The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-11-22
BY RODNEY BUTCHER Democrat Washington
 COrreenOndent 8.

BY RODNEY BUTCHER
 Democrat Washington
 Correspondent
 Washington. Nov. 2l--AGr. Arthur Walsh. the new assistant adminis- tratof of Federal Housing Admin istration, is about as astonishing fellow as you're likely to meet
 He can make music with his bare hands.
 Actually plays tunes with them. Cupping palms and fingers to- gether, he achieves a sort of wind d'I instrument from which he can pro- duce melodies with a sound which is an approximate compromise be- tween a kazCo and 8 whistle and not unpleasant, either.
 At banQuets where stuffed shirts were boring everybody Stin with speeches, MT. Walsh has been known to slip his hands under the tables and, quite anonymously, to emit with disturbing availability. such tunes as Show Me the Way to Go Home" and "How Dry ! Am"
 New Dealers, accustomed to no end of oddities, agree with awe that this is the darndest thing they ever saw or heard.
 Also, Walsh's new appointment is an improvement over most prevt- ous top-rank appointments in FILA. He is a protege of Charles Edison, formerly worker with the Edison laboratories, did some good federal housing work in New Jersey, and more lately has been FHA's deputy administrator in charge of modern ization loans.
 Outlook Is Bleak
 A recent official survey showed 37 federal agencies to have "defi- nite responsibilities in housing" The New Deal has spared with the housing problem more or less furi- ously. Housing is the one big thing Roosevelt's intimate friends say he will grapple with in his second ad- ministration-if any-and nearly all the outstanding American hous- ing experts are or have been here on the federal payroll or as con- sultants.
 What all those housing people whisper privately to your corres- pondent almost exactly parallels @ letter just received from a former hifth official who went away to su- pervise one of the largest non- profit housing experiments now url- der way anywhere. Let us quote: "I have just been through the process of actually getting some houses started. These are supposed to be minimum houses, not luxury horaes or even good houses, but minimum decent houses that will stand up for 20 years and house an average family. a.3o far, 1t seems the job can't be done for much less than $6000, which means they will have to rent for $60 6 month to carry them. selves. According to income figures by Brookings, 71 per cent of the fami- lies in this country can't af1ord that much for housing. No wonder thore is a housing shortage. "Owning or renting comes out the same way-housing costs too much" Hard to Figure Out i've been over this question of reducing building material costs from one end to the other," coil- tinues this expert, lover the labor problem, over the expensive distri- button system, everything. It all adds LID to some figure and yet you can't make an appreciable cut in 1t anywhere. Mortgage tinkering, housing act, hot cir, and everything else cannot make a decent business out of housing at the present state in the arts of production-the present state being about 1906 period (poorer, by the way, than 1890 con- struction).
 "I've even looked over all the prefabricated houses and see noth- ing good yet. It's always something a lot better (so they say) for g little more money, when we need something almost as good for 6 lot less money. Each is trying to adapt his ma terial or plant to something new instead of setting out boldly to find new thing irrespective of what 1t may turn out to be-"
 
 Hope for Subsidy Resettlement Administration is trying to- find the "new thing" PWA Housing hopes to provide Q few homes for lower middle class 1 incomes. of $500 to $2000 @ year, but to achieve that 1t must oper- ate with c 46 per cent subsidy and a per cent interest rate for 60 years! About ell housing experts here h0pes for is enough PWA and RA demonstrations to inspire wide- spread public demand for heavy government subsidies for low-cost housing such as have been granted in most European nations.