are very happy."


Next door, at 319 East 102d Street, workmen chopped away the crumbling interior of an identical, six-story tenement.


By fall, No. 319 will be almost completely rebuilt. Only the 80-year-old exterior walls of the original structure will be left.


Inside, instead of 30 cramped hovels, there will be 17 roomy apartments with modern equipment and simple but attractive decor.


By Christmas, if Mrs. Cambrelen's hopes are realized, she and her family will be living in one of the new apartments – despite a rental far beyond her means.


Rent supplements – a new Great Society program launched by Congress this spring – will make the difference.


Here's how the program will work for Mrs. Cambrelen and eventually thousands of others like her:


At present, Mr. and Mrs. Cambrelen and the four children occupy four wretched rooms at 317 East 102d, an "East Side Story" neighborhood where Negroes and Puerto Ricans jostle each other in heat, dirt, and discontent.


The Cambrelens pay $45 a month rent for their quarters in what a New York housing official called "one of the most ghastly slums in the city."


When No. 319 is ready, the Cambrelens will be assigned to a five-room apartment. They will pay about $75 a month rent – one fourth of Cambrelen's wages as a factory worker.


"That's a $30 a month jump in rent but even that falls far short of the real, so-called "economic rent" – the sum it takes to pay for the land, building, improvements, operation, and management of the property.


The actual cost of the Cambrelens' new quarters will be about $140 a month, even with no profit for their landlord, a nonprofit association of churches and private charitable organizations.


The gap will be made up by the taxpayers in two ways:


Federal rent supplement payments estimated at $50 a month will be paid by the FHA directly to the Cambrelens' landlord, Metro Northeast Harlem Housing Society.


The city of New York has granted a 100 percent tax exemption to the six buildings in the project. City officials estimated this is worth about $16 a month on the Cambrelen apartment.


Three doors away, in an already rebuilt ex-tenement at 307 East 102d, Zion Paige was relaxing in his spic-and-span, newly remodeled apartment after his all-night job as a stationary fireman for the city.


[Letter to the editor New York Times, June I4, 19671

RENT SUPPLEMENT FOR Low-INCOME GROUPS


To the EDITOR:


The May 27 article by Arthur Krock of The Times was highly critical of President Johnson's proposed rent-supplement plan for low-income facilities. As Chairman of the House subcommittee on housing, I feel an obligation respectfully to disagree With Mr. Krock so that your readers will have a balanced picture of this important new plan which the President has called "the most crucial new instrument in our effort to improve the American city."


Mr. Krock quotes extensively from the minority report on the housing bill signed by eight Republican members of the committee (two other highly respected Republicans, William B. Widnall of New Jersey and Seymour Halpern of New York, voted for rent supplements).


The minority report is written quite frankly as an attack on this proposal and naturally gives a very one-sided point of view, one which I believe is unfair and misleading. As Mr. Krock himself noted, the irresponsible cry of "socialism" is "a doctrinal attack."


PRIVATE HOUSING


The rent-supplement plan is essentially quite simple. The housing would be privately built, privately financed, and privately owned. It would be rental and cooperative housing financed under Federal Housing Administration Section 221(d) (3). The sponsors would be private nonprofit or limited dividend corporations or cooperatives.


The families to be aided would be those whose incomes are so low that they cannot afford decent housing by paying not more than one-fourth of their total income, and who are elderly or handicapped, displaced by government action, or now living in slum housing. The aid would be the difference between one-fourth of their income which they would pay as rent and the fair market rental on the unit, and the supplement payments would end when the family's income rose to the point where it could pay the rent on its own.


There are too many distortions in the minority report to go into all of them here. As one example, it is charged that the proposal would "kill the incentive of the American family" to improve its circumstances. In support of this claim, the statement says that no family making $3,000 a year would aspire to purchase their own modest $7,500 home, but would instead seek to be a renter in a $100 a month apartment for which the Federal Government would pay $37.50 while the family paid only $62.50.


FALSE ASSUMPTION


The fallacy of this argument lies in the assumption that a $7,500 home is available for purchase by a family earning $3,000 in the same community where $100 a month is the rent required for a decent unit. In this hypothetical community where a good home could be bought for $7,500, no rent supplement would be available for families earning $3,000.


On the other hand, in communities where decent housing could only be obtained for $100 a month, the rent supplement program would enable the family to occupy a good unit with only 25 per cent of its modest income instead of 40 per cent.


