It should be noted, however, that while the percentage distribution of existing home cases shifted less in 1966 than had been the case in the two prior years, the volume of cases involving existing properties declined much more significantly for all income and value categories than did the new home volume. Thus, losses in home buying opportunity for moderate-income families were most strikingly reflected in the reductions in total volume of the existing homes sales in which the income and value distributions have always been more heavily weighted toward the lower values.

The most significant of these annual changes in volume are as follows:

TABLE 1-A.-Percentage distribution by total monthly family income of home

TABLE 1-B.-Distribution by total monthly family income of home mortgages

$715.56

TABLE 2-A.—Percentage distribution by property valuation of home mortgages insured by FHA under sec. 203, 1963-66

TABLE 2-B.--Distribution by property valuation of home mortgages insured by FHA

under sec. 203, 1963-66

$14,542

14,342

Senator MONDALE. Mr. Secretary, what has been the impact of tight money on the code enforcement program? Do you have any observations you could make on that?

Mr. WEAVER. Well, our code enforcement program is a relatively new one, as you know, and we are just getting these projects underway. I have not had too much indication that it has had any effect, because we have no available assistance for this.

We have, of course, the 20-year, 3-percent loan for bringing properties up to standard. We have a $1,500 capital grant for homeowners of low income, and in addition, there are certain types of FHA mortgages that I don't think have gone much differently since than before, have they, Phil?

Mr. BROWNSTEIN. Except for below-market interest rate.

Mr. WEAVER. And insofar as we have been able to use these aids. which again are subsidized programs, they have not been affected by the tight money market, because the money comes from either the

direct Government loan or a loan which is supported by special assistance in FNMA. This has not been a great deterrent here.

I am sure it has slowed it up somewhat, but this is not an area in which you get a tremendous amount of private investment anyhow, whether the money is tight or not. So it didn't have too much effect, because they weren't in it very much, to put it very bluntly.

Senator MONDALE. Mr. Chairman, I have one question for Mr. Bertsch.

Senator PROXMIRE. Fine.

Senator MONDALE. A recent article by Mr. Nick Kotz in the Minneapolis Tribune tells of the problems Negroes in Mississippi have had in obtaining self-help housing loans.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to include this article in the record. According to the story, these loans would be in the amount of $2,500, to be repaid at $20 to $25 a month. The program involved the cooperation of the OEO agency in training these people to make bricks and build these homes. Why were these people unable to obtain the credit and money they needed; and if an application like this was now received by your department, by this self-help group, would you approve it?

Mr. BERTSCH. Senator Mondale, we were concerned with Mr. Kotz's article, and I would also hope you would like to introduce into the record a letter from Mr. Carr, who was quoted by Mr. Kotz; he wrote to the editor of the Tribune, which Mr. Carr vigorously denied all of the quotations

Senator PROXMIRE. Without objection, both-you are referring

Senator MONDALE. Mr. Chairman, I ask that the article be included in this record, and also include an answer by Mr. Carr.

Senator PROXMIRE. Both documents will be printed in the record at this point.

(A reprint of excerpts of the article, and letters of Mr. Freeman and Mr. Carr follow :)

EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE BY NICK KOTZ IN MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE REPORTED FROM CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, MAY 29, 1967

PRIMITIVE SHACKS ABOUND AMONG THE MANSIONS

The basic housing problem is how to finance even the most modest dwellings for Negroes who have little if any income.

The Agriculture Department briefly operated a small grant program. It helped several thousand families. But congressional appropriations subcommittees, dominated by southern segregationists, have adamantly refused to fund this program for several years.

Is self-help romantic?

Now, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) is attempting to get the rural poor into brick houses under a self-help concept. Poverty workers would provide building supervision while enrollees in training courses would work together to build their new homes.

OEO officials are fighting desperately for this plan as the only one that, at the moment, is feasible. Agriculture Department officials brand the plan romantic and have fought against making necessary loans because they regard the concept as financially unsound.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Robert C. Weaver told a presidential commission that the self-help idea was impractical. Weaver quickly added that his department doesn't have any programs to help the rural poor into housing.

Impractical and romantic or not, several hundred Negro farm hands are eagerly constructing a model home at the OEO migrant training school on the Saints College campus in Lexington.

The Lexington plan is simple enough in theory. The trainees use a mold to make special interlocking, air-dried bricks that fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. OEO officials say the homes can be built for $2,500-if the Negroes make their own bricks and perform the labor.

Warren Booker, vocational teacher at the project, said:

"We have about 15 who would start building tomorrow if they could get their hands on the brick molds.

"One fellow is so excited he has already started collecting sand from a creek to make the bricks. All he needs is the cement and brick molds and he's ready to go."

If the project fails, many will be sadly disappointed, said the Rev. R. M. Stevens, assistant director of the training program.

"These men had chopped a little cotton and loafed the rest of the year. Now they are learning they have abilities and skills they never dreamed of," Mr. Stevens said. "They are having the thrill of putting up a floodlight, of holding a skil saw for the first time, of wearing a white carpenter's uniform instead of blue overalls."

The 277 enrollees receive $30 a week during the 36-week program. They spend two-thirds of their time in basic education courses, the rest in vocational training.

