Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #2 (Reel 1)

Challenge 69 the European crisis. The student's response. I observe that there are two problems that seem to be emerging. One is a generation gap. That is quite this horrible between the speakers and the young men and women who have come here to hear them. And also something of a communications gap. Comments were made by the men and women. Who came to hear a number of the speakers that we live in a competitive society which is all very true but they fail to understand that one must compete on something close to equal competitive grounds. It isn't fair for a 6 foot 200 pounder to take my young 10 year old son into a ring and proposed to box or to wrestle with him. And I submit to you that the one fifth of all Americans who have to compete with the 80

percent of laws that seem to have the full measure of the blessings of this society are competing not on a very very fair basis at coal. And I think that that's what challenge 69 is all about. The Wake Forest University's symposium on contemporary American affairs presents challenge 69 the urban crisis. The students response. This is the second in a series of nine programs that seek to focus attention on the problems of American cities. The topic of this program is the crisis of urban environment. The speaker on today's program is Dr. Chester Hartman who received his doctorate in city and regional planning from Harvard University in 1067. He is presently associated with the Joint Center for Urban Studies at MIT and Harvard and is also a consultant to the Office of Economic Opportunity.

Here now to speak on the crisis urban environment is Dr. Chester Hartman. It's a very great pleasure to be with you here today and has that extra added pleasure that one can only know if you would slosh through a foot and a half of snow as I did this morning to get to the airport to come here. It's a very beautiful campus you have here. I'd like to apologize just slightly for the slight discrepancy that exists between the. Printed title for my talk and what I had a slightly different title that I had prepared. I'm going to be talking on housing in the urban environment but I think that even though it sounds like a slightly narrower topic what I'm going to suggest is that the whole area of housing is quite broad and really coverage for a great many aspects of what's commonly called the urban crisis. The title for this particular conference challenge 1969 is quite appropriate for my title one could talk and one could evenly even say it's ironically appropriate in terms of.

The specific issue of housing that we're focusing on this afternoon. Because 969 also represents the 20th anniversary. Of the milestone in history of U.S. housing policy. Two decades ago. Congress passed the Housing Act of nine hundred forty nine. The major piece of postwar housing legislation in this country. Was legislation which introduced urban renewal program. Which proposed but unfortunately never carried out a program to produce some 800000 units of public housing over the next six years. And most important it was legislation which for the first time enunciated something called the National Housing Bill. The U.S. Congress and its preamble to the 1949 Housing Act. Stated that the goal of this country quote. A decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family. Unfortunately Congress is pretty good at positing goals but not very effective at providing the programs and resources to carry these goals out. And this Congress seems to be a rather fair reflection of the

American people this is a point that Senator Muskie made this morning. One only has to compare some of our cherished historical documents from the Declaration of Independence. To the Constitution and onward to verify that point. This generalization about our ability to carry through on our goals is not true of all goals however. Let's something really important come along like putting a few men into space or building a supersonic transport system that will cut a few hours flying time off those Intercontinental trips at about 5 percent of the population takes. Then we marshal all the necessary billions of dollars the intellectual and technical resources we need and we get the job done. But those relatively unimportant things in our society like decent housing and adequate medical care and first rate schools. They just don't seem to merit the same kinds of action on our part. And this is a question it seems to me both of the values and priorities of our society and of our image of what is possible. These are two points I'd like to return to later. But make no mistake

about it the national housing goal of one thousand forty nine of a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family. Has turned out to be little more than rhetoric. Just how bad housing conditions are in this country and something that no one really knows. And in part it's a question of totally inadequate data collection which in itself is a reflection of a rather low priority given to this problem. And in part it's a question of definition and standards. Just what do we mean by a decent home and a suitable living environment. We collect systematic national data on housing once every 10 years as part of the descending census. Reliable data will last collected in 1960 by the time in which 1969 these figures are next to useless. It's obvious that a sound comprehensive attack on the problem would be far more likely if we were armed with good data. And now we're going to have to wait until 1970 for verification of just how bad things are. There have been some individual studies made in particular cities like New York and Los Angeles which suggest that in fact housing conditions have gotten considerably worse since 1960. But we're not going to know the

national picture for another year a year and a half. The data we do have give a very depressing picture indeed. Somewhere about 11 million American households give or take a few million depending upon how you want to count them. In 1960 were living in homes that were not rated by the Census as sound with all facilities and the census ratings are quite limited in themselves. They only measure structural condition and plumbing facilities. They don't even begin to count some some of the gross housing inadequacies such as vermin infestation and lack of central heating. In addition there are several million families living in housing that is unacceptable. That is an acceptable condition but doesn't offer the family enough space. In other words these families are overcrowded. Several million more families are living in housing that is perfectly acceptable in terms of the quality and quantity of space. They've been able to manage to do this only by spending a portion of income for housing. That requires camping and other necessities of life the family and particularly the low income family who is paying 35 percent 40 percent and