I see nothing in this very promising proposal to justify the extravagant alarm of those who have singled it out for attack. It would add to the supply of decent housing available to low-income families. It would take advantage of the energy and imagination of public spirited citizens – churches, cooperatives, and the thousands of civic organizations – who are deeply concerned about slums.


And it would offer low income families a healthy third choice to the alternative of slums or regular public housing.


WILLIAM A. BARRETT,

Chairman, Housing Subcommittee on Housing.

WASHINGTON, June 1, 1965.


[From the New York Times, Feb. 13, 1966]

RENT SUBSIDY TEST IN CAPITAL HAILED – MOST FAMILIES SHOW GAINS IN HOUSING EXPERIMENT

(By Joseph A. Loftus)


WASHINGTON, Feb. 12.– Rent supplements, or subsidies, have upgraded the housing and environments of 50 poor Washington families in an experiment that Government officials pronounce successful.


Only two of the families caused adverse reactions in their new neighborhoods. One man had his friends over for beer too often and failed to discipline his children and maintain the property.


"We had to transfer him," said Hamilton Smith of the National Capital Housing Authority.


The other case of adverse reaction is not being taken too gravely. The man of the house prayed so loudly, his neighbors complained. The Government cracked down – ever so lightly. The complaints ceased.


INTEGRATION NOT AN ISSUE


The housing authority had $194,470 for what the law calls a demonstration grant, the point being to show the feasibility, advantages, and costs of leasing existing structures for sublease to low-income families. The grant covered the difference between the rentals charged by the private owners and the amount the tenants could afford. Similar experiments are being made in Boston, New Haven and Chicago.


Forty-nine of the families were Negro, but the upgrading raised no problems of racial integration. "There were no extreme cases of integration," said Mr. Smith. "The economics didn't allow us to make integration a point. We were limited to old housing. Our concern was price."


With seven thousand families petitioning for public housing, or rent subsidies, the 50 that were accommodated were about the equivalent of a toothpick in a forest. Most of them were about to be, or had been, bulldozed out of their quarters to make way for expressways or some other public convenience or because of building code enforcement. One family of seven had lived in a long basement room and sloshed around in an inch of water when the rains came.


The lucky families ranged from six to 14 persons. The Housing authority's big job in a tight rental market was to find houses of three to seven bedrooms outside blighted neighborhoods.

Mr. Smith reported enthusiastic cooperation by public and private housing interests. The owner of each house brought the property up at least to building code standards, spending as much as $1,500 on it. The housing authority guaranteed the owner his rent, averaging $165 a month.


MOST INCOME ROSE


The occupant agreed to pay the housing authority at least 22 per cent of his income and to report increases in his income. His rent payments ranged from $34 to $110.


Private agencies made contributions of cash and services. Mothers learned more about homemaking and how to make social adjustments for themselves and their children. They joined block clubs in their neighborhoods.


[From the Washington Evening Star, Jan. 6, 1967]

RENT-SUBSIDY SUCCESS


Washington's so-called "scattered-site" public housing experiment seemed a natural from the start. And the most recent analysis of its results, conducted by the Washington Center for Metropolitan Studies, assuredly justifies the program's expansion here.


The program's premise was quite simple: Instead of attempting to concentrate public housing- eligible families entirely in large, institutional-like "projects," why not lease individual homes in existing neighborhoods, and charge eligible families amounts they can afford to pay toward the rent? Well, the initial 50-home experiment has worked – so well, in fact, that the National Capital Housing Authority now is in the process of leasing an additional 300 homes.


One great advantage of this approach is the ability to house large families – the most difficult to accommodate in the standard type projects. The Washington Center analysis also found that the placements of these families in established private neighborhoods presented no insurmountable social problems. And most encouraging of all, it found that the incomes of public-housing

eligible families living in these more normal circumstances have tended to rise, with the result that the amount of the public rental subsidy required has dropped from an initial average of $91.11 a month to approximately $81.


The Washington Center's proposal that the NCHA should seek to extend the program beyond the city limits to the suburbs is entirely reasonable in theory, but hardly practical as an immediate step. Legally, the NCHA's authority ends at the District line. More important than that, however, the housing of low-income District residents in the suburbs is not likely to occur until suburban jurisdictions are ready to accept them. We believe that discussions leading toward that degree of acceptance should be set in motion. But it does not exist, as a practical matter, as yet.


