Senator CLARK. A charitable contribution?

Miss CHILDERS. Yes, sir, because they feel that the problem is that great.

In closing, I should like to leave one thing with this committee. Rather, I would like to share it with the committee. This gift is in the form of a ghost which has haunted me continuously since a few months back when a letter came to my desk from an old lady in Los Angeles who gave her age as 76 and who was pleading for help. She told of being ill with old age and of living in one small room with a broken window and very little or no heat. In order to keep warm, she slept in her clothes. She was paying $30 a month for the bare room. Naturally, being interested in her problems, I wrote a letter back to her and it was returned to me marked "Deceased." I then called her landlady to inquire after her affairs and asked what had been the cause of her death. The coroner's report said that she had died of exposure. Gentlemen, in Los Angeles that is rather odd. I know the chamber of commerce will not like me, but this happens.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak, and I sincerely hope that I have been able to add some small bit in your quest for information regarding our Nation's housing problems. Thank you.

Senator CLARK. Thank you, Miss Childers, for some very helpful and interesting testimony. I want to again thank you for being so patient and giving up your entire day to us.

The committee will recess until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. (Whereupon, at 4: 22 p. m., the hearings were recessed until 10 a. m. Tuesday, April 2, 1957.)

HOUSING AMENDMENTS OF 1957

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1957

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, in room 301, Senate Office Building, at 10 a. m., Senator Paul Douglas presiding.

Present: Senators Sparkman, Douglas, Clark, and Capehart. Senator DOUGLAS. The subcommittee will come to order. The chairman of the committee has conferred upon me the honor of presiding temporarily in order to introduce the distinguished witness who is going to testify this morning. It is a source of personal pleasure and civic pride to introduce the mayor of Chicago, the Honorable Richard J. Daley. I may say for the benefit of the record and for those in the room that the mayor has made a most distinguished record as a city official, county official, a State senator, and now as mayor of the greatest city in the United States. Senator Clark, take notice.

Mayor Daley, we would be delighted to have you come forward, and if you wish to have any of your assistants with you, they should, of course, come forward, too. When the Secretaries testify here, they generally have a battery of assistants, ranging from 7 to 20. So you should feel no reluctance.

It is a great pleasure to have you here.

I may say for the record that among the others who are here is my friend and former colleague of the Chicago City Council, the Honorable William Murphy. I may say that after you have served in the Chicago City Council, the United States Senate is an anticlimax. STATEMENT OF RICHARD J. DALEY, MAYOR, CHICAGO, ILL., ACCOMPANIED BY ALDERMAN WILLIAM MURPHY, GEN. RICHARD SMYKAL, IRA BACH, PHIL DOYLE, AND JAMES C. DOWNS, JR.

Mayor DALEY. Thank you very much, Senator Douglas, Senator Sparkman, and Senator Clark. I appreciate very much the opportunity of apearing before this subcommittee on a subject that is very close to the hearts of the people of Chicago.

Sometimes the term "urban renewal" is robbed of its real significance, because we talk about planning and projects and building and housing, and we overlook, unfortunately, one of the real purposes behind the program, and that is the people. I am here to talk for the people of Chicago, who are vitally interested in rebuilding our city.

I understand, of course, and I appreciate the problem that confronts this committee and the members of the Senate due to economy

in the National Government. We recognize also the fact that all of you men are trained to do the best job you can, using your best judgment on the facts and on the problems that confront you.

Chicago has been a pioneer in the urban renewal program. Going back to 1945, the people of Chicago voted bond issues, payable from real-estate taxes, in order to carry out programs of rebuilding our city. We in Chicago recognize the problem of rebuilding the older neighborhoods. The fact that we have joined with the Federal Government, if you will, in a cooperative program over the last period of years is indicative of the recognition of the problem that confronts us. We need the help of all governmental units, Federal, State and local, to do the job of rebuilding. We can no longer delay this problem, because it is connected very directly with expenditures in other avenues of Federal, State, and local government.

The question of better neighborhoods and better communities is tied up very closely with the question of crime, with the question of health, with the question of our youth and juvenile delinquency. So we feel that the diminution or cutting back of a program so closely connected with the people of the large cities would be in our opinion a step backward.

We recognize that the problem of rebuilding in a large city takes long years of planning. Overnight you do not take a neighborhood or a community and demolish it or remove it, because you have first to get the interest of the people. We in Chicago at the present time have 22 communities and neighborhoods in which the people have organized themselves to conserve and rebuild their neighborhoods. We have talked to them, and other public officials. They have recognized through the various means of communication from the Federal Government the suggestion of how you proceed with urban renewal, what you do to conserve your neighborhood, what you do to rebuild your neighborhood. All of which is directly connected with our program in Chicago.

We have Chicago University, which is one of the pioneers in the idea of conservation in neighborhoods. The interest of the people has been most inspiring and encouraging. Urban renewal is one program that I have never had any opponents to. There has never been anyone opposed to urban renewal, whether it be the laborer or the banker, whether it be the housewife or whether it be the professional man. All the people seem to feel that a healthy city is a necessary part of our American way of life, that the slums have been a challenge to our Republic and democracy for too long, and that we, in a very prosperous system of economy, surely can no longer continue to disregard our obligations on the removal of the slums and the blight.

The people that are in the particular community or neighborhood. the children that are there, are the leaders of tomorrow, and I feel that all of us recognize our responsibility to them.