sometimes over 50 percent of its income to secure a decent house and. In all probability is eating poorly as poorly clothes and is receiving inadequate medical care. And these people I said made are probably worse off in terms of overall health hazards and the general effects of poverty. Than most families who are living in technically substandard housing. And finally we come to that most elusive phrase suitable living environment. What about all those families again probably numbering in the millions who are living in a good dwelling unit of the right size and paying an acceptable portion of their income for rent. But living in a neighborhood which is distinctly hazardous to physical social and mental health. The truth is that if we were to look honestly and comprehensively at the nation's housing and environmental problems. We probably find that somewhere between one out of every four and one out of every three families in the US are living in conditions that cannot be said to meet the National have single. Nearly 40 years ago President Roosevelt cried the fact that one third of the nation was ill housed. And I don't think we've made all that much progress since that time. Now why all this concern about

housing. Is it really that important. People point to the fact that in many respects our urban poor are considerably better housed than the vast majority of the rest of the world's population and that's true. Well let me suggest the ways in which I think housing is important for in my view it's one of the most important goods that a society should be guaranteeing to its members. First it's important for the traditional reasons of health and safety reasons which motivated the earlier slum fires of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All the slums of today are far better in absolute terms in the slums of a hundred and fifty years ago. Far too many men women and children still are killed and injured due to defects in their housing. And this whole variety of defects one can point to such as lead poisoning from eating old paint to infectious diseases caused by inadequate sanitary facilities. Etc.. Family overcrowding is another cause of severe tensions and poor personal development.

Housing is important simply because it's a setting for so great a proportion of our lives as individuals and in terms of our family life. We all spend an enormous amount of time in the House and the house to be a satisfying and pleasant environment not a depressing and frustrating one. It's important because it takes a greater part of the family budget. Usually it's the largest single item or the second largest single item after food in the family budget. Cycle and psychologically and financially terribly I'm important to this money be spent well but the family gets the feeling that it's getting its money's worth. Think of the frustration and anger of the black family which is paying 40 percent of its income for housing and still getting what any absolute or relative standard is an inferior product. I think of the added frustration and anger when this family knows that it's paying more just because it's a black family because of the closed indiscriminating housing market. I'd like also to add two more items which are not usually included or emphasized in the usual catalogue

of reasons why we want to get rid of slum housing. The first is that where you live and how you live is an outward badge to yourself and your friends and to the whole society. Not just where you stand in this country's social and economic hierarchy. Housing is one of the last really good indicators of status. Those other every day matters which traditionally were used to indicate status such as clothing and automobiles simply don't indicate that very clearly anymore. Everyone can dress pretty well in. Person to be driving around in a flashy new car and it could be a millionaire he could be someone who's hawked everything to buy that car and the car is going to repossessed the next day. There's no way of knowing by these traditional standards just what a person's social status is. Housing is quite different. One of the reasons is that housing is not a discrete item but it comes as part of a package of surrounding homes and of the neighborhood and bad housing usually is grouped together in whole districts where garbage collection is poor streets run swept and snow removal is third rate. Were all the services the city supplies were low level. And the message of this environment is clear and Woodley and

outwardly that whoever lives there is on the bottom is getting the bare minimum that society has to offer. Housing is that's the symbol on the home base of the whole system which defines your place in society. And finally housing is important when looked at as a system of control. Probably the most despised figure in any slum neighborhood is the landlord. May be anything from the lowest form of human life and greed to milking dozens of properties and their residents as dry as they can as fast as he can. If an institution like a bank an insurance company or church or even a university. All the way to an old couple of marginal income themselves just trying to hold the pieces together. But for the slum RESIDENT It all adds up to the same thing. Paying what seems like an exorbitant rent for a crummy apartment and having little choice as to where to live that's a severe housing shortage because of discrimination on racial and welfare grounds because of the expenses of moving on. Repairs are pretty much at the mercy of the landlord. And whether you can even stay or not in that apartment you are at the mercy of the landlord.

