Imperial Valley press., 1941-03-20
by Peter Edson...
The Inside Track in WASHINGTON

Carmody, who is given authority
to decide which of his agencies will
tackle each project.
Main department of F.. w. A.
which will function on defense
housing is U. S. H. A.--United
States Housing Authority. Since
1887 it has been the slum clear
ance agency and now turns to the
job of building small homes for
the families of enlisted men, not
officers, and other emergency
housing near army posts and fac
tories with defense contracts.
U. S. H. A. also dug up $32 mil
lion of its own to throw into this
kitty. WPA has $25 million it can
these new boom towns, and the
Public Roads administration can
build main arteries and approaches.
In all. here is 1857 million or
more. just for defense housing, and
on top Of that is potential S5
million for trailer towns, portable
cities that can be used for con-
struction crews or replaced when
more permanent housing becomes
available.
The big fight Of defense hous-
ing comes over this one issue
whether to make these new prof.
ectS largely of pre-fabricated
knock down houses of a purely
emergency nature, or to make them
permanent towns of the best Slum
clearance type. You'll have to wait
for a decision on this policy, but the
chances arc it will be a compromise.
TUGWELL
REMEMBERED
The Department of Agriculture
gets one plum out of the defense
housing pie, through an appropria-
ton to add a thousand family
dwellings to Greenbelt, Md. (Tug-
Welltown to you, to house Wash
ington'S war workers.
All this is direct-grant housing,
paid for by the government, but
oil the other side of the picture is
the complex, housing structure
under the Federal Loan Agency
to encourage private building by
home owners. insure loans, dis
count mortgages and help private
capital finance big multi-family
developments.
Resources for this type of pri-
vate building, through RFC and
its $40 million Defense Homes
Corporation and Federal Housing
administration with its 500 mil
hon capital, make probable the
building of some 100000 structures
of all types by private capital this
year, as against $4,000 in 1889.
Elghty-five per cent of F'HA's
loans since last July have been in
defense industry areas, where
building construction is running
from 30 TO 200 per cent above the
previous year.
Add all this private construction
to emergency defense housing and
you will come close to the 10-year
average for building in the l920's,
which was 100000 units. It's a
long way, though, from the peak
year of 1929. when the figure was
$4,000 structures of all types.
WASHINGTON HEARS
Two South Carolina governors,
Maybank and Ex-Governor John
ston, may fight it out for the Sen
ate seat of Jimmy Byrnes, should
he get that Supreme Court ap-
pointment. Germany is running a
airline, north of
India, to Japan.
The rayon business, which started |
from nothing, turned out nearly |
half a billion dollars worth of |
products last year. Limitation of |
number of aluminium ice cube |
rays in new electric refrigerators |
is first evidence of how aluminium |
shortage Will affect non-defense |
industries. Average of the 10000
corn loans made to farmers last
year was $50 on $40 bushels. Iowa
had four times as many as any
other state.