We in Chicago also recognize our local responsibility. We know that many people come to Washington with their local problems and try to just turn them over to you. We in Chicago have recognized that. On June 3 of this year we are presenting to the people a bond issue for $213 million, which means more schools, more playgrounds, more parks, more lighting, and all the facilities that go to make up urban renewal, to rebuild our neighborhoods, to rebuild the various

sections of old Chicago, in order that we might have what the suburbs have, a healthy neighborhood with grass and with parks, with modern schools, and with the facilities that we think are so necessary for the young people of tomorrow.

I know that you have heard time and time again the repetition of statistics. I would not care to burden you any further with that.

I want to say that I think the most essential part of an urban renewal program is continuity, to have the people in the cities know that the Federal Government is interested in our city problem, to have the people in the neighborhoods that are organizing and, if you will, using their own resources and money, hiring their own staffs, doing the thing that is necessary to build confidence and pride in their neighborhood, know about the interest of the Government.

Those are the things that we think would be seriously hampered and seriously hurt if there was any cutback of this program of urban renewal and conservation.

Again, I am appreciative of this opportunity of appearing before this distinguished group and to talk for the people of Chicago, who would ask you, with all the sincerity they could, to please continue this program for the youngsters of Chicago, in order that we might give them decent housing, decent neighborhoods, better schools, better parks, and fulfill the hopes and the objectives and the vision of the men and women who are interested in making this a better America.

We have our staff, as you mentioned, Senator. We have Jim Downs, who is the consultant to the mayor and an expert on housing. We have Ira Bach, who is our commissioner of planning; Phil Doyle, head of the land clearance; General Smykal, our commissioner of conservation; and we have Alderman Bill Murphy, who is chairman of the city planning.

Again, thank you for the opportunity of letting us present Chicago's interest in this very vital problem.

Senator DOUGLAS. We thank you, Mayor Daley, for your testimony, and your formal statement will be made a part of the record following your informal remarks.

I think the committee would be much interested if you would describe briefly and informally the steps that have been taken to rebuild the South Side and the Near West Side, and then pass on to the plans for the Near North Side, the so-called Fort Dearborn project, or if you prefer to have someone else discuss these plans, that would be fine.

Mayor DALEY. I can say this, Senator. As you know, the first project was Lake Meadows, extending from 35th to 31st and from South Park to the Illinois Central tracks.

Senator DOUGLAS. One of the worst slums in the United States probably.

Mayor DALEY. That is right. The crime situation and all the factors of health and juvenile delinquency and youth problems that we mentioned a while ago are at their peak in that particular section of Chicago. Then this project came along, and now we see multiple buildings rising on the same property, we see fine grass growing, we contemplate building a new park, we have one of the finest high schools in the Nation, Dunbar High School, that recently opened, a vocational high school. It is being utilized, one of the schools, with

day and night classes, in an attempt to bring together adults and give them the necessary education and training.

We have had the Illinois School of Technology program immediately to the west, which goes from 35th to 30th, and from the Rock Island tracks over to Michigan. There private individuals have come out with vision and determination, and some 8 or 10 years ago, with the help of the city, some of the worst slums in Chicago were removed. Now we find university buildings and various housing projects arising on that land, and the grass and the trees and the flowers are coming back to the city-which proves to us that we can, with the necessary determination, bring back the things to a city to make the neighborhoods and communities just as attractive as the

suburbs.

I have overlooked one point, Senator, and that is the fact of the anticipated tremendous expansion in the Chicago land area that is projected in the next 10 years. All of us feel that with the opening of the St. Lawrence seaway and the geographical position of Chicago that we will have a tremendous expansion. Our industrial might and manufacturing has expanded tremendously. We hope that keeping abreast of that will be the expansion of housing and accommodations for our people.

Senator DOUGLAS. Do you wish to add anything, Mr. Downs?

Mr. Downs. With respect to the development of the South Side to which you referred, Senator, we started there with the Lake Meadows project, which was a 100-acre clearance project, and which is now completely cleared. There are several hundred public housing projects which were all slum-clearance projects that are also located there.

The great institution of the Michael Reese Hospital, which is one of the greatest charity hospitals in the world, faced up to a decision as to whether or not to abandon this area, as did Illinois Tech. The activities that the city stimulated there caused them to say they were going to stay and face it out, and they have done themselves a tremendous redevelopment project.

In the urban renewal portion of the program, the University of Chicago has led in its own community. On the West Side we have a nucleus of our medical center, and again large numbers of slum clearance units of public housing that are reanimating that whole area. And there, also, we have one of our industrial redevelopment projects. I think perhaps one thing that we might emphasize is the fact that when the urban renewal program came into being, we went all out to encourage our people to believe in it. I think we have unprecedented local organization. There are 18 community groups that have gone out and hired staffs, engaged offices, hired planning personnel, and are putting up of their resources to aid this thing. To go back to them with a reduction of the program at this point in its momentum would be to dispirit them greatly.

I think this is the thing that is of great concern to the mayor. Here we have given these people this promise. And now if we withdraw it from them, it just is no good for the country in its new urban manifestation.

Senator DOUGLAS. In the Lake Meadows project, is it no true that one of the big New York life insurance companies has made a very large investment in a series of beautiful apartment buildings for middle-income groups?