WGBH Journal; Homeowners Rehab, Loft Dwelling, Fred Graham At Harvard, The Final Conclave (Book)

Good afternoon and welcome to TB external. I'm Bill kept us. On today showing our two pieces which focus on aspects of home on and on about the rehabilitation of old homes in Cambridge. The other about the conversion of buildings into lofts. Then we'll hear excerpts from a speech by CBS News legal correspondent Fred Graham and the close will have an interview with the author of a book on the Catholic Church. People who want to own homes in a large city can be faced with many problems. Homes are very expensive to buy. They are not always beautifully available and when they are available they're often in poor condition. All three of these obstacles are somewhat relieved by homeowners rehab operating in Cambridge Massachusetts. This organization can help people find homes at reasonable prices in return for some hard

work. Thank you Rory has more information but she details in this report. Housing costs have increased dramatically in recent years making it difficult to maintain a home and even more difficult to purchase one. In Cambridge the work equity program is attempting to make homeownership a reality for more Cambridge residents. Through this program people who want to own a house are able to buy one without the initial burden of a down payment. In its place families supply their own labor toward rehabilitating their future home. To be eligible for the program applicants must have lived in Cambridge for at least a year. They also must be tenants not presently owning a home. Homeowners rehab is a nonprofit agency which operates the work equity program. Mel GAD is the director of homeowners rehab. The work equity program really got started saying there are a lot of people out there who have made a commitment to the city have been here but a tenant and they haven't been able to apply to the pro you know to get into any

kind of home ownership situation because they don't have the downpayment. I mean they have to do one big thing about perm is they have to be bankable. OK so they could if they had the down payment right now they could go in on their own and I House. Problem is most of these families are marginal You know they they're feeding they're paying their rent paying their bills and feeding their families but they just can't put away a couple of thousand dollars every year to save them money. And this program really gives them an opportunity to get into an ownership situation. Homeowners we have initially purchases a building with the help of bank loans and federal funds from the community development block grants program since the building is often in a deteriorated condition. Homeowners rehab does major rehabilitation work on the building. When this work is completed the family interested in buying the building does most of the interior work and then they purchase their new home from homeowners we had a great deal of work is often involved in this process. I spoke with Peter Rennes the contractor for homeowners we have at the present construction site.

The families come in here and they do a good deal of work in order to you know work out their downpayment. We sort of encourage these people to come in here like three hours a day in court. For a long time you know at least to have a happy year or so. So it's no giveaway. That people have to be ready to put some sweat as this program is on us cause what equity program it so that people have a sense of pride in you know in you know in buying the houses from us because they have a bit of themselves in here. Leonard and Evelyn called Pell and their children moved into their condominium several years ago through the work equity program. They describe their participation in the program. Homeowners give you up to a year to complete the job but I did this in less than three months because I had and I would come in from work at 3:00 o'clock and work till 1 and 2 in the morning along with some friends would come in and especially on weekends. Most of my conferences and I watched

them. Then with the help and the skill of homeowners. They just explained to you tonight how he's doing everything and then you have to have a strong will to do it out. If you feel like you know that you you're doing something which you have to live with. Not everyone who wants to buy a home has the necessary skills to rehabilitate the interior of a building home when his rehab is committed to training people who may not have the skills would get what he is based on people learn teaching people how to do stuff with our families we tried of course self-help because they save themselves a lot of money which they probably can't afford to pay out anyway and it gets them more actively involved with their own building doing stuff so that in the future they can do stuff themselves. Another benefit from all this is that the people they've learned in this process how to take care of their own better able to deal with emergencies and with general maintenance and so on. So it's they're not just falling into this thing

blindly without thinking. Feel a secure way. Peter wrens and Mel get of homeowners rehab. This joint commitment to rehabilitation by homeowners rehab and the families involved is an encouraging step toward improving the housing situation in Cambridge. However Mel Gad stresses that additional efforts are necessary. In general what most urban areas need besides groups that go into over a vacant building like a concert. I think most of us agree that you need a regular ongoing maintenance program for it to housing in general not just for working class families but for people in general because only one house means constant ongoing maintenance. And that's basically the problem with most of the urban areas is that maintenance hasn't been done. And I think all the rehab programs in the city really are looking at doing that kind of stuff along with taking no random vacant boarded up buildings and putting them back together.

