The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-02-13

oSAAS ~ A 10000 f a m l i es.
 SS They have been - Si fine houses, decor
 Cattca ative and SubStan- tial. but there has been a major complaint; they cost so much that genuine slum- -dwellers can't afford to live in them.
 Housing Authority people say they have turned the trick. They are financing housing projects de- signed to meet the needs of fam flies whose annual income ranges between $450 and SLIGO. Tenants are limited to people who have been living in substandard houses. LENDS BUT .....~ DOESN'T BUILD
 Here's what has happened so far in the USHA program:
 Congress voted $500, 900, 900 for the USHA. The Authority doesn't do any building itself; it lends money to local housing authorities set up by cities or counties which must through sale of bonds put up sum equal to 10 per cent of the USHA loan. In addition, the USHA agrees to contribute to the local group a subsidy equal to 3h per cent of the cost of the project. The local group in turn must make its annual ontribution-usually by making the new housing exempt from taxes.
 Because the loans run for 60 years at low interest rates. be- cause the 3Is per cent subsidy keeps coming in year after year, and because the houses are tax free, the rents will run, on an average, a little less than S4 per- room per month. A family will be able to get a five-rOom home, then, for something under $20 month-nearer $16 than SEQ. say the USHA people, because the S4- a-room average is pared in the larger units.
 This. obviously, isn't housing that paws it's own way. It isn't housing that private industry could hope tc duplicate and make profit. But the USHA sees it as the most prac' tical' kind of slum- clearance worR that has yet been evolved; 1t points out that 1t offers decent housing al prices that slum-dwellers can affore to pay, and that none but slum' dwellers can become tenants Furth' CT. one of its regulations is that fol every new dwelling unit built under its program, substandard house must be demolished.
 STILL PLENTY
 TO DO
 With the money already appro- priated, the USHA will eventually have built homes for 60,0o0 fami- lies. That looks like a big bite ou' of the slum problem - until the Authority's staff remarks that the common estimate is that the nation contains 5!000,000 urban homes thai are substandard enough to come in or close to the slum classifica' ton.
 The pitfalls that got in the path of PWA's slum clearance program are to a large extent being avoided on the USHA program. For one thing. this program makes use Of cheaper land. It has ruled out the fancy Iandscaping and ornamental plazas which made some of the PWA projects look like miniature copies of Versailles. It has told the local contractors 70 follow the building standards current in their own neighborhoods, instead of in- sisting in strict government stan dards. It gets cheaper utility service through wholesale pur- chase. It requires the tenant to do for himself lot of things that were done for him under the earlier program. It got the build ing trades unions to agree to set A prevailing wage rate before con- tracts are bid, and to stick to It; 1t also got the unions to agree to get along without :urisdictionai strikes. ,.
 It is going into small towns a. well as big cities-there is $283, 900 project in Mount Hope, W. Va for instance, town of 236l people
 .No one whose monthly income | more than five times the rent the would be charged him is allowed to become a tenant. On the othe hand, the USHA insists that ever. tenant must have some regular in come-even if 1t is only a relic allowance. It doesn't want to turr the new housing into a poorhous' development.
 Copyright. 1889, NEA Service, Inc.