Arousing Housing

"A nation that is partly ill-housed is not as strong as a nation with adequate homes for every family. A nation with ugly, crime-infested cities and haphazard suburbs does not present the same image to the world as a nation characterized by bright and orderly urban development." So saying, President Kennedy sent Congress a five-year plan to set the nation's housing in order--at a minimum cost guessed at $3 billion. Highlights:

P:A proposal to create a new Cabinet office, the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs. Federal Housing Administrator Robert C. Weaver is in line to head the new department, as the first Negro Cabinet member in history.

P: Extension to the general public of Government -guaranteed, no -down -pay ment. 40-year mortgages for moderate-cost housing, now available only to families displaced by Government action.

The message stipulated that the program would first be tested for twelve to 18 months to measure its effects--and well it should be. since it could conceivably upend the real estate market and unfairly depress the value of sound, old houses.

P: A request for authority to build 100,000 new low-rent public housing units in the next three years. Half of the new units would be reserved for the elderly.

P: A four-year, $2.5 billion urban-renewal plan for industrial development, recreational facilities and slum clearance.

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