The city of Cambridge is also working with homeowners rehab in an attempt to improve the housing situation in Cambridge. The city plans to install new sidewalks and trees at homeowners we have present construction site through their joint commitment. The neighborhoods of Cambridge may experience a renaissance of good housing and stable neighborhoods for GBH Journal. This is Becky roar. If you're thinking about a dwelling less conventional than a simple family abode. You might be interested in the creation of lofts. Many people artists in particular are beginning to buy and convert unused factories into loft dwellings. Jim Stratton as a journalist and filmmaker living in New York. Just written a book

surveying loft dwelling in big cities across the country. He spoke recently with. A representative David Friedberg. It's rather arduous Actually I've gone through the process a couple times and I'm not eager to do it again. The first thing you would probably need is a bulldozer to get everything out that was there before my first loft was filled with old rag bales and I had wood roll them from one side of the loft to the other. While I was building walls until I finally got into a dumpster in a way clearing the brush away. If you want to use the pioneering simile as the first problem getting all the residue from the previous industrial tenant out then if you're lucky enough you might have some plumbing pipes coming up or an electrical line or two. And if you're not lucky you have to install those too. If you're lucky all you have to do is build some walls run some electrical lines around and you're

in business. If you're unlucky you may have to jack up the floor repair the ceiling for any number of things can can step into your way. But it's eventually a lot more space than an average artist might be able to you know find even a house in the country you've written in the book that there's a considerable amount of illegal renovation of this sort. What are the zoning obstacles. Well the obstacle is always kind of a bureaucratic dysfunction if you like I think the bureaucracy basically is there to drive up costs and make things confusing. The obstacles are that all codes are written for new construction because that's where their heads are and to try to write a code for a kind of renovation that does not take into account the fact that you've got all plumbing lines and old electrical lines and you've got

things that just don't look right to the to modern architecture. Trying to justify the situation the planners wind up writing a very long confusing list of requirements and many of them very expensive and most of these buildings original buildings are better built than the new buildings that are coming up. And there are nicer spaces they're built lower to the ground and they they make good residential buildings in most cases. But the city planner has to catch up on that. So it's happening in some cities in Philadelphia in Boston and New York in Dallas to some extent. You have some negotiations going on between the illegal pioneer and the city planners to make this kind of thing legal. Could you describe your own loft. Well it's sort of a

barn. It's on the third floor of a building it's about. It's about 3000 square feet I would think. Ten foot ceilings the same old floor that I had before except that some of the patina of the 19th century has been scraped off with a sander and divided it up into different spaces. Filmmaker I have room for doing that and I have a couple of children. There's a room for that and you know there's also room for them to ride their bicycles around. But it's a very rough kind of space as I point out in my book. Any loft or who gets into it finally discovers that about two thirds of the way through they've run totally out of money and over their credit line and there's still a third left to go and that's where I am. I don't have enough money to finish it right now. Well good luck.

Thank you very much talking with Jim Stratton himself a loft dweller and author of pioneering in the urban wilderness. This is David Freud burg in Boston. Fred Graham is legal affairs correspondent for CBS News. Washington. This is normal sphere of operations. But he was in Boston last week to give a speech at the Harvard Law School Forum. Alex Eldridge was there. And I can say without without any fear of contradiction that I am the only officer of the court in the United States who can do what I'm about to describe to you. You've seen it many times on television but you didn't know you were seeing it. What you do is you you write your script and let's say it's going to be a

minute and you say it exactly the way you want to say it in your script. And you take out your stopwatch and you time it for exactly a minute to get to the point that you can say it and then it and then you read it into your little Sony Rick record recorder as you want to say it. And then you put the earplugs in your ear and you put it around your ear like this and you stick it down your coat and then you write it down this arm and you cup that arm kind of behind your hip like that you know. And that's that's why some of you think Pierpoint only has one on stands like this. And then when they. When the camera man gives you the signal. You push the button and your script goes in your ear here and you have practiced to the point that you can say it just about two words after it goes to you goes to

you can you say it that you don't just open your mouth and let the voice you're saying. Mr. Graham titled his speech the legal beat in Washington in the talk he touched on several problems associated with press coverage of legal affairs. He started the speech by finding fault with the professional code of ethics which lawyers must follow the legal professions. The rules of canons of ethics code of professional responsibility is so poorly drawn and so unnecessarily complicated and I believe unconstitutionally restrictive that many lawyers simply either will say nothing at all to reporters or freeze for fear of really not knowing their rights not knowing their clients rights and refuse to say anything meaningful. When when they're approached about information and it comes really at a time that it could not

