PART IV

OF THE

Third Annual Report

HOUSING AND HOME FINANCE AGENCY

Covering the Activities of the

PUBLIC HOUSING ADMINISTRATION

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

Honorable RAYMOND M. FOLEY,

Administrator, Housing and Home Finance Agency,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. FOLEY: I am submitting herewith the annual report of the Public Housing Administration for the year ending December 31, 1949.

Sincerely yours,

Enclosure.

JOHN TAYLOR EGAN,

Commissioner.

Chapter I

PUBLIC HOUSING IN 1949

The Public Housing Administration has responsibility for five separate housing programs, each with its own well-defined objective. Each program was designed to meet a certain kind of housing need, important enough to the Nation's welfare to call forth public action. In one program, the purpose was to provide good housing at low rents. for low-income families who otherwise would live in slums. In two others, providing shelter for the workers who manned war industry was the objective. In still another, the aim was to help veterans. returning from their service in the armed forces. A fifth program originated as a public works program during the depression of the 1930's.

The nature of the programs varies as widely as their purposes. Some of the housing is owned and operated by local public bodies, with financial assistance from PHA. Other public housing is federally owned, but operated by local agencies under lease contracts. Still other public housing is both owned and operated by the Federal agency. Basic Program Expanded

Diverse as it is, all of the housing with which PHA is concerned shares two major characteristics: It is owned by the public, and the Federal Government has a financial interest in it.

At the start of the year, the five programs embraced a total of 716,000 dwelling units of all descriptions. By the end of 1949, this responsibility had declined by 100,000 units to a year-end total of 616,000 units.

This decline in the physical workload carried by PHA, however, reflects only one facet of its activities for the year. It is a measure of progress in liquidating certain of PHA's interim and short-term responsibilities, mainly in connection with war housing and veterans' housing.

PHA's basic, long-term program is the low-rent public housing program for low-income families. It is in this field that the most significant event of the public housing year occurred, the enactment by the Congress of the public housing provisions of the Housing Act

of 1949.

This action extended and expanded PHA's basic program by authorizing development of 810,000 new units of low-rent public housing in a 6-year program. This new authorization established a program more than four times the size of the previous low-rent public housing

program. Since passage of the Housing Act of 1949 at midyear. the tremendous task of putting the new program into motion has been a major field of PHA activity. The agency's prior duties in connection with earlier programs continued undiminished, but the farreaching demands of the new program moved into the foreground. The Programs and Their Purposes

The low-rent public housing program was instituted by the United States Housing Act of 1937 (Public Law 412, 75th Cong.). In essence, it is a program of Federal loan and subsidy assistance to local public housing agencies to enable them to build and operate housing for rent to families whose incomes are so low that they cannot afford adequate housing provided by private enterprise. Under this program, 191,700 dwelling units were built.

The public housing provisions of the Housing Act of 1949 amended the basic 1937 statute, preserving its central form and concept but refining it in detail and providing substantial new authorizations for Federal financial assistance to local housing agencies.

All of the other four PHA programs are emergency programs, destined for liquidation in a relatively short time through disposal of the Government's holdings and interests. Three of them were devised to meet certain emergency housing needs arising from the war and its aftermath. They are the public war housing program, authorized by the Lanham Act and related legislation; the veterans' reuse housing program, authorized by the postwar title V of the Lanham Act, and the homes conversion program, inaugurated by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and transferred during the war period to the jurisdiction of the PHA's predecessor agency, the Federal Public Housing Authority.

The public war housing program consisted of housing projects built and owned by the Federal Government to house war workers and military personnel in localities congested by the wartime migration of workers to war production centers. Since the war, this housing has been devoted mainly to housing the families of veterans and servicemen.

Both permanent and temporary war housing were built in the war housing program. Under terms of the Lanham Act, the permanent housing is to be disposed of by sale, and the temporary housing removed. In total, this program consisted of 628,263 dwelling units, 191,119 of them permanent and 437,144 temporary. As a result of postwar disposition activity, this stock of war housing had been reduced by the end of 1949 to 312,185 dwelling units, 132,981 permanent and 179,204 temporary-a total reduction of 316,078 dwelling units.

The homes conversion program also was a response to wartime

housing needs. In this program, the Government leased properties from private owners and converted them into dwellings for war workers. This program is being liquidated by returning the properties to their owners, either by terminating the leases by negotiation, by canceling them before expiration or by normal expiration. Of the 49,565 converted units in this program, 33,411 had been returned to their owners by the end of 1949, mainly by negotiation. This represents disposition of 67 percent of the total program.

The veterans' reuse program resulted from another housing emergency, the need for shelter for veterans returning from service. In this program surplus temporary war housing and military structures were converted into living quarters for veterans and their families. In many cases, the structures were moved from their wartime sites to new locations where they were needed. The Government furnished the structures to local sponsors of the veterans' housing projects and in some cases paid the cost of relocating and converting them. The local sponsors of the projects were public bodies, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. A total of 267,092 accommodations for veterans, servicemen, and their families were provided in this manner. By the year's end, the program had been reduced to 71,451 units, mainly through the Goverment's relinquishment of its interest in the housing to the local sponsors.

One PHA program-the subsistence homesteads and Greentowns program-originated in the economic emergency of the 1930's. This program was formerly administered by the Farm Security Administration and was transferred to the Federal Public Housing Authority when that agency was established in 1942. Virtually all of the subsistence homesteads have been disposed of, and one of the three Greentowns had been sold by the close of 1949.