What has been demonstrated is that the rent-subsidy concept is one of several useful tools in attacking the problem of low-income housing. There are many possible variations, as yet unexplored, in applying the concept. And Washington can take pride in the fact that the success of the local experiment is stimulating similar programs in other communities throughout the country.


[From the Washington Post, May 25, 1967]

AREA GETS $277,329 IN RENT FUNDS

(By Carol Honsa)


Federal rent-supplement funds of $277,329 have been earmarked to help pay the bills of low-income families in the Washington area so far this year.


The Federal Housing Administration said this amount will benefit 247 families living in new or rehabilitated housing projects sponsored by private non-profit organizations.


Under the rent-supplement program, low income tenants pay a quarter of their income toward rent, with the Government making up the difference between their payments and the going rate.


APPLICATIONS APPROVED


The FHA's District of Columbia Insuring Office is still taking and considering applications for fiscal 1967 rent-supplement funds from private sponsors of low-income housing. These applications have been approved:


A $248,767 allocation to the Washington Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church for a 200-unit project at 7100 Central Avenue, District Heights, Prince George's County. Tenants in 198 of the 200 housing units to be built by the church group will be covered by the rent-supplement program.


A $15,600 allocation to Presbyterian Incorporated to Conserve Housing for rent supplements covering all units in a 26-unit rehabilitated apartment building at 1430 W St. NW.


A $12,962 allocation to the United Church of Christ to cover partial rents of 23 families in its new 124-unit home for the elderly at 620 Pershing Dr., Silver Spring. April rent supplement of $294 were paid for five families there who have been certified as eligible, an FHA spokesman said.


To qualify for rent supplement, tenants may not have incomes higher than $3900 annually for a family of four. They must also either be displaced by Government action, be living in substandard housing, be physically handicapped, be 62 or older, or be currently or formerly residing in housing damaged or destroyed in a natural disaster.


DIRECT PAYMENT


Rent-supplement payments are paid directly to the housing owners rather than through the tenants. Tenants are selected by the owners.


Among the rent-supplement projects still under consideration by the D.C. Insuring Office are a 250-unit housing development near Gonzaga High School sponsored by the Bible Way Church and a 199-unit development adjacent to the old Sibley Hospital site sponsored by Sursum Corda, a corporation formed by area Catholic institutions.


The FHA spokesman said there was no fixed limit on rent-supplement grants in the Washington area. He said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had $32 million available for rent supplements this year, with $30.5 million from that sum already earmarked for rents on 33,000 housing units in 271 communities.


The House of Representatives last week rejected a request for $10 million to expand the program. The Johnson Administration had sought $40 million. Current rent-supplemental contracts, however, will remain in effect.


[From the Machinist, May 25, 1967]

WHO KILLED RENT SUPPLEMENTS?


Conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats joined forces last week to cripple one of the Great Society's most promising housing programs, rent supplements.


The vote in the House of Representatives was 232 to 171. All but 12 House Republicans voted against funds for rent supplements. Of the 69 Democrats lined up against the program, 63 were from the South. A complete state-by-state record of the rollcall vote appears below.


Rent supplements were first authorized by Congress in 1965 with strong labor supports. They were designed to stimulate construction of private, low-cost rental housing as an alternative to public housing projects.


The system has worked this way:


The government makes commitments to non-profit sponsors of new and rehabilitated housing projects to pay part of the rent of low-income tenants.


The government payments go to the project, not to the tenants. Size of the payments is the difference between the amount the project sponsors need to break even and one fourth of the tenant's monthly income.


Prior to this year, Congress appropriated more than $30,000,000 for 405 projects in more than 250 communities. When completed, the projects will contain nearly 35,000 dwelling units for more than 100,000 persons.


This year, President Johnson requested $40,000,000 in additional funds to house another 100,000 persons. The House Appropriations Committee cut the request to $10,000,000.


Last week's vote eliminated even that. U.S. Rep. Glenn Davis of Wisconsin, a Republican, offered the motion to kill rent supplements, arguing that "It is wrong to be taxed to provide a better home for the man next door."


Democratic supporters of the program, led by U.S. Rep. Joe Evins of Tennessee, argued in vain that rent supplements are an improved private enterprise alternative to public housing.


