Evening Star Newspaper, May 9, 1937, Page 11

L] » 2 ne A ~or - = THE 'SUNDAY " STAR, - WASHINGTON D. C, MAY -9, 1937—PART ON F.H. A HOUSING PROGRESS SHOWN Models on Exhibition in New York in Drive for Slum Clearance. B5 the Assoclated Press. The Roosevelt New Deal reported progress today in its drive to build the American working man a de- cent home at a price he can afford to pay. It listed its accomplishments—with concrete illustrations—on the floor of the North American Homes Exposi- tion, which opens in Madison Square Garden next Wednesday and closes May 23 ‘The chief exhibits are: 1. A model house for a family of four costing $2.500 to $4.500, in- cluding the price of land. It can be purchased on monthly payments no larger than those such workmen now pay for rent, Government officials said. 2. Low-cost apartment house proj- ects, built for low-income workers who cannot afford to buy homes. They are designed to rent at an average of $6 a room. The model house was the result of agitation by the Federal Housing Administration. In a booklet, pub- lished in May of 1936, on ‘Princi- ples of Planning Small Houses,” the F. H. A offered plans for small, sim- ply designed dwellings which it said could be built at a cost ranging from $1.200 to $3,000. Industry raised & chorus of dis- sent. To test how well these plans on paper would work out in practice, the National Associations of Lum- ber Manufacturers and Dealers built four such homes at Bethesda, Md. The plans ran true to form, and the houses were so popular among Vis- itors that & national campaign was decided on. Model Homes Erected. ‘The National Small Homes Bureau was set up in New York City to co- ordinate all the building industries— Jumber, equipment, house furnishings, etc—for integrated effort. Model homes were erected in different parts of the country to demonstrate their | practical value There are now some 2,000 of these homes finished or under construction in 1,000 different communities. Four thousand more have been promised. On June 1 there will begin a drive to | build 450,000 of them in a year. The market for these small homes 18 immense. Building experts estimate it at 71 per cent of the home-buying market, on the grounds that the per- centage of potential home buyers can- not afford to pay more than $5,000, The F. H. A. co-operates in the | Bmall Homes Bureau's scheme by guaranteeing mortgages on the homes up to 80 per cent and spreading the buyer's payments over 20 years. Under this arrangement, homes costing be- | tween $2.500 and $4,000 can be bought on monthly payments ranging from | $20 to $40. A monthly payment for a | $3.000 house would be $26. The one hurdle remaining under this set-up is the down payment, which 15 20 per cent of the total. For a $3,000 | house, this would be $600. It cannot be obtained by a second mortgage, for secoand mortgages are banned on F. H. A. loans. Instead, the site for | the house is often used as collateral | for the down payment. The attractivenes of these “pack- aged” homes, as they are called, is demonstrated at the housing exposition by a full scale model. It has four rooms and bath—Iliving-dining room, kitchen, two bed rooms—and can be built in either one-story or two-story style. The builders emphasize the de- sign is not intended to be “standard.” Variations for individual taste and community traits are encouraged. Only the broad lines are definitely laid down. Price Still “Too High.” Despite the combined efforts of Gov- ernment and industry to cut costs to a minimum, the price of the “packaged” home is still too high for much of that ill-housed populace which President Roosevelt—with Federal .income sur- veys to support him—estimates at one- third of all the American people. ‘What the Federal Government is doing to meet the problem of this lower group is pictured at the housing show by & slum clearance exhibit. Two ancient walk-up tenements ‘which formerly stood on New York's lower East Side have been trans- planted wholesale to the show flcor. The buildings were torn down as part of the City Housing Authority’s anti- slum campaign. Bricks and other materials were carefully tabbed and numbered for the reconstruction at the exposition. Everything remains as it was on the East Side: Areaways, stores, the cor- ner saloon—even the ash cans. Visitors enter through the original tenement of the “old law” class. Then they cross a flower garden into a sec- tion of new, modern, low-cost, Gov- ernment subsidized apartments of the type being constructed by the Public ‘Works Administration in Harlem and ‘Williamsburg. It was former Gov. Alfred E. Smith who started slum clearance of this sort in New York and in the Nation in 1926. Prices were rising rapidly at that time, and Smith persuaded the Legislature to help “white collar” ‘workers by giving them cheaper homes. Thirty million dollars was spent on 14 developments tu house about 22,000 people. The Rockefeller family and Vincent Astor helped out by selling parcels of their land at a sacrifice. Those projects, however, were op- erated to rent at an average of $12.50 per room, a price the P. W. A. says most slum families cannot afford. So to talk. Mae