The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-12-08

This field is entirely separate from the Federal Housing Admin istrNtion, which endeRvors to stimulate individual homo con. struetlon, and tho Homo Owners Loan Corporation, which aids only those who have placed mortgages on their homes.
 Low cost housing ls on At. tempt Co aid municipalities Co, wipe out their sluEns by building modern, subsidized apartments for rental At Che lowest possible price. Originally this work was carried on by the Housing Division Oe pWA where it came under the watcheul and fire. Quently feroclous eye of Harold Iekea.
 Nominally 1t is still under tho oy0 of Honest Harold" but Ac. tuAlly it comes under tho super vision of Nathan straus. Partly because of this ambiguity of ad- miniatratlon, tho new Housing HubElVHaWy WHvutvhAe w bvSVhAV VAlS of the tragic failures of tho Nd- ministFation.
 At present, relations are 90 strained between the Iekos group and tho strAuS group, that ex- employees of fokos' recently have been approached by . New York detective agency with offers Of Si,o00 if they could supply owl. denee og c criminal nature against theR exsohief.
 There ls no evidence At All that Mir. Htraus, himself, knows that these offers have been made, and they may have come from some of his friends or ass soclates. Not only have they been made, however, but TO. peateA, with instructions that two lawyers from New York will have to pass on tho evidence before the 9l,000 is paid.
 NOTE. ono of the offers was Mado to Arch Loney, c wood OK. pert who testified regarding tho ladder used In tho Lindbergh kid. iiaping case. MT, Lonoy is an OK. PWA einployo.
 Senator Wagner's Baby
 Father of the U. s. Housing Authority Is Robert Wagner, Ger. man.born senator from Now York, who, raised In the slurnS of Now York city, has worked for three years to pass c housing bill.
 During tho first two of those years he got no Approciablo help from Roosevelt. At tho lest con. gregsional gession, however, with most of tho New Deal program out of the way, Roosevelt put the Wagner Housing Act on his"mus~ list, and it was passed.
 It Is c modification Of tho old PWA Housing plan by which stun. clearance projects were built chiefly through outright grants from the Federal g0v- ernment. The new bill provides Q fund of half Q billion dollars from which . city may get . % per cent loan plus an outright gift of 10 per cent, provided it fuIfllls certain servicing c0ndi- tons. There gre also conditions by which it may contribute cash, and secure . larger outright gift from the government
 The administration Of this new organization was placed by con. gresS under Secretary Ickes, al. though with c genii-independent executive. To i'll this place, fckes recommended tho chief of his Housing Division; but Senator Wagner, claiming the right to put his own nurse in charge of his new housing baby, insisted on Nathan Straus, and after two months delay, the President yielded.
 Strauss Skeleton
 gtyaus was picked for the job partly because of his connection with tho Hillside housing project in New York, but this ig now one of the skeletons rising Up to give him trouble.
 The Hillside project was fi- nanced with PWA funds, and in building 1t straus kept c valuable strip of iand which he owned ad- jacent to the property. On this he erected stores and other build- ings. The value of these now have increased and are yeputed to be worth four to five million dollars.
 The Wagner Housing Act pro. hibits speculation or profit on Q housing project by c housing of- ficial, and although this is not
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