be more ironic in the situation because two things have happened of course. There may have been a time when it was would not have been so ironic but at a time when we hear over and over. That the world is being taken over by lawyers and judges that more and more of our lives are being controlled by what happens in court rooms and into those circumstances for the lawyers to be following archaic rules that really are premised upon the belief that that the law is the little little world of lawyers and judges that happens in the courtroom and that really you almost don't deign to discuss it to the world outside and perhaps it's not quite proper to discuss this to the unwashed outside the courtroom. On the positive side he mentioned that the American Bar Association is working to revise legal canons and so relieve the problems that they cause. Mr Graham also

folded the news media for not devoting enough coverage to Supreme Court affairs. However he soon qualified his criticism saying that the court was not dealing with many controversial issues at the present time. In the course of his discussion he also offered some explanations as to why this was so this year with the exception of the Baki case. If you look through the material that the Supreme Court is working with it really does not have the kind of impact on. The public that makes for public interest. That is news. Now a certain amount of that may be due to the fact that the the groups that have been bringing cases to the court the ACLU and other libertarian groups are now openly avoiding the court. I think it's much much more than that Ira I think there was a time 15 years ago when many of the of the major problems in this country were cast in a legal or constitutional

mold. And they were susceptible to being dealt with by judges reapportionment civil rights criminal due process first amendment right down the line. It's not true now. Energy the economy. Balance of Payments those things are not susceptible to being dealt with by judges and we're seeing the result of that. Mr. Graham devoted most of his speech to the issue of whether to allow television cameras into the courtroom. This issue is figured in the news recently due to a Florida court decision which allows camera coverage of court cases. In his speech Mr. Graham commented on the legal history of courtroom TV and suggested where the issue was headed. You know that the estis case the delay Salles this case. A five to four decision hail that in in estis is case it was a violation of due process to televise his trial over his

objection. Now in the case though for those of you who've seen it or seen it lately you'll recall that the swing vote Justice Harlan. Justice Harlan made quite a point that this rested on two bases. One. Was the paraphernalia which at that time was quite disruptive Cable's bright lights cameras with a big red light whirring noise when the cameras started. It was quite a distraction. It did contribute to a circus like atmosphere. What point number one point number two the psychological effects of witnesses and so forth in the courtroom. And Justice Harlan pointed out that with time the technology and the psychological impact could change people could become more accustomed to television. Well surely the technology has clearly changed. Cameras are smaller they don't use film now they use. They use available light it could happen right now in this room. There's no red light or

doesn't have to be there's no noise that's taken care of the psychological part is harder to say but we are in a television age where we're told people do get it. It's hard to imagine anything being more distracting than some of the exotic gear that the court reporters use mumbling into. Mumbling into a mouthpiece of some sort or some kind of exotic keyboard. But people get used to that and and and we're told they do to the cameras what happened in Florida is really fascinating to me unanimously that court seven judges voted and imposed a room when it's for a year a test period of a year went into effect on the 5th of July of this year of last year. It opens every court proceeding in the state of Florida. Every court at every level. For a year when ever the public is permitted to walk in the door television and radio can be they are

now obviously potentially every criminal case in the state of Florida for that year is a is a potential. But he Salles his case. The Supreme Court of Florida is playing chicken with the United States Supreme Court on the Billie Sol Estes case and I think the Supreme Court's going to blink. From everything we hear it's not a distraction. The judges the lawyers even the defense lawyers for the most for the most part in the media say that that is simply is not a. Due process problem. Later on Graham admitted that TV might constitute an invasion of privacy for witnesses. How about How about the case of the of the of sex defendants in sex crimes rape cases domestic relations cases. How about nervous jurors. As you can see as you go from the extreme case and you get toward the other end of

the scale objections will be raised on the grounds of privacy and if you grant them you can swallow the roof and cameras again will be banished for the most part. However he defended the use of Court TV saying that it would help people by making the law understandable. I believe that in general the public will understand more and will have more confidence in the system if they can see it. And there may be instances where there that is outweighed by other factors. But in general I think that's true. If there is one theme running from Fred Graham's talk it was that the law needs to be demystified and brought within the understanding of the populace. Mr. Graham will have to wait for a Supreme Court decision before he can carry out that demystification via TV and newsmen in Massachusetts will also have to wait. There have been no court decisions on the issue recently in the state and there are no bills currently pending on it in the legislature for GBH Journal. This is Alex Eldridge. The final conclave by Molokai Martin is a book which looks at the current

