2. In regard to the matter of accelerating the operation of the urban renewal program, we would suggest for your consideration the following recommendations:

(a) In reference to the matter of land acquisition, it would be our suggestion that serious consideration be given to separating the loan contract from the final grant contract. The objective in this case would be to permit the community to undertake immediately the problem of acquisition of land in project areas as soon as project eligibility had been established and the relocation plan approved. It can be seen readily that this would extend the time for the solution of relocation problems considerably and thus reduce delay in carrying out the redevelopment program. Further, it would make available immediately a means of purchasing properties from owners who wish to relocate voluntarily and who have an early opportunity to relocate. Finally, it would enable the community to show actual progress in its program, and it would aid in the development of good public relations.

(b) Considering the matter of Federal review of local action, certification, so-called, we would suggest that thought be given to legislation and administrative procedures that would enable the Urban Renewal Administration to accept statements or certifications from the local public agency or proper State agency as to the determination of the predominately residential existence of a general plan, etc. If the Administration could accept such certification, administrative procedure would be considerably streamlined and the time element reduced. It would be our position that the Federal Government should recognize local governments or proper State agencies as responsible and fully capable of making competent and honest determinations of such matters. In regard to the matter of the requirement that such projects deal almost wholly with the elimination of substandard housing, and because of the unusual situation in Maine as set forth above, we would suggest that consideration be given to legislation to broaden the Federal Housing Act to permit a full-scale program of urban redevelopment. In many Maine communities, and we are sure this must apply with equal import in other States, commercial and industrial blight is considered a prime generator of housing blight. To permit this generation to long continue, we feel reduces the effectiveness of many renewal programs. The present requirement of a substantial amount of housing in the so-called 10 percent projects should be entirely eliminated, and the percentage of total capital grant authority should be substantially increased to permit the elimination of these particular blight producers.

3. In regard to the urban renewal program itself, it is our feeling that the program has graduated from the initial or experimental state and has reached the point where consideration should be given to the establishment of a long-range program with adequate financing. It would be our opinion that a 10-year renewal program would be an absolute minimum. The adoption of such a program would assure municipalities of continuity, and enable them to develop effective and continuing programs at the local level with the assurance that Federal aid will be available on a constant and continuing basis. Further, many smaller communities are reluctant to undertake a campaign for local acceptance of an urban renewal project without the assurance of a continuing program. To gain a favorable mood toward adoption of a renewal project at the local level in many instances involves a long and arduous program of education and explanation.

CONCLUSION

The Maine Municipal Association is thoroughly convinced, and statistics tend to indicate, that the lion's share of the tax receipts of local government, State government and the Federal Government come from the urban areas of this country. To permit the continuance of blight, including commercial and industrial blight, prevents each governmental level from realizing adequate tax revenues from these areas. Blighted areas make the greatest demand upon municipal services, and as a result, require a greater percentage of tax dollars than corresponding neighborhoods.

It is our considered opinion that the continuation of the urban renewal program on a Federal-local partnership basis is vitally necessary. We feel that the program should also be broadened in scope and increased in size. It is our opinion that the establishment of a continuing program should be given serious consideration, as we firmly believe that only through a continuing program can the municipalities of this State, and of other States also, achieve the complete elimination of slum and blight conditions.

Town of

ΜΑΥ - 1958.

1. Is the establishment of an urban renewal or redevelopment program desirable in your community?

2. Would your community undertake one or more urban renewal projects if the proposed program were established in this State?

3. Are there any local personnel capable of setting up a workable program? 4. Would your program be based substantially on substandard housing, substantially on commercial and industrial blight, or practically equal parts of both? 5. Have you an estimate of either the number and size of areas needing redevelopment or any costs that might be involved?

6. Have you a section 701 planning program in operation, in process of application, or under active consideration by a local group?

Signed:
Title:

Urban renewal questionnaire-Consolidated returns-May 14, 1958

No op. This indicates that no opinion was expressed regarding this question.

Senator SPARK MAN. Monsignor O'Grady, one of our oldtime. friends, who has been with us many, many times is next.

Father O'Grady, we are delighted to have you here again. May I say this: I am due to be over at the Foreign Relations Committee, and I have asked Senator Clark to preside. I will read your statement carefully, and I am delighted that you are here.

If you will excuse me now, I will go on. You know, we have not devised a way yet to be in two places at the same time.

STATEMENT OF THE RIGHT REVEREND MONSIGNOR JOHN O'GRADY, SECRETARY, NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC CHARITIES Father O'GRADY. I understand that, Senator.

Thank you very much.

I thought that I would not go into too much detail today. I thought that I would confine myself to certain basic principles underlying this whole program.

I happen to be one of those who has lived with this program since its beginnings. I suppose I happen to be one of the original proponents of public housing. I remember the studies of the slums and I remember all the literature that we poured out on the slums. One of my students made a study of the first slum analysis of Cleveland. I participated in that study.

I know the things that we used to say about slums, some of the same things you are saying about them now in Portland, Maine, that some of your businessmen have not come to see yet.

We thought that once we got these slums cleared we could build houses. We associated them with delinquency, the destruction of family life, and all the ills to which human beings are exposed. We had felt that once we had cleared the slums, we could build houses. We used to call this public housing in the beginning "municipal housing," those of us who pioneered.

I shall forever remember the first meetings of our National Housing Conference, of which I happened to be one of the organizers. We felt that it would be a matter of time. We did not think, of course, as did the great experts who succeeded us, that we could clean out whole areas and replace hundreds of thousands of people. We did not minimize it the same as I am afraid the urban redevelopers have done in the past 2 or 3 years.

