General SEEMAN. Yes, in high cost areas or very remote areas where you cannot develop a Capehart program. Senator STENNIS. Suppose you give us a special writing on that, because we want to follow the policy and we want you to spell out what your policy is. General SEEMAN. Yes, sir. You asked us for an elaboration of the West Point situation, you will recall. Senator STENNIS. That's right, and those extra costs, too. You are going to do that? General SEEMAN. Yes, sir. Senator STENNIS. You think you can sustain it? General SEEMAN. We may have furnished it to Mr. Nease already. I am not sure. Senator STENNIS. Someone said something awhile ago about the armory bill. Didn't you indicate someone here had a copy of what they had done? Whoever it is don't leave the room, please. I will want to confer with you. General SEEMAN. We have it available. If we don't have it with us, we will provide it to you. Senator STENNIS. I may want to look at it this afternoon. Senator STENNIS. If we get into this matter now of lifting the limit for your housing it seems to me that we are just opening up trouble. I wish you would try to work out these West Point houses within some kind of present limits, sir. General SEEMAN. We are at more or less, the court of last resort now, sir. We had an authority for Capehart housing for 2 years there I believe and tried our darndest to work out a project and under the $16,500 limitation it was just impossible, sir. It is the configuration of the ground, the remote location as far as labor is concerned, the high cost labor area, and we have now found this project to be developed on a scale and scope with which General Davidson, the superintendent, is much dissatisfied. But we feel that it is a rock bottom design concept. We actually have not gone into detailed design until we get the authorization. Senator STENNIS. Have you ever considered moving the Academy anyway to a more centrally located area? General SEEMAN. Yes. The staff has talked about that. I must admit not too seriously, sir, because of the tremendous capital investment already there, and the historic significance of the high lands, the defenses of the Hudson during the Revolutionary War, and so on. Senator STENNIS. It does not detract any from the present location. I mean it does not cast any reflection on it, just say that you have outgrown it. General SEEMAN. That is true. I know one of the tentative plans considered was the possibility of more or less developing a satellite area, part of the cadets and part of the classrooms to go to some other area on the reservation, but the overall operating costs and the difficulties of coordination were at a great disadvantage. The National Guard is on page 56 of the bill, sir. We have just had handed to us a clean bill from the House also if Mr. Nease does not have it available. Mr. NEASE. I have it here. I have shown the Senator our bill with the changes in the House. Senator STENNIS. They seem to have taken out some items and added others. Well, we will look at that again later. Is there anything else now about the housing? Of course, you mentioned briefly the other day, the surplus commodity housing. I think you had better cover that more fully, Colonel. General SEEMAN. That is in section 104, page 8 of the bill, subparagraph (a) is the commodity, the surplus commodity housing, and the first item is various locations in France, 400 units, and Colonel Mc-. Carty has those detailed locations, sir. Colonel MCCARTY. If you will recall the other day I gave you the locations of the 400 units in France, Mr. Chairman. Senator STENNIS. Yes. Colonel MCCARTY. At the present moment we have under construction 1,068 Army units under the Surplus Commodity Housing program there in France. We also have authorized an additional 298 units. We have a gross housing requirement in France of 9,512 units, and our existing assets, including those under construction, amount to 5,024. That is assets both on base and off base including community support, sir. Senator STENNIS. What kind of title do they give you to the land there? Colonel MCCARTY. The title to the land does not pass to the United States. It still remains with the French Government under a title I surplus commodity program. Senator STENNIS. Are you more or less tenants at sufferance? Colonel MCCARTY. Yes, sir; that is one way of putting it, because eventually the desidual value of the housing will be determined by agreement between the two governments at a later date. Senator STENNIS. But any time they say get out, why you have to get out? Colonel MCCARTY. I don't imagine we would get out until the United States withdrew its forces from the country, sir. Senator STENNIS. Is there any other rundown you want to give? Colonel MCCARTY. One other surplus commodity program is the 157 units for ASA location. General SEEMAN. Army Security Agency. Colonel MCCARTY. In Japan, sir, this is a very northern location in Japan on the island of Hokkaido. It is in a very isolated location. The total housing requirement there is only 264 housing units, sir, and in this bill we are requesting 157. That will include four key civilians to be located at that installation, so what we are trying to do is provide housing for all of our families at that location, sir. Senator STENNIS. What about your rental guarantee; give us something more on that. Colonel MCCARTY. We have no rental guarantee program in this proposed bill, sir. Senator STENNIS. You have some houses though. You are still operating under that plan. Colonel MCCARTY. Yes; we have 2,152 houses in France under the rental guarantee program, and at the present moment we are exploring the possibility of getting a rental guarantee program in Germany. First, because we have a serious housing shortage in Germany, and second, it appears impossible to generate any surplus commodity funds in that country because they simply do not need the agricultural products that we have to offer for sale. So we are exploring the possibility of getting a rental guarantee program in that country, sir. Senator STENNIS. How is it working in France now? Colonel MCCARTY. As far as I know, satisfactorily, sir. We have built some very austere housing there. I have heard a few complaints on the quality of it. I shouldn't say we constructed it because as you know rental housing is constructed by foreign investors with foreign capital and maintained and operated by them. Senator STENNIS. Someone, either you or the Air Force, did compromise on some housing over there. Is that you or the Air Force? It must not be you. Colonel MCCARTY. A compromise, sir? Senator STENNIS. Well, I understand a liquidated agreed amount that they were going to pay, about $500,000. Colonel MCCARTY. I am not familiar with it, sir. Senator STENNIS. That is the Air Force I am advised. Yours is still a going concern then? Colonel MCCARTY. Our rental guarantee program in France is still a going concern. it? Senator STENNIS. You don't have to pump any fresh money into