Atlanta Daily World

16 Colleges Granted 801 Additional Housing Units

To help take care of the thousands of ex-G.I.'s crowding their doors, 16 Negro colleges in the southeast have been given 801 additional housing units from the Government's stock pile of prefabricated cottages, dormitories and barracks put up during the war around defense centers and on military posts.

Tuskegee will receive 203 units. C. N. I. Agricultural and Mechanical College at Orangeburg gets 115; 99 go to Greensboro A and T and 90 to Florida A. and M at Tallahassee.

Atlanta colleges get the following allotments: Atlanta University 26; Morehouse College 43, Morris Brown College, 10. These are in addition to the prefabs already standing on the campuses or in process of being re-erected.

ALLOCATION OUR NEED

"Allocation of units," John P. Broome, FPHA's Director for the southeastern Region explained, "depends directly upon local need --that is, on the number of veterans the college has enrolled and the amount of housing it has to care for them. However, the cooperation of the sponsoring body in providing a suitable building site and the necessary utilities is a more important factor. This is an emergency measure and we must work fast."

Local sponsoring bodies, Broome pointed out, must agree to carry out the removal provisions of the Lanham Act, under which most housing was built. This requires that these temporary units cannot be used as living quarters for more than two years after the emergency.

"The purpose of this is to prevent these houses from deteriorating into slums," Broome continued. For the time being they will serve to give a great many veterans a decent place to live during this emergency period, while all of us tackle the really fundamental problem of providing good, permanent housing for everybody."

Where the houses will go, who will live in them, how much rent they will pay and similar matters are being determined by the colleges themselves, subject only to minimum standards set up by FPHA.