But we thought that maybe we could have some repairs in that too. We inherited that from the twenties. We were not the first to begin it. We thought we were sometimes, some of us. We thought we were the people who originated it. But we did have some outstanding figures in our cities in the twenties. people like Lillian Wald in New York, with whom I used to climb tenement steps in New York City way back in those days. She had a vision of doing something to improve the tenements without necessarily tearing down all the housing units.

When we thought in those early days, and even in the early thirties, about tearing down housing units, we thought about it as a gradual process, not these huge clearances that we have come to ever since; that the experts have led us into.

We had, of course, a rather simple, naive attitude that once we got housing for people that somehow or other all these things would clear up.

In the beginning, in 1931 and 1932, along there, we had given a good deal of attention to building houses for the underprivileged. We had thought about people, of course, at that time, and here is a concept now that has changed a great deal. We had thought about housing for poor people, and, of course, at that time we had a rather pessimistic attitude, like the British had, that if you were a poor person maybe you would always remain a poor person. But that concept has been changing, and that is the kind of thing you have to keep in

mind in all these new programs that that sort of a concept is not in harmony with the philosophy of a dynamic society where we get what we learned from the Germans in the old days, the circulation of the elite-in other words, people coming up from the bottom all the time.

We saw an opportunity coming along when the Recovery Act was promoted by the Democratic administration in the early part of 1933. We had $334 billion for public works. And some of us said, a few of us said, "Now, let's include housing in that."

I shall forever remember one evening I went with the late Mrs. Kingsbury Sinkovich, who was our pioneer-we were just followers in that time and we hoped to write into the Recovery Act a provivision for low-income housing. That was really the first large provision we had had for housing in the United States, for public housing. What we called in the early days "municipal housing.

In the beginning we watched the first group of houses rise. I remember I used to go around to visit these houses. I wanted to see what kind of people acquired the houses and how long they remained there. Because we had, you see, this subsidy idea which was a temporary subsidy. We assumed that, after all, the people weren't going to remain in the houses very long and that it was going to lift them up, improve their family life.

These were some of our concepts about this original public housing. I am saying this in preparation for the sort of disillusioning experience we have been going through recently.

These houses were not these high-rise things. These we got from the experts afterward, I presume maybe long after 1937 when they felt that we pioneers had done enough, and our day was done and they would take over from us. That was what they professed to do, and that is what they actually did.

Our ideas, I think, were realized in the first groups of houses, the first groups that I have seen in a city like Cleveland. We thought that our original ideas were realized in those houses. They were row houses. The people in there, the families there, were not broken families. They seemed to be the ordinary low-income American family that lived in our slums.

The large-scale units had not yet come, and I think that has been one of the tragedies of this housing movement. We felt that we were making progress with these families in the beginning.

Then, of course, when we compare our experience in dealing with the conditions that prevailed in the slums, even in our early slum studies, and the conditions that prevailed in those first housing units that we built, with the conditions as we find them in our public housing projects at the present time, we have a rude awakening, and this is generally true. We have very large numbers of broken families. Many of the things that we said earlier about the slums can be said with equal truth about the housing projects that I visited in New York City within the past month. I have never seen anything a closer approximation to disorganization, to disorder, to chaos in the American community. I have never seen anything like it even in the slums.

Because let us remember that in the slums, with all their problems, we had certain assets. We had certain bonds of unity there.

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represented immigrant groups. They were gathered around the church there in the neighborhood. There was a certain bond of union that bound them together.

But then, you see, as we spread them out, as we placed them in these high-rise apartments, something has happened to the original bonds of union, those original ethnic and religious bonds. I think that again is another thing we have got to keep in mind in studying the problems of the American city today: What will we substitute? It is not sufficient for us to build houses.

I want to keep that in mind in my housing crusade and in my crusade for the study of a new approach to the American city today. And what are we going to do?

I am on the trail of the new housing authority in New York City, and I said to one of them only 2 days ago, "I am going to be on your trail. I have been around in these projects of yours, and you know the chaos that prevails, and I want to be able to study what you folks propose to do about it."

And I said, "I am not going to be satisfied with words or with theories and with techniques, but I want to see what can be done to remedy the chaotic conditions that prevail in these housing projects.” We have tried the housing. We have given all the experts a chance of deciding what we should do in housing. And, of course, unfortunately, we have not kept up a civic interest in that movement. A few of us have remained in it, but of the original group very few have remained. We have no substitutes for that. And the technician has no substitute for the chaotic condition in the American community. I think that is the thing we have always got to keep in mind.

I think for this reason it is time that we faced up to a new approach in public housing. I think we have got to face the realities. The Federal Government blames the local housing authorities, and the local housing authorities blame the Federal Government. They say they have been too restrictive. But I suppose I would be inclined to share the blame equally between both at the same time.

I am saying I do not think we have had the type of leadership from the Public Housing Administration that we should have had nationally. I have said that openly, and I am going to keep on saying it. Neither have we had the type of leadership we should have from the local housing authorities.

I know there are variations, and I would not want to put them all in the same category. But I am simply telling about housing authorities that I know. When I get into a city I do not get my information in regard to housing authorities from the authorities. I drift into these projects. I drift around from one place to the other and I talk to the people, you see, in the neighborhoods, and I get my information about chaos and about riots, and all these other things. Anything you might say about them would be true. And that is the question we have got to keep in mind.

We have, of course, on the other side, the whole question of relocation.

If I could find any program of relocation, I would travel a thousand miles to see it-actual relocation. I have seen it on paper. At the last meeting that Mr. Cole's office called, I challenged them to take me around, that I would take time off to go around with their regional