House Majority Leader Carl Albert of Oklahoma declared that the Republicans had shown themselves to be "the same old party of opposition." He charged that those who voted to end rent-supplements had "turned their backs on millions of residents of our metropolitan areas" and had taken the first step to "dismantle and sabotage the humane and progressive programs" enacted by, the last Congress.


Robert Weaver, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who has administered the rent supplement program, also attacked the Republicans.


"The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives," Weaver declared, "has again vicitimized the poor. By spearheading the attack upon appropriations for rent supplements, they took a major step toward denying decent housing for some 200,000 Americans.”


Although last week's vote ends expansion of the rent supplement program, the House did approve a $5,000,000 appropriation to enable the government to honor past commitments to pay rent supplements.


The Administration will try to get the rent supplement cuts restored in the Senate. But some Washington observers give the program little chance in this session of Congress.


[From the Niagara Falls Gazette, May 22'19e7]

GOVERNMENT LEADEas PONDER NEW VIEW or CITY PROBLEMS


A key problem of life in America confronts the National Conference on Social Welfare at its six-day session on "Humanizing the City" which opened Sunday in Dallas.


Some venturesome programs intended to combat the physical blight and social malaise in urban slums have been slashed back sharply by the House of Representatives. Funds for model cities have been cut from $400 million to $249 million and Rep. Henry P. Smith III, of this Congressional district, was one of those who voted to eliminate all the funds except $12 million for planning. Funds for new rent subsidy projects have been refused. Urban planning, open spaces and related programs are taking a similar beating.


At the same time, Congress is being urged to look at the plight of the cities from a wholly new standpoint. Lewis Mumford, the social critic who has made a life-long special study of urban problems, on April 19 told the Senate Government Operations subcommittee:


"If you are not to do far more damage than good in establishing a new housing policy, you must first prepare to rebuild the effective organs for regional planning and regional government on a State and interstate basis.


"Unless human needs and human interactions and human responses are the first consideration, the city, in any valid human sense, cannot be said to exist, for, as Sophocles long ago said, 'The City is people.’”


What Mumford is getting at is that urban redevelopment and all the related programs that deal with urban blight, poverty and the stifling of the poor are mechanistic, technical operations if they are not aimed directly at the needs of man himself. President Johnson in his remarks to a recent Conference of Women in the War on Poverty said:


"The seeds of aspiration – of the will to succeed – have been planted in the slums and the ghettos and the hollows of America. "


By the mid-1970's, it has been estimated, we will be spending $130 billion a year on new housing, schools, streets, sewers, water systems and other urban facilities. How much of this should go into research on better ways to do the job? Dr. Donald F. Horning' science adviser to the President, says, "We are all participants in a dramatic and massive experiment which will test whether 20th century man – richly endowed and highly educated – can find a way to live together in large metropolitan areas with human dignity.”


Dr. Rene Dubos, biologist who has concerned himself with the effect of environment on human life, asserts:


"The total response of man to man is, I think, an absolutely essential part of human development. And if our cities fail to provide that – and there's a danger that they are beginning to fail to provide that – I think we'll bring about such a gross impoverishment of human development that our civilization will eventually die."


City worries are immediate as well as long term. As one contemplates another long hot summer it's disturbing to be reminded that urban poverty is at the heart of the race problem.


(From the Lorain (Ohio) Journal, Jan. 13, 1967]

THE RENT SUBSIDY AND HOW IT WORKS: LORAN IS FIRST IN THE UNITED STATES

(By Frank Dobisky)


"I don't know of any other place I have lived that I have been as happy and content as I've been here."


The woman's eyes danced with joy, her lively spirit was infectious, as she sat in her small but comfortable apartment at Firelands Retirement Center.


The reason for her happiness?


She is one of 16 persons now living at the retirement center, at 1025 West Erie Avenue, who qualified for federal rent supplement program that began in November.


The program is experimental and residents at the retirement center in Lorain are the first in the nation to benefit from it. And one of the reasons they are first is the effort expended by Mrs. Dorothy Duke, long active in the field of housing for the elderly, and Mrs. Pearl Trotter, manager of the center.


The woman who expressed her delight at the program receives $89 a month from social security. That's all. She has some savings but admits without rent supplement she would soon have exhausted her savings.


Under federal law, persons receiving this assistance cannot be identified. But two of the qualifying women residents agreed to discuss the programs as long as their identify was not revealed.


