Home Experiment

From a drafty shack with primitive plumbing in a shabby section of Cedartown, Ga., Lee Cantrell, 35, last week joyfully moved his wife and two children into a brand-new modern house. Yet Cantrell, a $2,350-a-year clerk who had been living in the only place he could afford, will pay only $23 a month plus utilities, less rent than he paid for his shack. Reason: the new house is one of 13 newly scattered through Cedartown (pop. 10,000) under the first such Government experiment in the U.S. The results may bring a great change in planning for the 80,000 public housing units still to be built in the U.S.

Public housing has always meant huge projects that pack in the most people possible per foot. But many experts now feel that such projects do nothing to stop spot decay in good neighborhoods. They suggest that a better way would be to scatter small units in strategic sites. Because Southern federal housing officials have been notably critical of the "blockbusting" theories of the housing authority, it finally set up the first experiment in Cedartown, 70 miles northwest of Atlanta.

So far, only the land cost ($13,770) of the seven scattered Cedartown lots for the one-and two-family houses has been above that of the older housing projects in the area. The building costs of the single houses are cheaper because of prefabricated construction and the fact that no new water, electrical or sewage facilities had to be built. At a cost of $191,972, a total of 20 families are being housed in completely equipped structures with up to four bedrooms and spacious yards. Furthermore, the authority expects that separate houses will be much easier to sell to private buyers, as it hopes to do eventually. Philadelphia is mulling over the single-house idea to rehabilitate some sagging row-house areas, and the New York City Housing Authority plans nine one-block projects this year.

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