Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #2 (Reel 2)

And by whom should this housing be constructed. That's a further important question. Again I opt for variety and openness. Traditionally low rent housing has been constructed almost exclusively by local housing authorities. But recently out of the so-called turnkey program private developers are constructing this house and then selling the completed development to the Housing Authority. But the emphasis on the local housing authority as the sole agent for this kind of housing is entirely too narrow. For one reason. According to a study I've just published. Local housing authorities and progressive advocates of the housing needs of the poorer. Members of the local bodies. Much the same manner as draft boards tend to represent upper income groups and highly conservative occupations such as real estate banking business and insurance. Very few poor people very few black people. Puerto Ricans are Mexican-Americans and almost no president or former residents of public housing are ever appointed to these boards and whose hands rest all the key decisions as to how much low rent housing to have and what type and where should be located. Members of the local authorities tend to reject some of the more progressive and successful ideas about how to provide housing

subsidies. And I'm not all that favorably disposed to the idea of a really big program of housing for the poor. To place all of our hopes on these local bodies means that almost certainly we will not meet the national housing goal. Further the idea of a public landlord in its own way competes with that of the private landlord for the hostility of the poor. Public bodies. Have not been themselves very good landlords. And further the system creates one further invidious distinction between the subsidized and the subsidized. I'm all for opening up the whole field of low rent housing to the private sector to private developers just as long as there are sufficient controls on the production of housing on profits on how this housing is allocated. Housing production is a highly complex operation requiring lots of skill and experience to do efficiently and well. We should by all means take advantage advantage of whatever skill and experience currently exists in the private sector. The system of incentives for and controls over the private sector. Tied into a widespread system of subsidies for low income families all under the control of a local or metropolitan agency

would seem to offer the best solution. A vast market for housing could be created among those millions of families currently ill housed through a system of subsidies like the one certificate system I described above. Creation of this vast market would allow the most efficient producers to develop technological and marketing economies of scale which might lower some want the price of housing. Production of new housing would be tied to a guaranteed market by making the subsidies usable only for new or rehabilitative housing produced by developers willing to accept the necessary planning controls of the location housing type profits and occupancy patterns. And this finally leads us to the question of where this housing is to be built. In part we need a phased rebuilding of central city areas. By phase I mean starting on vacant land building there first. Then moving families from substandard housing into the new units. Thereby making available the land they formerly lived on for reconstruction and so on. So the aim. Of eliminating the negative effects of displacement that accompany the urban renewal

program in the past. Under a program a phased reconstruction no one would move into a new home was available to move into but to meet our needs for replacement housing as well as the normal growth needs of our cities. We're going to have to build in the outlying areas as well. And this will require the best of our planning and design skills to create what essentially are new towns and new cities and satellites to our existing built up areas. Current efforts such as James rouses new city of Columbia Maryland and Reston Virginia. As well as the more advanced steps taken by European countries will have to be studied very closely to provide us with guidelines for our own action. But the critical issue of location involves not housing location but people location and quite specifically it means where black families and white families are going to live in our society. A massive program of housing construction necessarily involves basic decisions on population distribution and possibly our unwillingness to face this issue is one important reason why we have not attempted to meet the housing problem head on today. I don't pretend to

have any greater wisdom or powers of forecasting than any of you have. I do know that there is an extraordinary amount of latent racism in this country that is just coming to the surface and an increasing number of white families have no desire to live anywhere near black families. And a substantial probably growing segment of the black community also is not interested in living as part of the white community. The increase in violence in our cities. The repression that will probably follow and the growing bitterness and frustration on the part of black people against their second class status. All this leads me to believe that for the immediate future greater separation rather than greater integration is likely. Whether this will in the long run lead to or permit eventual integration I cannot say. But again I would allow for maximum open choice in this matter. But we should not refrain from undertaking the massive building programme needed at an insistence that all communities must be racially integrated. If the realities make it appear that this is impossible. One of the majority of black and white families don't hold this is a very high priority. For the average family

living in substandard housing now black or white. Is far more interested in getting a decent home and suitable living environment than in questions of social policy with regard to racial how much of a racial had originated. And this brings me around again to the subject of control of housing and the environment. We were to avoid many of the problems and tensions we have today relate. Relating to the control of housing. Our new programs have to provide a far greater personal and community control over living conditions. This involves far greater use of resident ownership either in the traditional form of simple fee on or ship on cooperatives on the condominium form. This kind of control should extend beyond the housing itself to the community and its institutions. Neighborhood Development Corporation which can own and manage the commercial institutions in an area. Carry out local public services such as garbage removal snow clearance and street cleaning. Run the schools and libraries and other community facilities. Can provide the necessary sense of control over one's life. Neighborhood groups of this type are springing up all over. And I myself am