Tom Karter, national director of the OEO migrant division, says the plan will work if the Farmers Home Administration will grant the trainees $2,500 loans, repayable at $20 or $25 a month.

Karter and his projects officer, Kenneth Vallis, have journeyed to the South almost weekly in an effort to make their training and self-help housing programs work. They are advising local program directors in Lexington, in Wilcox County, Ala., and elsewhere to have their trainees apply for the loans. Agriculture or social service?

As matters now stand, OEO is supplying training funds for a self-help housing program the Farmers Home Administration will not approve.

"The Agriculture Department simply is not a social service agency," commented Joseph Doherty, the administration's special assistant for economic op portunity programs established under the antipoverty law.

"Thirty-six weeks of guaranteed income is just not enough to justify a loan," Doherty said of the OEO plan. "At the end of the 36 weeks, they might not get jobs. If they do, they generally will be located somewhere else. Loans must be repaid. These are a lot of romantic notions-making your own bricks."

Doherty said his office might approve loans if OEO or another agency established a program entirely devoted to building the homes and welfare agencies guaranteed that the home buyer could use welfare funds to make repayment. Doherty's suggestion would eliminate any possibility of homes for several hundred able-bodied male family heads now in the training program, since they are not eligible for welfare payments in either Mississippi or Alabama.

"These people are now paying $10 to $40 per month rent for shacks unfit for human habitation," said Karter. "Now they finally have the opportunity to learn, to get the opportunity to learn, to get jobs, and to own decent homes. The government should give them that chance."

Aside from federal financing problems, poverty program officials here say that the white resistance to the possibility of Negroes' building permanent, brick homes is increasing.

These whites fear that Negroes-who make up two-thirds of the Delta population and are registering to vote-now may remain permanently and keep voting. Sue Geiger, a poverty worker at Freedom City located outside Greenville, criticized a plan to move 300 Negro families to the predominantly white Gulf Coast area.

"We see this as a plan to move Negroes to an area where they will have no political power," she said.

"This is their home. We say they have a right to jobs and homes here." 81-082-67 -3

AFTER A MAN LEARNS, WHAT HAPPENS TO HIM?

CLARKSDALE, MISS.-It was an unusual graduation ceremony. The 450 graduates ranged in age from 25 to 65. Almost all were poor Negroes from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta.

An overflow audience in the city auditorium listened intently as the graduates delivered short speeches about what school meant to them:

"Many of us couldn't read or write when we entered the program. Now we don't have to make an X to sign our names."

"I used to go to the back room when the children had company. Now I stay and take part in the conversation."

"Forty-eight of 52 in our group have registered to vote. Our ideas about citizenship have improved."

The proud graduates had raised their average educational level by 31⁄2 grades during the 36-week basic education course financed by an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) program for migrant and seasonal farm workers.

Board members of Coahoma Opportunities, Inc., the sponsoring community action agency, listened proudly-and momentarily forgot their deep worries. But the next morning the board met federal and state officials and once again banged head-on into the realities of poverty programs in the Deep South. The big question: What next?

OEO's Migrant Division-knifing through red tape and bypassing state and local government resistance-has worked with willing local leaders to improve the education and raise the hopes of thousands of rural Negroes.

Most need further vocational training before they can qualify for even semiskilled jobs. Job discrimination is still a reality and jobs in the rural South are scarce enough for anyone.

Federally sponsored but state-operated vocational training programs are accepting few of them. Low-cost homes are not available for Negroes who now believe life owes them something better than a plantation shack.

The Coahoma board meeting was typical-federal and local poverty program officials allied on one side, federal and state labor department representatives on the other.

Dr. Aaron Henry, a Negro Coahoma board member and Mississippi president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, got to the point quickly. Directing his comments to a U.S. Labor Department official, Henry asked:

"What are you going to do about the guy who is dumb and the guy who needs more education? I'm concerned about the casualty rate."

Andred Carr, white board member and plantation owner, chimed in: "OEO has done its job. What's the Labor Department going to do?”

Specifically, the board wanted the Labor Department to offer a year of basic education in its manpower training program, so that more graduates of the OEO migrant school might qualify for vocational training.

"Literacy is your job," replied a state labor official, H. A. (Sawdust) Sanders, a heavy-set former football star who is typical of Mississippi officials who are finally but slowly accepting change.

"Congress says it's your job, too." shot back Tom Karter, national director of OEO's Migrant Division. "Your job doesn't just consist of teaching a man to turn a bolt one way. We're dealing with the hard-core unemployed."

Carr and Henry said 150 of the previous night's graduates could meet present education requirements for manpower training, and asked: “How many will you take?"

Sanders replied skeptically: "I've seen them. I'll wait for their applications with a great deal of interest. I'm here to serve, but I'm here on a businesslike basis."

The Carrs, Henrys and Karters don't believe that any neat businesslike solutions exist for the multiple problems that have grown out of 300 years of slavery and stark poverty.

James Townsend, the U.S. Labor Department representative, stated repeatedly that he could make no commitments.

The meeting ended inconclusively, as have countless similar discussions held in Washington and in the Deep South.