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Congress Likely to For Giving Cities NewBy Congressional Quarterly■* ' t'ACONGRESS is laying the foundation for new legislation to help clear away city slums.Staffs of the housing subcommittees of the Senate and House since Labor Day have been preparing for hearings to find out what more the Federal Government should do to save deteriorating neighborhoods and rip out hopeless ones. The Senate subcommittee will go to Chicago Nov. 2 for its first slum clearance hearing, then travels to cities in Maine, Pennsylvania and Alabama. The House subcommittee will hold slum clearance heatings in Washington the second week in December.The investigations will helpshape slum biearaiicethat will be introduced hi gress next. January. “The question says a S en a t e subcommittee staffer, “is not whether to continue the slum clearance program but how big to make it.” He said he knew of no national group opposed to slum clearance legislation.Since 1949, Congress has authorized the Federal Government to to give $1.25 billion to cities so they could rehabilitate rundown neighborhoods or bulldoze them away and build new ones. Of that amount, $890 million had been promised and $99 million had been disbursed to cities as of Aug. 31. The long interval between the time the Federal Urban Renewal Administration approves a slum clearance project and the city actually carries it out accounts for the big difference between the two figuresNew York has been promised $143 million for slum clearance and Illinois, $83 million, the largest amounts among states participating in the program. Legislatures in Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming have not passed laws toenable their communities to participate in the slum clearance program.Massachusetts so far has been promissed $28,677,504 in Federal slum clearance and rehabilitation grants and has actually received $1,867,666.S'JHE CONGRESSIONAL attack on slums was launched by the 1949 Housing Act. The Act said clearance of slums would contribute to “the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth and security of the Nation....” In 1954, Congress authorized rehabilitation — which it la-beled urban renewal — of decaying neighborhoods to supplement clearance . of hopeless areas.Under the slum clearance and urban renewal programs, a city first receives a Federal loan and then a grant. The loan is like a drawing account to be used uptii the Federal grant arrives. *jbe loanthe slum clearance project, clearing the land and readying it for new houses or stores by putting in such things as water and sewers.When the city sells its former slum* site to a private developer, the money from the land sale is subtracted from the total cost of the city’s entire slum project. The result is the city’s net cost, or loss. The Government pays two-thirds of that net cost and the city the other third. This Federal money is used to pay off the city’s original Government loam.In order to qualify for Federal grants, the city must have a detailed plan for its slum clearance project that conforms to its master plan and must be prepared to move persons displaced frojn slum areas into suitable housing. City slum clearance agencies work through regional offices of the Urban Renewal Administration.* * *THE SLUM clearance and urban renewal program passed its most recent popularity test in 1957. The Eisenhower Administration proposed that money authorized for the program be reduced from $250 million for fiscal 1958 to $175 million. Mayors from cities throughout the country squawked so loud that Congress eventually authorized $350 million for fiscal 1958.Mayor Richard C. Lee of New Haven, Conn., typified the attitude of the Nation’s mayors when he told a Senate housing subcommitOn Lifevtee: “The Federal moneys involved in urban renewal are less than one-half of 1 per cent of the Federal budget....Figures from the Federal Works Agency show that slums and blighted areas take up about 20 percent of a city’s entire residential area. But in these slums live 33 percent of our population; in these slums are committed 45 percent of our major crimes; these slums are the scene of 55 percent of all our juvenile delinquency; these slums account for 60 percent of all our tuberculosis patients....Unless renewal and redevelopment programs are rolling across the country, especially in our older cities, by 1960, then these cities will face complete fiscal municipal' ruin lt;by 1965.” v. r The fact that the mayors won out in Congress in economy-conscious 1957 indicates that Congress in 1958 will continue, and probably expand, its program designed to give American cities a new lease on life.
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North Adams Transcript
North Adams, Massachusetts, US
Tue, Oct 08, 1957
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