One of the things that impressed both residents was that everyone in the building – and they range from people with low incomes receiving rent supplement to people with high incomes who are financially independent – really care about the others.


"If you enjoy being with people you can have that here," said one of the women. 'But if you want to be alone you can go into your own apartment and shut the door."


Mrs. Duke recalled talking to a resident, a man, who had been ill. During his sickness, women in the building bustled around him like mother hens watching over their broods. The man was taken aback and told her, after his recovery:


"I was nearly chicken-souped to death!" Mrs. Duke feels the concept of rent supplement is "not to supplement or be in conjunction with public housing but it is in addition to public housing."


The center is operated by a non-profit corporation which has much of its backing from the United Church of Christ.


Prospective residents, however, do not have to be members of that church. And this is where the Firelands program differs from many other church-sponsored housing programs for the elderly.


No effort is made to determine a resident's religion before he moves in. There is no provision in the application to indicate a resident's race. The only basic requirement, to qualify under the federal rent supplement program, is that the person be 62 years or older (although handicapped persons can be younger and qualify), be an American citizen and be self-sufficient.


Also, to qualify, a single person must not have an income exceeding $2,600 a year or more than $5,000 in assets. A married couple's income can't exceed $3,600 and their assets cannot be more than $5,000. The center checks out the individual's bank account, investments, if any, and life insurance policies to determine the extent of assets.


Mrs. Duke fought long and hard for the federal program, administered by the Housing and Urban Development Department.


The bill passed Congress in the spring of 1965, signed by President Johnson in August of that year (one of the pens used in the signing is on display in the Firelands lobby) and finally was given appropriations in July of 1966.


Firelands filed applications for the program a day after President Johnson signed the bill even though funds weren't available. A waiting list from John F. Kennedy Plaza, the public housing for the elderly center on Broadway in Lorain, was made available to Firelands. From this list, the names of prospective residents were obtained. These people were contacted, interviewed and told they would be notified when the program went into action.


On Oct. 21, 1966, Firelands was informed their program had been approved and four days later a 40-year contract was signed with the federal government. Between Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, the prospective residents were called in, signed their applications and many moved in by Nov. 1.

The first rent supplement check – for $819 – was received last month.


Residents pay 25 percent of their income for rent and the federal government pays the balance or up to 70 percent of the total rent. Rents for the 15 units under the federal program ranges from $80 to $125 a month. All the units are studio apartments. Each resident furnishes his or her own apartment.


One of the women interviewed lives on $76 a month – part of it social security and the balance from the Lorain County Welfare Department. In addition, she buys food stamps from the Welfare department ($16 worth of stamps can buy $22 of food).


The two women were interviewed separately, neither knowing the other was discussing the program.


And the second woman, echoing the first woman's sentiments, said:


"I love it. I have never been as happy in all my life as I am now. All I can say is I'm very happy."


She said, "Everybody is warm, kind and outgoing. They always offer to help one another. The atmosphere is very warm. And the building – well, the building is simply beautiful."


How this woman came to Firelands is an example of Ecumenical spirit.


She said she was Catholic and that a friend referred her to a Methodist minister who helped with arrangements for her to enter the center.


Although the application blanks don't reveal the information, Mrs. Duke and Mrs. Trotter said that from casual conversations with residents they know there are Catholics, Jews and Protestants in the building. There also are Negroes.


Mrs. Duke said there still are small bugs in the program, nothing serious, and that it appears the rent supplement idea will catch on.


"The whole idea is to be able to help these people without giving them the impression they are charity cases. We want to preserve their dignity. That is important to these people," Mrs. Duke said.


THE LORAIN EXPERIMENT


The Federal government is helping pay the rent of 13 elderly people living at Firelands Retirement Center here in Lorain.


It is the nation's first payment under an experimental rent supplement program passed by Congress after much controversy.


Since it is an experiment, it would be wise for all of us to take a good, hard look at it with an open mind. It still goes against American principles when you give something for nothing.


But we're giving millions to feed, cloth, uplift many strangers in far away lands. Let's try to take an objective look at this program, without in any way exposing the recipients to public ridicule or embarrassment. And let's again give credit to the one person more than anyone else who pushed this experiment through – Mrs. Norman G. (Dorothy) Duke. She made Lorain number one in a social experiment that could change our way of life.