Surplus & Shortage

All over the U.S. the housing situation was so tight that people were almost ready to move into abandoned chicken coops (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Last week the Federal Public Housing Authority offered them something a little better than that. FPHA is ready to sell the Government's 320,000 temporary, jerry-built housing units around shut-down war plants. They were not houses that would last a lifetime, said FPHA, but they would be good enough until the shortage eases.

First to go on the block will be the 300-unit clapboard project at Wichita, Kans.. As fast as other units become surplus, they too will be put up for sale, along with 35,000 trailers. When these units were built, Congress provided that they be torn down within two years after the war emergency was over, lest they become slums.

Now FPHA believes that it can conform to the law, and maybe help ease the housing shortage, by selling the units to private builders who agree to: 1) demolish the units and move them from present sites; 2) use some of the salvaged material for entirely new houses. FPHA will show the method of recovery at a 20-acre "showcase" exhibit to be erected at Silver Springs, Md., in mid-December.

Best news for builders was that FPHA plans to sell its units dirt cheap. For the $760,000,000 it sank in temporary housing, it expects to get only about $50,000,000, roughly the cost of tearing them down.

Along with the temporary units, FPHA soon expects to start selling its permanent houses, built at a cost of $790,000,000. Outside of the obvious advantage to private builders, of getting the Government out of the housing business, this will have little effect on the housing shortage.

The units handy to big cities are already occupied, and FPHA will go slow in selling them. It has no intention of disrupting local housing markets or individual families.

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