It will take all the public housing provided for under the original bill to even make a fair start on meeting the immediate needs of those in the lowest income groups. The urban development provisions are vital if our blighted areas are ever to be made available for private and public development and result in housing veterans and others of average income can afford. And with the rise in building costs, the area between the proposed public housing ceilings and the lowest-cost private housing which is being built today has widened to such an extent that it is imperative that we take more drastic steps than were contemplated when the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill was written.
There are two courses open to us. One is the use of Federal funds to make loans to public bodies for erection of rental housing at prices veterans can pay – with the provision for the sale of that housing to private interests when the emergency is over and prices have declined. The other is to provide such firm guarantees to private investment that private capital will be induced to finance rental housing, amortized over a long period of years, of a type to meet veterans’ needs.
I don’t know whether such a formula for private capital can be worked out. But I do know that Congress faces the challenge of finding some means of providing housing at rents of $35 to $50 a month.
The facts are indisputable. The building industry today does not pretend it can produce housing at that cost. There is no hope of producing such housing in the future along the lines the industry has proceeded in the past. Yet the building industry and its allies fight every proposal for a broad program of Government financial aids, research, and stimulation of new types of materials and housing. As they fight Government action, they offer not one single suggestion as to how to produce housing at rentals of $35 to $50 or less or homes to sell for $6,000 or less.
Veterans need homes and they need them quickly. They know that others than veterans are in the same plight. I don’t believe that they will sit quietly by and 'take it' if Congress ignores the plain facts of a critical situation and yields to the do-nothing policy of pressure groups who admit their inability to cope with that situation with their present tools.
Source: David F. Powers Personal Papers, Box 28, "Veterans' Housing, Press Release, 10 March 1947." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.