status of the Roman Catholic Church. Martin himself a Catholic makes some interesting claims about the church politics in our time. And in Boston last week he spoke with reporter Robert Farr Aagot. Dr. Malakai Martin author of the final conclave is a devout Roman Catholic whose knowledge and involvement with the church has been lifelong. Dr. Martin's familiarity with the Vatican has led him to conclude that the church must renounce its politics in order to regain its spirituality. In his book Dr. Martin also talks about a papal communist link which he sees developing. He described the feelings of a powerful group of cardinals who favor this religious political tie. They. Are convinced that the four predominantly Catholic countries of Western Europe Italy Spain Portugal and France are going to have communist governments legal legally voted in at the polls sometime soon. And that because of the irreparable economic condition

of Europe which is heading for double digit inflation and higher interest rates and high unemployment and then they also don't see House Latin America all the way from Mexico dubbed to Tierra del Fuego. He's going to escape the same thing because the simply there is too much want too much hunger there is no improvement. The population is burgeoning. It will it's going to climb to 300 million. Who's going to feed those people. So they say this is going to go coming if it goes Communist and if we're not. If we hadn't been accommodated position with them we're going to be as we were in Poland in 1945 down in the gutter. Do you think that the Vatican is making its alliance with the Communists is not a healthy thing. And you know it is an unrealistic thing. No I see it as a very realistic thing from the point of view of survival. But I think the cost is too high. And I also am an American besides being a Roman Catholic and I

were loyal to this country. So I think it's bad for America. And I'm sure incidentally sort of the State Department and prison guards or anybody else was looking at the situation. This will create an irresistible force in Latin America and they have the USSR in Eastern Europe now that I would have the USSA Alem the United Socialist States of Latin America on their backside. You think the church is a power wielding institution Shor in the All Stars. Do you know that in 1976 alone 43 part of the nominations totaling about about 200 million people. They collected a billion dollars in collections. Where is that money going to. They haven't given it away. They've invested it. Now the bad the Vatican has much more less invested in these United States. But obviously if you do that you enter corporate politics and national politics. You play politics and I don't know of any bishop Catholic bishop in these United States except perhaps one or two who don't play

politics play politics in the sense that they enter the political game. And one of the examples of that was where the way they behaved over abortion during the election year Jeff Carter and. Well that's that's a very good issue to get into it is in this area it's very important. It certainly wasn't me. If you recollect what happened in that election year cotton and Ford were running against each other and the bishops wanted to find out for a card a student of Fort Stewart now believe you me Robert any cotton in these United States can lift the phone in the middle of the night and call a presidential candidate and he would be delighted to hear from his eminence. So too if they want to find out where these two people stood and to communicate their point of view they could phone them or send a representative what to do oh no they went to the process got to them when they came out they made a statement of the press that is politicking. That is politicking and that is not worthy of a churchman who should not take sides in political issues. I feel normal American lay man wants

to campaign. Prob Washington that is right. If you want to campaign against it that's his right. But the Church as such a church might stay out of the political side of it because that's has nothing to do with religion. If I were an avid churchgoer in these areas are dreamily Catholic oriented as you know wrote I know that such as those and surrounding areas I would look at this and I would say that the church is really divorcing itself from spiritual matter that's the difficulty that which is getting too caught up that's why but I I want to sound a warning in that rub it look so easy you're going to pull a very fast one on us all and silence is essential and secrecy. If somebody blows it on your blows the gaff of the zone reveals that it stops you at least modifies your position. I want to make a public discussion on this issue. And in recent time Vatican cameras have pulled more than one fait accompli on their unsuspecting populations and their bishops. Now here the issues are too grave. They're lethal

in my view. They're lethal for America. I love America and we have enough difficulties already and people should be alerted to the fact that this could be pulled off without their knowing it and they could be confronted with a fait accompli. And I think that should be said. I think the church goer would favor and I'm sort of hesitant to call it a reformation but certainly and yet it isn't. Oh yeah the church Oh yes. Do you think they'll see it coming. Yes there is a point at which everything must break. There's a saturation point to it all collapses and then the good men stand up and say OK let's stop building those rafters again let's put this house in order and put the plaster on the walls and build a fire and warm the inhabitants and make it a home. That's GBH turn over the last gasp of February 1978. Our

producer Marcia hurts our engineer Margo Garrison and I don't cavernous have a terrific view there. And.