Colonel MCCARTY. No, sir. Senator STENNIS. It is paying its own way? Colonel MCCARTY. It is paying its own way in that the occupants are paying for the quarters, sir, not the foreigners, who own it. Senator STENNIS. I mean you have not had to ante up on your guarantee any yet? Colonel MCCARTY. Not to my knowledge, I am quite sure we have not, sir. Senator STENNIS. Check on that and see. Colonel MCCARTY. All right, sir. All of the Army rental guarantee projects are fully utilized and we have not incurred any actual financial liability to date under this program. Senator STENNIS. I was over there when they broke the ground. We drank champagne at the ground-breaking ceremony. I don't know whether it was you or the Air Force. I think it was the Army in 1953. Colonel MCCARTY. I think that is the date we broke ground, sir, as I recall. Senator STENNIS. Do you have anything more to add on this housing? Mr. NEASE. No, Senator, that is about all. It is pretty well covered. Colonel MCCARTY. I might add, that we feel that our program this year is a modest program, sir. We still have safety valves so as not to overconstruct at any location, which will be in our programing criterion. Senator STENNIS. What do you mean by safety valves, Colonel? Colonel MCCARTY. We never construct more housing than is re quired at any post and we also consider all of our adequate community support, we don't consider requirements for our lower three grades, although many of them are married, sir. Senator STENNIS. The lower three grades of what now, officers? Colonel MCCARTY. Of enlisted grades, sir. Many of them are married, and if we have a surplus of housing at any location we can always put those people in the housing, sir. Senator STENNIS. You count all your officers though in making your calculations? Colonel MCCARTY. We count all our married officers. Senator STENNIS. I have had some of these enlisted men tell me they would rather live away from these locations. They want the children to run and play with just the general run. Do you hear much of that? Colonel MCCARTY. No, sir, I don't, what I hear mostly is "Why can't you furnish me a house or some suitable place for me to live”? Senator STENNIS. All right. General SEEMAN. I think Mr. Chairman, that would be similar to the Secretary's reply about the letter of the particular family that was apprehensive about their four children in Berlin. You can't just generalize on individual preferences, but by and large the preponderance, the great preponderance is just fighting the problem of long distance commuting, transportation and high rental costs and lower standards that they get if they go too far out on the civilian market. The Department of Defense also, as you know, has a guideline, a yardstick that they hold up beside the various projects of not approving any more than 75 percent on post for the total, so that there are all of these various guidelines to avoid dangers of overbuilding. Senator STENNIS. That is one of your guidelines that you should put in your memorandum and show just what you consider and how you measure these matters. Colonel MCCARTY. Then we have the two strengths. We have our current strength and the longe-range strength, and we take whichever is the lesser to make sure that there will be no overbuilding. Senator STENNIS. I can appreciate your problem and I am not out of sympathy with it, but it looks to me like the smart long-range view for the military to take is that if we stop trading in stores of the taxpayers, stop buying our groceries from the taxpayers, stop renting our homes from the taxpayers and severe our connections, that we finally find ourselves without any sympathy among the taxpayers and it will be reflected in the halls of Congress where the money is appropriated. General SEEMAN. I appreciate your very difficult position, sir. On the other hand, without in the last being argumentative, sir, I have found myself in many conditions being a taxpayer in two States at the same time. I paid taxes going to Virginia and Texas in the same year. Senator STENNIS. Well, we are not being personal but I am a taxpayer in a State and in the District of Columbia, but I made that choice myself. I consider it an incident of my chosen field of work and not a punishment of any kind that the Government has inflicted on me. General SEEMAN. It is one our our professional hazards. Senator STENNIS. Yes. I am amazed at the extent to which the services are isolating themselves. It looks like to me the way they are whittling on the Army all the time, cutting down on your strength, your manpower, that you could well have too many houses before you know it. I am concerned about it myself. I think it is going in the wrong direction. We have had figures here in previous years and gone over it quite a bit about the cost to the Government of the appropriated fund housing and Capehart housing. What do you have to say on that, General. Have you ever compared those figures? General SEEMAN. The cost of operation? Senator STENNIS. The ultimate cost to the Government of a Capehart house and an appropriated fund house, one compared to the other? You have seen those columns of figures I imagine? General SEEMAN. Yes, sir. We have various statutory limits for the various grades within the appropriated fund houses. Senator STENNIS. I mean if we put $20,000 into a Capehart house today with the utilities, the actual number of dollars, figure out what it is going to cost the Government over the years of payment, and then put down the same house on appropriated funds. We know it runs considerably more for the Capehart system. General SEEMAN. Through the long-term financing, yes, sir. Senator STENNIS. Why is it that the services favor the Capehart plan over the appropriated funds? General SEEMAN. Actually, we don't necessarily favor the Capehart plan. By funding you avoid the large capital investment at the very beginning which you would do with the appropirated fund housing. You are able to pay for it over a number of years very similar to the time payment plan in commercial enterprise. Specifically comparing the cost, Colonel McCarty has some figures on it if you would care to go into it, sir. Senator STENNIS. You might file your figures there, Colonel, if you will. We are fairly familiar with them, but I think you might do that, sir. COST COMPARISON-CAPEHART AND APPROPRIATED FUND HOUSING Initial construction costs are assumed to be identical to provide a basis for comparison: 1 Covers house, including range and refrigerator, and all on-site improvements, such as streets, sidewalks, landscaping and utility distribution systems. 2 Computed on the basis of 300 monthly payments over a 25-year term; rate for Capehart is 4 percent as specified by current FHA rules and regulations; rate for appropriated fund is 4 percent, the current cost of long-term Treasury borrowing. Based on 4 of 1 percent of declining balances. Covers site acquisition and preparation and off-site utilities, and access roads. |