involved in assisting two such groups in Roxbury and south and sections of Boston. Where local groups are being designated developers for their own areas as part of the urban renewal plan for the community. I would feel somewhat amiss addressing this particular audience if I did not spend at least a few minutes discussing one quite specific aspect of the housing problem that you should be particularly concerned with. Even though this represents a slight aggression from the flow of my remarks. And that is the role that your own institutions the universities have played and continue to play with regard to the urban housing crisis. In my city of Cambridge the situation is quite extreme. But I imagine it's no better in areas surrounding our universities in Chicago New York San Francisco Detroit as well as dozens of other communities large and small. Specifically the universities themselves are creating severe pressures on the surrounding housing stock by virtue of the growth and expansion which results in rising rents and driving old time residents out of their homes and causing considerable amounts of suffering. Many universities.

You seem to feel that the housing needs caused by their expansion. Can and should in large part be taken care of by the existing housing stock through the normal forces of the market. That is to say they feel it's not necessary to build a sufficient number of housing units to take care of the university's growth needs. Those connected with the university its faculty its staff and its students will in their view replace the older residents in the surrounding area by in effect bidding up the price for existing housing and forcing the lower income families out. For some of the university personnel will be able to afford those higher rents. And this in fact is happening in city after city and the areas surrounding our colleges and universities. In Cambridge a survey taken by the local OIO output. Show that 57 percent of the city's elderly were paying at least 50 percent of their income for housing. Hundreds of families in this city have already been forced out by market pressures. And hundreds of other families who remain are doing so only by paying rents they simply cannot afford. Since many of these families lived in Cambridge for generations and of strong ties to the city and to their neighbors it's no easy thing for them to move.

They are truly caught on the horns of a dilemma. Meanwhile people like yourselves and like myself become the unwitting agents of this process. Let me say parenthetically this is probably more true of graduate students and faculty than it is of undergraduates since the universities seem to be a little more responsible in providing undergraduate housing. But this to me is a fairly intolerable situation. That the university and my view cannot continue to inflict this kind of suffering and costs on the elderly and on low income people. Pressures must be brought on the university from within as well as externally. To construct a sufficient amount of housing to take care of all of its growth needs. And furthermore to construct some low and moderate income housing directly for the community. To relieve current market pressures and compensate for some of the damages done in the past. There's a noble effort now underway to make universities more responsible and moral with respect to the country at large and the surrounding community. This is a clear example of immoral behavior on the part of many of our universities and it's the responsibility of people like yourselves to create the kinds of pressures that

make the university act responsibly in the housing field. More generally how to create pressures to bring about the kind of house and program I outline is at the heart of the matter. For some reason we've never had a very strong lobby in this country for a mass of low rent housing program. There are but a few professional organizations in the field advocating this course. But few cities have Citizens Associations for planning and housing. We have yet to see any significant grassroots organization and pressure on the part of those millions of families in need of decent housing. There are signs that things may be changing. Rising rents and worsening housing conditions in many of our cities. Have led to a burgeoning of citizens organizations. When strikes are occurring in many slum areas the sorts of rent strikes are now legal in several states. As a desperate attempt to exert economic pressure on recalcitrant landlords. Agitation for rent control is again coming to the fore. Three cities in the my own metropolitan area Brookline Cambridge and Boston are very close to passing and control ordinances. The reversal of the trend after World War 2 which saw rent control die out

in every city except New York and all rent controlled by itself is no answer to the housing problem. It's part of an answer and does suggest the kinds of organization and militancy that are rising among urban dwellers. And public housing organizations of tenants are growing and the thrust is toward greater control over the running of these projects. Even residential management and ownership. I think the potential for massive tenant organization around the housing issue is there and all of our large cities. It will take considerable organizing skills as well as an overt program and strategy to bring this about. An analogous movement has already begun in the welfare field. I'm sure you're familiar with the National Welfare Rights Organization with a concrete set of goals and a nationwide organizing organizing strategy and. A parallel or perhaps joint effort in the housing field since there's considerable overlap in the two constituencies. It seems to me like a real possibility and I'm also convinced that it's a necessity we're never going to get the billions of dollars we need and the local support for the kinds of programs in qualitative terms for low income families want. The potential political power of these upwards of 12 million families is

enormous. And both the issues and path to solution are at hand. I do not wish to exaggerate the importance of housing. It's not the be all and end all of urban life. For a housing program. Even the best housing program to work. It must be instituted in tandem with programs of job creation income maintenance improvement of community facilities and whatever individual compensatory services and needed medical educational psychological. To make up for the cumulative effects and deprivations of poverty and racial discrimination. But housing at the same time means far more than has generally been acknowledged. There's more than a roof over one's head and four walls. In the ideal sense. It can mean a meaningful social network political power and control. In many ways housing is the urban environment. Thank you Ed. Dr. Chester Hartman expert on housing at the Joint Center for Urban

