Message to the Congress Transmitting 18th Annual Report of the Housing and Home Finance Agency.

[Released October 23, 1965. Dated October 22, 1965] To the Congress of the United States:

The Housing Act of 1954 directs that I transmit to Congress the Annual Report of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, covering activities for calendar year 1964.

This report confirms the wisdom of fifteen Congresses and five administrations going back to 1934. The great Franklin D. Roosevelt first pleaded with the Congress to approve housing measures for the good of all Americans.

Consider what has been done for America by the United States Government's housing programs:

$100 billion of FHA mortgage insurance loans has been written, covering more than 7 million homes and more than one million rental units.

700,000 public housing units have been constructed since the start of that program in 1937. Two million people are living in those units in more than 2,000 communities.

More than 600,000 college students are living in dormitories made possible by government loans.

$4.3 billion has been made available for urban renewal.

4,500 communities--mostly small towns-have received urban planning assistance.

$300 million of government credit has gone into small town water and sewer facilities.

These programs were not easily begun. Cries of "socialism" and "waste" surrounded them at their birth. False propaganda and misrepresentation were used to discredit those who were to administer them. Cynicism and self-interest preyed on fear of the new and the imaginative.

But without these programs we would never have been able to push back the frontiers of blight, disease and ugliness that thirty years ago afflicted one-third of a nation. Without them the task of building a clean and safe America would have been impossible.

Today our people accept these programs. Private enterprise and public well-being depend on them. We know now that these programs--and new approaches demanded by logic and vision--are needed to meet the challenges that confront us as hour by hour we become a more urban nation.

In 1965 I requested authority for a new means of housing low-income families. We proposed to encourage private organizations to build thousands of new apartments and houses for poor people who could not afford safe or decent housing. We proposed to help these private builders provide housing for the elderly, the poor, and the handicapped, so that they might live with safety and dignity.

Congress accepted this proposal.

Yet when the time came to provide the funds for this program, the old voices of doubt and misunderstanding were raised once more. Allegations were made that had no basis in fact. Insinuations were raised that obscured the basic purposes of the act.

For the time being, those voices have prevailed. No program funds were granted.

The national interest demands that the matter not stop there. Thousands of American families need this housing now--today. Thousands of poor children who should grow up in a world of safety and decency and promise are being treated with indifference by an affluent nation.

Next January I shall once more ask for the initial $30 million necessary to make bricks and mortar out of a promise. I am confident that the Congress will cut through the propaganda of fear and mistrust to provide shelter for the families who need it now-today. We who have raised up hopes have a duty to bring them to tangible reality.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

October 22, 1965