Evening star., 1934-06-23
BUILDING TRADES
EXPECTED TOFEEL
BENEFIT IN MONTH
Aggressive Publicity Drive
Planned to Sell Loan Idea
to Public.
RENOVIZING ELIGIBLE
FOR PRIZES OF STAR
40 Per Cent Increase in Activity
Over 1888 Set as Conserva-
tive Estimate.
BY VINCENT TUTCHING.


The wisdom of borrowing money for
home modernization and renovation
is lesson No. | that the Federal HouS-
ing Administration must teach the
country's home owners in the national
drive to stimulate activity in the ema-
ciated building industry.
In its far-fung publicity campaign.
planned as an integral part OF the
whole administration housing program,
the F. H. A. must stress the benefits
to be derived by property holders, la
Dor and business from operation of
title l of the national housing act,
The success of this feature of the pro-
gram will hinge on the number who
will borrow up to $4,000 for the re-
conditioning of their homes.
While it is difficult to estimate the
number of home owners who can be
persuaded to go more heavily into debt
to improve their homes, still the points
favoring this expenditure are sound
and many may see the wisdom of it.
Enhances Value.
Primarily, the value of the property
thus improved will be enhanced and
this, of course, is the most important
consideration from the standpoint of
the home owner. After more than
five years of neglect in the ordinary
maintenance of residential. CONNER
cial and industrial properties, the po-
tential demand for repair, renovation
and moderniZation is more widespread
now than it has been in many years.
Declining property values, according
to real estate appraisers, can be
checked by wise expenditure for i'm
provementS.
From the viewpoint of labor, activ-
ity in the building trades, if encour-
aged to any extent through the Gov
ernment's application of this needed
primer" can give the greatest pos
sible amount of relief to the employ
ment situation. BY far the greatest
proportion of unemployment today is
attributed directly or indirectly to the
almost dormant building industry.
In the national housing act the
building material manufacturers and
equipment dealers see the groundwork
for a substantial pickup in home
building and modernization and re-
gard the measure as the long-desired
stabilizer of the building and home
mortgage business.
Estimates Made.
1t is impossible to forecast they say,
the probable effect of the measure
with any degree of accuracy, but they
are of the opinion that a conserva-
10 of nFoat during the
first year of its operation would be
an increase over 1888, the lower point
for the depression, of about 40 per
cent. Government officials had hoped
for about S1,500, 100000 in property
Improvement within year. but this
would represent about all of the work
of this kind now awaiting attention
and it is not believed that it could be
accomplished within Il months.
Discussing the housing act in the
current issue of the Architectural
Forum, Kenneth Z. Stowel, editor
says:
1.-TWO previous attempts to stimulate
the sleeping building industry have
failed-the Public Works Administra-
ton made a negligible, diffused at
tempt to revive building; and its
housing division program has been
practically abandoned except for the
hundred million or so which the hous
ing corporation will spend Oh few
demonstration projects. The Gov
ernment has not injected enough
money into the industry to cause a
fiutter, and has announced recently
that little more public works will be
forthcoming. 1t cannot afford that
medicine and balance its budget.
Tries New Treatment.
''The ideas incorporated in the
public works section of the N. r. A.
have been relegated to the background
or to the limbo of impractical ideal
ism. The new bill takes no account
of a national plan for the construc-
ton of needed buildings which was
mandatory in the act, but which the
P. w. A. has not yet developed or
presented 1t discards the theories of
Government cooperation in large
scale planning, of community plan
ming, of slum clearance and housing,
and devotes itself to the system of
financing of individual enterprises,
trusting, evidently, that private initia-
tive is sufficiently enlightened to take
care of these things through co-opera-
ton with local planning boards and
Continued on Second Page)