Studies at MIT and Harvard speaking on the crisis urban environment. Dr. Hartmann addressed himself to the urban crisis during the Wake Forest University's symposium on contemporary American affairs. Later in a question and answer session Dr. Hartmann was asked how feasible is the notion of phased relocation and re housing in the central city area. First I don't think that can be a one to one relationship between the two I think most of that rebuilding will have to be done in outlying areas. But there is an awful lot of vacant land and down and central city areas there are a whole abandoned blocks and abandoned sections of large cities. I wouldn't have any major objection to taking some of that sacred park land at least temporarily and building on it and then replacing it once the housing is built with Parkland some other place if it gives us some breathing space. A lot of people have to live in the central city because of the services that are there the jobs the transportation. I think we have to devise a strategy for letting them live in the central city. And this means using whatever

land is available now. And as I say one of the sources of this land we may have to think of at present recreation space. I think housing is more important of the two. Another questioner wanted to know if the construction unions are a major barrier to solving the problem of housing in low income areas. Yes indeed they are a major barrier but I don't think as important a barrier as people have felt in general. The Kaiser Commission which presidential commission which just issued a its final report has some figures which seem to indicate that productivity of labor in the construction field has been going up at roughly the same rate as wages in the in the field. And most home builders say that they can build the same product that they built 10 years ago for the same price now and all the materials and labor cost have gone up. Productivity has also gone up. And the real problem is in these other factors of land and interest costs and upkeep. So possibly the labor question is not all that significant. I would say two things about the labor unions however

acknowledging that they are certainly a regressive force in the field. One is that to the extent that the housing credit becomes increasing and just increasingly industrialized that the production process takes place not on site in the factory then you're going to get new unions involved who had generally been much less resistant to this kind of change than the craft unions which have been among the more conservative unions compared to the industrial unions. Secondly I think that there is we're going to have to really abandon some of the 30s thinking that a lot of liberal people have about the sanctity of trade unions particularly when it's shown that the unions are definitely keeping out in many areas. Certain groups in particular black workers from working in construction projects part of this community control I've talked about very much involves people taking part in rebuilding their own communities having the jobs themselves. And if the union is not willing to take these people in then I think we have to find ways of going around the union so that these people can get jobs and take part in building their own community. I don't see any reason to consider the

inviolable sacred thing. Earlier Dr. Hartmann had cited the high vacancy rate and turnover in public housing. He was asked how to deal with middle class feelings about public housing. The vacancy rate in turnover is sort of one part of the picture it shows a great deal of dissatisfaction with public housing in very bad conditions in public housing. But I've tried to outline is really that the term public housing is you know has referred to just a very specific form of public subsidy. Is that in fact you can call anything public housing should call anything public housing which involves a public subsidy. And there are many many more creative ways of using this public subsidy than have been true in the past. Now there's a real problem between sort of quality and quantity and in terms of sort of chicken and egg there's no reason why people buy Congress why the American people should support a program of the magnitude I describe when they see all around them that public housing is so bad I'll be totally irrational for them to do and it spreads understandable if they don't want this kind of program.

The critical thing is to make them realize through demonstrations through just certain kinds of lobbying and political work that it is possible to use the public subsidy for housing and much more satisfying creative way. And I think only until you can demonstrate this to people you're going to have that kind of a political support necessary to get the land in the money that you need for a public housing program. Next Doctor Hartman was asked about model communities such as Reston Columbia and Floyd McKay shakes. So which city I was spent almost the entire day with James Rouse the developer of Columbia Maryland on Tuesday he was up at Harvard Business Department giving a talk and I got some very good insights into his operation I would say that there's a great difference between Reston and Columbia with respect to the point you make Reston has experienced considerable amounts of trouble and that the original developer then sold out to a large corporation which is trying to refinance it and undertaking the project in a somewhat different direction. Columbia does not appear to be in any financial difficulties whatsoever and from what I can tell at least appears to be quite successful

