HOUSING: New Foundation Needed

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In an election-year splash of generosity, the Senate last week passed a $2.5 billion omnibus housing bill, about $1 billion bigger than the President requested. Piled atop the antirecession housing program enacted earlier this year, the new measure (which the House will probably trim a bit) brought the Senate's total 1958 housing appropriation to a dizzying $4.3 billion.

Federal housing programs have grown like suburbia in the quarter-century since Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed that "one-third of a nation [is] ill-housed." A structure so costly—taking in mortgage insurance, home-improvement loans, slum clearance, public housing, special programs for colleges, military posts, old people, veterans, farmers—requires clear definitions of its purpose and scope, but in mid-1958 the definitions are even hazier than they were in New Deal days. Federal housing programs seem to be founded on a feeling that better housing is A Good Thing—a worthy sentiment, but too vague, in itself, to serve as a national policy. Even a definition of "better" is lacking, so that federal funds often contribute to shoddy dwellings and future slums.

Badly needed is a joint effort by the Administration and Congress to decide just what national purposes federal housing programs are supposed to serve, and just how the programs should fit the purposes. But beyond this governmental responsibility lies a responsibility of the housing industry. The industry is composed of some of the U.S.'s ruggedest free enterprisers, who work toward a single purpose only when they want Government help. Next needed step: to promote improved housing in the U.S. in other ways besides handing out loans and grants, e.g., through research on housing materials, designs, construction methods, and potential markets.