West Won’t Talk Mae West, siren of the screen, and her attorney, Loyd Wright, at the deposition hearing in Los Angeles in the suit brought by Frank Wallace, ex-actor, to establish his claim that he was married to her in Milwaukee in 1911. greas of the Wagner-Steagall housing bill to create a Federal housing au- thority with power to issue $1,000,000,~ 000 in bonds to aid cities to wipe out slums, The slum exhibit at the housing show is the New York housing author- ity's argument in favor of the Wag- ner-Steagall bill. But all of Madison Square Garden is taken up with other arguments—those of the building in- dustry—in favor of the average man's hn:,illd.ln‘ his own home wherever pos- sible. A hundred booths hold displays of everything that goes into a house, from bathtubs to door knobs, from food choppers for the kitchen sink to oil- burning furnaces that blow hot in ‘Winter and cold in Summer. The steel industry shows houses made entirely of steel. For those who can afford it, there is the “house of tomorrow,” designed by Wallace K. Harrison, one of the achitects who designed the futuristic theme for the New York World Fair of 1939. It has doors that open be- fore you reach them, controlled by “electric eyes.” It has luminous glass ceilings, and all the newest devices for the kitchen and laundry. It has air conditioning. Its floors are con- tinuous with the marble fioor of the garden, in which flowers are planted in movable concrete pots in designs that can be changed from day to day or season to season. It costs some- where between $30,000 and $75,000 and guarantees privacy because it is sur- rounded by a 10-foot wall. 6,900,000 Die in India. India's deaths totaled 6,900,000 last Miss West re e d ] e W hich 41000000 Ferltealtrocs —Copyright, A. P. Wirephoto. up with the aid of Federal subsidies intended to guarantee an average rent of about $6 & room. 2,000 Harlem Families. The low-cost apartments in Harlem will house 2,000 families. Those in ‘Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, will house 6,000. Together they make but a small dent in the 516360 families which live in New York's 17 square miles of slum area. But the P. W. A. housing drive is not confined to them. It covers 49 projects in 34 other cities in the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Eight of these 49 have been finished; the remainder are still under way. Two sets of buildings are going up in Atlanta, Ga.; one in Atlantic City, N. J.; one in Boston, Mass.; one in Buffalo, N. Y.; one in Cambridge, Mass.; one in Camden, N. J.; two in Charleston, S. C.; three in Chicago, one in Cincinnati, three in Cleveland, Ohio; one in Columbia, S. C.; one in Dallas, Tex.; two in Detroit, one in Enid, Okla.; one in Evansville, Ind.; one in Indianapolis, Ind.; one in Jacksonville, Fla.; one in Lacka- wanna, N. Y.; two in Lexington, K two in Louisville, Ky.: two in Mem phis, Tenn.; one in Miami, Fla.; one in Milwaukee, Wis.; one in Minneap- olis, Minn.; two in Montgomery, Ala.; two in Nashville, Tenn.; one in Okla- homa City, Okla.; one in Omaha, Nebr.; one in Philadelphia, two in Puerto Rico, one in Schenectady, N. Y.: one in Stamford, Conn.; one in ‘Toledo, Ohio; three in the Virgin Islands, one in Washington, D. C., and one in Wayne, Pa. The total cost of them will be about $133,000,000. They will house about 21,000 families. In addition to the P. W. A. drive, the Resettlement Administration has model communities under way near the cities of Washington, D. C.; Mil- waukee, Wis, and Cincinnatt, Ohio. They involve a possible expenditure of Regular $1.85 jar VITA-RAY Vitamin Cream *1.48 Vita-Ray has been praised by Beauty Editors . . . approved by GOOD HOUSEKEEPING . . . honored in Hall of Science. It causes skin to look young, fresh again because it carries 1,200 ADMA units of Vitamin D direct to the capillaries—the only source of skin nourishment. Pores are refined. Lines are made fainter; dryness lessened. This all-purpose cream also con- tains ingredients to cleanse thor- oughly and serve as powder base. Thousonds of women find it the only preparation they need for complete skin care. Toiletries Dept., Main Floor. THE HECHT CoO. F ot Seventh . . . Nationel 5100 the present developments are gaing With one of these machines you'll really enjoy your washing and ironing— they're demonstrat- orsat thi: s price bargains in new standard make washers and ironers. $1 a Week Pays 1239 G St. Cor. 13th fevers, 300,000 from dysentry and 80,000 from plague. Snake bite ac- counted for 2,000, and 13,000 commit- ted suicid JOE HIGY ‘INCORPORATED: "OUR PLUMBER’ | $30.000,000 and affect from 3,000 to 19,000 families. Comparisons Abroad. Exponents of a broad housing pro- gram for the United States, however, are not entirely satisfied. They point to the long-established housing sub- | sidy systems of England, France, Nor- way, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Holland, and call this country “back- ward.” They urge enactment by Con- ANOTHER SMART USED CAR BUYER @ “A Dodge dealer’s classified ad led me to the nicest looking used car 1 have ever seen,” says Katherine | H. 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