B@NNINGTON LUMBER

Home Bldg., o Splir Personolity?

How do pundits account for the aPparently split personality of the housing in' dustry this year?

Housing starts, on the one hand, are being pressed down by a 1969 version of tight money. Yet, more and more homebuilders are being snapped up by major corporations via merger.

The explanation, says Sanford R. Goodkin in the newest issue of Th'e Goodkin Reprt, is that housing's bleak current per' formance is a mere apparency, It is the underlying indicators of the market that the big companies are betting on.

His report ticks ofi the critical difierences between the housing industry's disastrous performance in 1966 and its performance in 1969:

(l) Unlike 1966, there is no overbuilding. The housing market is as taut as a drumhead, with vacancy rat€s in some areas as low or lower than in World I(Iar II. Overall, they're 2/o lower tha,n in 1966, while household formations are rising I0/o annually.

(2) Builders and other housing producers are better capitalized now than ever before in their history.

(3) While the price of credit is high, credit-unlike in 1966-continues to be available. The monetary supply has continued to grow in 1969.

The dream that failed

A small, rough child's shack is all that remains ofa dream that Los Angeles Hoo-Hoo Club Two almost made come true.

Before last Christmas, Loop Lumber's Bill Chatham contacted Dee Essley of D. C. Essley & Son and Harvey Koll, H. W. Koll Lumber, who in turn contaoted Club Two to see about providing lumber for a little boy, fatally ill with leukemia, who wanted to build a new backyard playhouse for himself and his sisters. He had even made a detailed list and a paper scale model.

Club Two members Cal'Forest Lumber, Inc. donated the lumber and plywood and Tarter, Webster & Johnson donated the exterior siding. Other members gave of their time and effort so the boy could realize his dream before it was too late.

But it wasn't to be so. The child died before he could start building.

Today, the original shack remains, the dream is unrealized. But it is, in its way, a small, plain memorial to a brave little boy who almost lived to see his dream come true, thanks to a group of big-heart. ed, big city lumbermen.