tor, a subdivision in the field of human relations, which is also one of the greatest and most important problems facing America today, and which involves our prestige in connection with the way we behave where the nations of the world are watching us. You take in a community like Philadelphia where we have people from the various sections of the city, various sections of the country, various religions, various races and various ideas, with respect to how cities should be conducted, and the effort in the housing problem to mingle all of the people, at least, on an economic level so they can all live together side by side and go to schools. And we have an area where we are doing it in a very fine manner. There are many areas in the cities of this country where it is difficult to do that. I read about some of the problems of New York City which I though was advanced as far as Philadelphia. Incidentally, the State of Pennsylvania was the first State in the Union in this last legislative session to pass a bill involving a human relations commission on a statewide level to advance the cause of equality in housing and in education, equality in opportunity. And this would be done on a nationwide scale, so that we should not have a picture where one local community does and another community a hundred miles away does not. This is an opportunity to advance that ideal which is, also, necessary and vital to the importance and prestige of America. I have only tried to bring together some of the thoughts which are already involved in some of your papers, although I did not read of anybody who presented this human relations idea and I do not recall there were too many submitted in the field of the real congestion of our big cities, but this is what we are facing. Chairman DAWSON. You are unique in that respect. Mr. TOLL. I am not unique. I tried to read the material. I say I think some of the presentations you have had are unusual. I say that the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Mr. Bell's statement, is very, very significant. And I hope that I will be able to give you a more detailed statement which I will add by way of revising and extending my remarks with your permission so that it can be added to your record; and that you will give me an opportunity if this reaches the floor, which I hope it will, to add a few words there. I thank you very much. Chairman DAWSON. With no objection we will await your state ment. Mr. Fascell? Mr. FASCELL. I have no questions. Mr. TOLL. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Chairman DAWSON. Our next witness will be our colleague, Mrs. Martha W. Griffiths of Michigan. STATEMENT OF HON. MARTHA W. GRIFFITHS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity once again to appear before you on behalf of a bill to establish a Department of Urban Affairs and Housing and for other purposes. As one of the introducers of a bill to establish a Department of Urban Affairs, from 1955 on, I have had the pleasure of appearing before this committee. It is my considered judgment that the bill requested by the administration and introduced by our colleague, Mr. Fascell of Florida, meets many of the objections set forth by this committee in previous years. Mr. Fascell's bill establishes the functions of the Secretary for the Department with greater exactness than any previously introduced bill which I have studied. In my opinion, there is great merit in transferring the program of the Housing and Home Finance Agency to a Secretary. America, under a capitalistic and democratic system, has housed its people more adequately than any area of the communistic world. In my opinion, it is of great value to us to give this department a more prominent place in our Government. Adequate housing is one of the primary needs of human beings. We have fulfilled this need more adequately than any communistic country. We should emphasize it. Indeed, if we care to maintain South America in the free world, we should be exporting our techniques on homebuilding to those nations. Secondly, Mr. Fascell's bill provides that the Secretary shall develop and recommend to the President policies for fostering the orderly growth and development of the Nation's urban communities. To me, this is desirable for reasons already explained. In 1860, when the Department of Agriculture was set up, 80 percent of the people resided in rural areas, and 58.9 percent worked in agriculture. Today only 5 million, or 6.8 percent, work in agriculture. The rest are involved in urban areas. Within the next two decades, it is estimated that the population will increase by 100 million people Virtually all of this population growth will occur on the suburban fringe areas. Eighty percent of our population will become urbanized. We should prepare now to meet the problems of housing, water supplies, transportation, taxes and a multitude of other things in a neat and orderly fashion. In my opinion, a Department of Urban Affairs headed by a Secretary could best handle this situation. I wholeheartedly endorse Mr. Fascell's bill, H.R. 6433. I urge this committee to report it to the full committee. Thank you for your time. Chairman DAWSON. Mr. Fascell? Mr. FASCELL. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman. Our able col league has had a long interest in this field and has presented her views very well, as she usually does. Chairman DAWSON. Mr. Anderson? Mr. ANDERSON. You are from Detroit, are you not? Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Yes, I am. Mr. ANDERSON. Do you feel that primarily the need of these urban communities and I refer now particularly to the point that I think was made in the penultimate paragraph here on page 1 about fostering the orderly growth and development of the Nation's urban communites that this need can best be served by the Federal Government with respect to funds or with respect to supplying some of these specialists and technicians that the previous witness talked about? Mrs. GRIFFITHS. I do not think that it would necessarily best be served by the Federal Government but in those instances where the Federal Government is supplying funds or supplying technicians, I think that it should be done in an orderly manner. And I would like to give you an example. At the present time, when people are displaced because of highways, they are paid by a different agency a different amount for their evacuation from those areas than they are if they are displaced because of urban renewal. I think there should be some uniformity. And I think that if you had a secretary and a department reviewing these problems all of the time that you would have a better chance at having such uniformity. It is obvious there are many areas that have been mentioned here before where the Federal Government not only must act but has acted in the past on airports, on water pollution. Michigan, as you know, is surrounded by water. If you will look at the map, Michigan is almost an island. It is surrounded on all sides by waters that intersect other States or other nations. It is impossible to say to us that we are responsible for the pollution of those waters and that we must maintain them free from pollution. I would like you to say this to Chicago, not Detroit. We have to have some sort of program and it is insistent that the Federal Government help develop those programs. I hope that it is a uniform program. Mr. ANDERSON. If I understand you, then your primary concern is with orderly development and coordination of existing programs? Mrs. GRIFFITHS. That is right. Mr. ANDERSON. You would not go so far as Mr. Toll then with his snow removal and human relations and bring everything under the Federal umbrella here? Mrs. GRIFFITHS. I would expect everyone to have a shovel of his own. Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you. Chairman DawSON. Thank you, Mrs. Griffiths. Your testimony is what we expected. Our next witness will be Mr. Curtis E. Huber of the National Association of Real Estate Boards. STATEMENT OF CURTIS E. HUBER, CHAIRMAN, REALTORS' WASHINGTON COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REAL ESTATE BOARDS; ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN C. WILLIAMSON, SECRETARYCOUNSEL Mr. HUBER. We, too, are grateful for this opportunity of presenting our views to this committee. My name is Curtis E. Huber and I am engaged in the real estate business in Evansville, Ind. I appear before you on behalf of the National Association of Real Estate Boards to voice the opposition of this association to the creation of a Cabinet-rank Department of Urban Affairs and Housing. Chairman DAWSON. Will you introduce the gentleman with you. Mr. HUBER. Here with me is Mr. John C. Williamson, who is the Secretary-Counsel of the Realtors' Washington Committee. The position of our association on this issue was first determined by our national board of directors in January 1955 and was reiterated as recently as our 1960 national convention. We voice this opposition reluctantly because we hold in high esteem the agencies which would become part of the proposed Department and the able public officials who have administered them in the past and who administer them today. Our opposition to H.R. 6433 is premised on our sincere belief that its enactment would: 1. Not accomplish its purported objective; 2. Aggravate the fragmentation of the Nation's housing effort rather than contribute to its coordination; 3. Presuppose that the Federal Government's role in housing and urban renewal must be a permanent and expanding one; and 4. Hasten the erosion of our system of Federal-State-local relations. I shall attempt to present our argument on these four points in that order. First, the bill would not accomplish its purported objective. Creation of the Cabinet-rank Department, envisaged by H.R. 6433, is not conducive to increased efficiency in Government, because the Department would never be able to escape the fundamental doubts which now exist as to its objective. All of the proponents of this measure, without exception, insist that the problems of urban life dictate a voice on the Cabinet level so that the varied activities of the Federal Government which touch upon the problems of urbanization will be better coordinated. Thus for the first time in the Nation's history a Cabinet-rank Department would be determined not by its functional role but by the location or place of residence of the people who would be the object of its consideration. What are these problems of urban life concerning which, in the recent words of the mayor of Chicago— The mayor of a municipality must devote much time going from agency to agency to get an answer to a problem, or to get conflicting Federal programs coordinated. (This was in the May 24 testimony before the subcommittee.) When the mayors of our large metropolitan areas testified before the Democratic Platform Committee in July 1960, they recited the following as urban interests or urban problems which dictated the creation of a Cabinet-rank Department: Public health; immigration; highways and railroads; airports; water and air pollution; juvenile delinquency; slum clearance; housing; unemployment; civil defense; fire protection and prevention; location and relocation of industry; and general public works planning. This list appears to grow every day. On May 24 a witness before this subcommittee added "education" as another urban problem. (This was by Congressman Younger in oral testimony before your subcommittee.) And the declaration of policy in H.R. 6433 adds parks, recreational facilities, as well as facilities for cultural pursuits. And to that according to earlier testimony we can add snow removal. Even the Housing Administrator has some doubts as to just what would be the jurisdiction of the proposed Department of Urban Affairs. Recently, before the House Independent Offices Appropriations Subcommittee, he replied as follows to a query on this point: For example, on the matter of sewage and water pollution, obviously the Public Health Service can carry out the program much better than we could, so we are very happy to have them do it. On the other hand, water distribution systems and the establishment of certain types of sewage systems, as public works, come directly into our purview. (This is from pp. 921 and 922 of the hearings before the House Independent Offices Appropriations Subcommittee for fiscal 1962.) It would appear that the proposal has a potential, at least, for generating an interdepartmental "cold war" with the spoils representing functions in most of the existing Cabinet Departments. The problems of urban life- are national problems which run through all the functions of the executive branch. The executive branch could no more concentrate the problems of urban living in one department than the Congress could in a congressional Committee on Urban Affairs. Indeed, the Congress might well first experiIment with a Committee on Urban Affairs before it creates such a Cabinet-rank Department in what we believe is the mistaken belief that all the problems of urban life must converge in a new monolithic bureaucracy in order to achieve solution. On May 24 a witness before this subcommittee cited the following as an example of the harassment that confronts a mayor on one of his periodic pilgrimages to Washington: For housing assistance, frequently his contacts must be made with the Public Housing Administration, FNMA, FHA, and VA and the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department, the Bureau of Public Roads and the HEW. (This is from the statement of Ed R. Reid, executive director, Alabama League of Municipalities, on behalf of the American Municipal Association, May 24, filed with the subcommittee.) I can understand the plight of this mayor, but the relief he seeks is not in this bill. Of the seven agencies involved in his pilgrimage, only three would enter the new Department, and these three are today as coordinated as it is possible to be and still retain their identities. The Senate recently approved legislation providing for the establishment of a Commission on Problems of Small Towns and Rural |