financially as well as socially even though I think only 2000 units are up at this point I don't know much about Mr. Because six plans for Soul City so I can't really comment on the only thing that I'm happy that he has Mr. Rouse as one of his major consultants for the project. I think the kinds of experience that James Rouse has been very very helpful to him because except for down here. The topic of the Wake Forest symposium was the urban crisis the student's response and Dr. Hartmann had suggested earlier how the student might influence his university. What could the student do outside the university and helping to solve the housing problem in product the kind of organization that I talked about that's necessary at every level of public consciousness around the housing issue making people realize the extent of the problem how in relative terms it's rather easy to solve in terms the resources we spend on other things. Trying to shift this sense of priorities that I described earlier students can play a very important role. Specifically I this

program I run at Harvard called the urban field service which is a student program. It's a credit program mainly for city planning and architecture students but open to other students as well in which students go out and work for communities as essentially advocates for their particular cause. And we have at least a half a dozen projects in the housing area ranging from organizational rent strikes to developing housing cooperations to organizing in public housing all of which the students are playing an enormously successful role in assisting communities in this regard so I would say students really by getting out into the community on specific request from the community organization can play a very effective role and even if you haven't had training in city planning or architecture be surprised how many relevant skills you have for the kinds of community work that we're involved in. Another student wanted to know how much does prejudicial among middle income families.

I think the housing situation is fairly strong prejudice against this which is compounded by racial prejudice because that very often a coincidence obviously between low income and being nonwhite. I found though that the prejudice is also very much related to the kinds of public housing conditions that I've described earlier. When you pass a lot of these old projects in the major cities and you see what terrible condition they're in. The automatic assumption is that the people there are sort of terrible housekeepers really don't know how to keep the place properly at all. And this is unfortunate because I think some much of the what's wrong in public housing is due to a faulty design originally a very poor maintenance on the part of the public housing staff to a totally inadequate budget for maintenance and rehabilitation in public housing itself and indeed very much to resentment against living there a lot of the sort of anti-social vandal mystic acts are now our psychological expression of resentment of living there and enforcing this has created a good deal of resentment among the middle class about people of lower income living with them. There have been several experiments and one just been published

as a matter of fact of a pilot project project in which low income families under our early rent supplement program back in 1963 and four were placed in a middle income development in a Washington park section of Boston. And the results they are really quite striking that if you can sort of keep that as anonymous and hidden as possible people who didn't really know who had the subsidies and who didn't and they were mixed in about a 20 25 percent proportion of low income families not 75 percent middle income families. You found that in fact the families got along very well together. There really wasn't any great tension and there wasn't any discrimination against the low income families. So I think it's very much a question the kind of environment you create that if you create a situation where everyone around you is part of the socially economically disadvantaged it's going to be very bad environment but if you can mix in sort of relatively sensitive proportions people of different income groups I think of no real problems of people living together. To what extent can the United States look to other countries for guidelines

in planning public housing. Let me just point to two countries where I think that the European countries which are relatively in our. General social economic tradition point to England in terms of attitude I mean they really feel there that everyone does have a right to decent housing and the general program of housing subsidies is much more extensive than ours here. They've been able to build really very successful developments in large numbers for. Slum Dwellers in their major cities. So I in terms of sort of the political economic aspects I think England has a lot to to teach us. In terms of design I would say to Scandinavian countries in particular Sweden have the most to teach us. I don't know how many of you have been there but if you look at the developments there for any income group you find a tremendous sensitivity to people's needs and a sort of completely

divorced from the economic issue that in some by the Scandinavian architects have taken it even as a greater challenge when cost limitations are they are the public programs to try to build something attractive and definitely for that income group within those cost limitations and in general I found the quality of architecture in the Scandinavian countries for all levels of housing to be extremely high so I would say these two areas could be where we might look for some guidance. I think our time is up. Thank you very much. You have just heard addressed by Dr. Chester Hartman of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at MIT and Harvard University speaking on the topic. The crisis in urban environment. Dr. Hartmann spoke at the Wake Forest University symposium on contemporary American affairs challenge 69. The theme of this year's

symposium was the urban crisis. The students response next week. Michael Harrington author of The Other America will speak on the welfare system and the crisis of the unemployed. John when 69 was produced entirely by Wake Forest University students the executive director of Jalan 69 was Norma Murdock the assistant director was our show and this radio series was produced by the staff of station WFTV FM Wake Forest University Radio in Winston-Salem North Carolina. This is in E.R. the national educational radio network.