PWA Housing Division, concerned with urban housing for low income families, does not tell the whole story, however.
The National Industrial Recovery Act also set up the Sub sistence Homesteads Division in the Interior Department, with a revolving fund of $25,000,000. This organization was trans ferred in April 1935 to the Resettlement Administration, which in 1937 became the Farm Security Administration. By 1939 its build ing program was completed,—ii,800 farm homes in 4o States and 2,200 family units in three suburban Greenbelt towns.
Of the other Federal agencies created since the depression, some are purely emergency and others are intended to be permanent. Among the former is the Home Owners Loan Corporation, set up to rescue solvent home owners with a mortgage falling due, which they could not renew, because the lending agencies had no ready money. It has prevented nearly a million foreclosures. Most of the borrowers are repaying their loans in a satisfactory manner.
The Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on the other hand, is a permanent institution intended to bring together the home mort gage lending agencies of the country in a manner which will strengthen them and secure safer financing at lower interest rates than our small home owners have hitherto enjoyed.
The Federal Housing Administration was intended to stimulate private enterprise by guaranteeing mortgage loans and thereby hasten employment in the building trades. Substitution of insur ance for second mortgage has been its most useful achievement. From being a backward nation in the matter of statistical knowl edge of their housing conditions, Americans have become, through the rental figures in the 1930 Census, and, more recently, through the Real Property Inventories and numerous other surveys, carried out as white-collar employment projects, one of the best informed. The excuse of ignorance can no longer be offered. Surveys made from 1934 to 1936 summarized in the 1938 publication, Urban Housing, WPA Div. of Soc. Research, cover communities contain ing 44% of the urban population of the United States. The Farm Housing Survey, Dept. Agri. gives the results of a sample study covering 8.6% of occupied farm homes.
Local public housing authorities seeking its aid must show the existence of "dwellings which by reason of dilapidation, over crowding, faulty arrangement or design, lack of ventilation, light, or sanitation facilities . . . are detrimental to safety, health, or morals," and a shortage of "decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings" within the means of families of low income.
After establishment of these facts and submission of plans and estimates for a project, USHA may make a loan to the local hous ing authority, up to 90% of the total amount required, the local authority supplying the other io%. This loan must be repaid dur ing a period of not-to-exceed 6o years, with interest at least 1% higher than the going Federal rate. Since this would not produce rents low enough for the families it was desired to help, USHA was authorized further to make an annual grant. The maximum grant cannot exceed interest on the cost of the project at the going Federal rate plus I %, and is subject to revision downward at the end of 1 o years and every 5 years thereafter. The local authority must make an annual contribution, by tax exemption or otherwise, equal to at least 20% of the Federal grant. It must also demolish or restore as many unfit houses, on the site or elsewhere, as the project has built. USHA was authorized to make loans during the next three years to an aggregate amount of $5oo,000,000 and an nual grants to $20,000,000. In 1938, the amount of loans was raised to $800,000,00o and of annual grants to $28,000,000, and the time limit was removed. In 1939, Congress adjourned without completing action on further increases. The United States Hous ing Authority was set up Nov. 1, 1937, in the Department of the Interior, with Nathan Straus as Administrator. The staff, rec ords, and projects, finished and unfinished, of the PWA Housing Division were turned over to it. In the reorganization of executive departments. USHA was transferred from the Interior department to the Federal Works Agency, without other change.
Completed PWA projects were leased to local housing authori ties for management as rapidly as possible. The Wagner Act per mitted reduction of rents somewhat below those previously re quired under the George-Healey Act. Rents as finally established average about $5.00 per room per month, the lowest average being $2.24 at Caguas, P.R., including no utility except water, and the highest $7.12 at Harlem River Houses in New York, including heat in winter and hot water at all times. The average number of rooms is between 3 and 4, bathrooms not counting. Although a few units contain 5 and 6 rooms, these early projects did not make as much provision for families with a number of children as was socially desirable. The new program is doing better in that respect. The rents will also be substantially less.
To make certain that subsidized housing is used exclusively for families unable to attain adequate shelter without it, the Housing Act provides that no tenant shall be accepted whose family in come is more than five times the rent plus utilities, or six times if he has three or more minor dependents. To guard against extrava gance, Congress inserted a provision that construction cost per room in cities of over 500,000 population should not exceed $5,250, or $5,000 per family unit, while in smaller towns the maxima should be $1,000 and $4,000. Building costs in the de centralized program have kept well within these limits, but the family unit figure makes it difficult in some places to provide the number of rooms needed by extra-large families.
At the close of July 1939, USHA had made 259 loan contracts with local housing authorities totalling $472,745,000, providing for the housing of 102,000 families in 129 communities. Of these projects, 66 had reached the construction stage, and a few of the earliest, including the large Red Hook development in Brooklyn, were already receiving tenants. In addition, preliminary ear markings of some $200,000,000 had been made on projects not yet at the loan contract stage. Beside all this activity in the USHA slum clearance and building program and the rapid devel opment, already noted, of State laws and local housing authori ties, as well as the accumulation of favourable court decisions, a highly important step was taken when the New York State Con stitutional Convention (1938) adopted a clause permitting the State to issue bonds up to $300,000,000 for housing loans and grants to local authorities. This provision was ratified by the electorate in an approximately 2-to-I vote. The 1939 legislature enacted a bill to make the provision operative. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Mayor La Guardia, New York city was estab lishing a special occupancy tax on business premises, the proceeds of which are devoted to slum clearance and re-housing. The me tropolis is thus provided with three sources,—national, State, and local,—for financing her housing program. The program is being developed in collaboration with city and regional planning.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The President's Conference on Home Building and Bibliography.-The President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, (II vols. 1932) ; Edith Elmer Wood, Recent Trends in American Housing, (1931) ; Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing ; Edith Elmer Wood, "Slums and Blighted Areas in the United States," Bulletin No. 1, PWA Housing Division (1935) ; Henry Wright, Re-housing Urban America (1935) ; James Ford and others, Slums and Housing (2 vols. 1936) ; Mabel L. Walker and others, Urban Blight and Slums (1938) ; Langdon W. Post, The Challenge of Housing (1938) ; Michael W. Straus and Talbot Wegg, Housing Comes of Age (1938) ; U. S. Housing Authority, What the Housing Act Can Do for Your City (1938) ; Housing Yearbook, Nat. Assoc. Housing Officials, Coleman Woodbury, Editor, 1936-7-8-9. (E. E. Wo.)