That same place where you spend so much of your time the setting for so much of your life. Or even if it is rather crummy surroundings you do build up certain kinds of personal attachments and friendship networks. From that place you can be told to move almost at will someone else as well. For most states that's a landlord's absolute right. The whole concept of the sanctity of private property which was originally built in part at least around the notion that a man's home is his castle. Is now embodied in state laws all over the country which gives effective control to the person who is the owner of the property. With virtually no control or rights to those whose interest in the property is so much more basic because it's their home. This feeling of lack of control of being constantly vulnerable to the demands and conditions set by someone else. Is I submit possibly the most noxious aspect of slum living and any program which seeks to meet the national housing must attempt to engage this entire range of problems that I've just outlined associated with that house. Before turning our attention to what might be done. Let me review with you what has been

done over the past 20 years or so to solve the nation's housing problems. And I'm tempted at this point to deal with this issue rather melodramatically humorously by just standing silent for a few minutes much like that section in the parody. The saying of Chairman LBJ which some of you may have seen the section entitled humility and self-criticism which consists in its entirety of two blank pages. Would be an exaggeration to say we have done nothing but the truth is we've done precious little compared with the need for any historical excursions of the past 20 years of housing in this country is valuable chiefly for what it reveals in terms of quality. The kinds of mistakes we made and even the limited programs we undertook. These last them should be learned thoroughly so that we do not make the same mistakes in the future. But let's first dispose of the quantity issue. Aside from some very minor and in some cases quite recent programs in the housing field. The only significant program we've had to take care of the housing needs of the nation's poor has been public housing. And since 1949 we've managed to build just a little more than 500000 units of public housing.

500000 units in 20 years that's just about twenty five thousand units a year. We're a minimum of 10 million families living in substandard housing and probably more at that rate will reach the national housing goal according to my calculations sometime around the year 2037. 1949 Housing Act call for 800 and 10000 units over the next six years and even this was an inadequate target and 35000 units a year. Compare for example the most the last urban message of President Johnson where he called for six million low and moderate income housing units over the next 10 years 600000 units a year and the Kerner Commission called for that same amount in five years. One point two million of these units per year. Were getting back to history there's a world of difference between authorizations and appropriations during the Eisenhower years appropriations for public housing got lower and lower into public housing construction virtually stopped in the mid and late 1950s when the Democrats took over

for the next eight years things got a little better but not much. The average public housing construction was barely more than thirty thousand units a year. The private sector on the other hand was going great guns during the post during this post-war period. The housing industry with considerable aid of government. Was able to provide quite well for the needs of millions and millions of American families that vastly expanded middle class who could afford the product and that was and is the rub for the product. A house is a terribly expensive good and metropolitan areas most houses cost $15000 and more. And in inner city areas one can expect cost closer to 20 and $25000 a unit and more if it's a unit for a large family. And so many poor families are large families. Furthermore the product keeps on getting more and more expensive. Labor costs keep rising as to material costs. The cost of land is skyrocketing most of all and the money to build homes is getting increasingly expensive. Recently the major banks announced a prime rate interest rate of seven and a half percent. And it's even higher for home mortgages which usually are not given at the

prime rate so much higher interest rate than has ever existed in the last 20 years and the cost of operating and maintaining a house once built keeps rising. Local real estate taxes fuel insurance upkeep. A lot of people talk about the. Possibilities of technological advances in the housing industry and indeed it's a very backward industry technologically. The comparison is usually made with the auto industry one sees how clearly the the housing industry simply is not up to the same kinds of techniques of mass production as true of the auto industry. And indeed there probably are many advances that can be made in the production of housing. But basically because of the nature of the product and the cost so many of the costs are not really involved in the production itself but as I say our land and money and upkeep. I don't believe the technological advances in housing are going to significantly reduce the cost of the product very much at all. Always going to be an expensive good. And quite simply We've got a situation where the gap between what the product costs and what a substantial portion of Paap of our population can afford is massive. And it seems to be growing larger. And

this hard fact of economics on the one hand. And on the other hand our national housing goal and the choice is ours. We're going to take that goal seriously or not. We're going to take it seriously we've got to realize that the costs involved are enormous. Not so big that we can't afford them. But far more than we've been accustomed to spending or even thinking. For housing that is to return to an earlier point we accept and are accustomed to spending money in the order of billions and many billions for Wars space projects defense systems. But when it comes to housing we think along the order of hundreds of millions. There aren't any really good figures on what the bill would be for the nation if we embarked on a crash program to meet the national housing development. The fact that we don't have these figures again in itself shows how far we are from taking the goal seriously. I've made some very rough estimates and suggested a conservative figure might be around seven to eight billion dollars annually for 10 years. That's about 20 to 30 times the amount we now spend. And these are big figures.

But compared with the nearly three billion dollars we spend every month on that insane futile and most immoral war in Southeast Asia. And compare it with a 15 to 20 billion dollars we're about to spend them in ABM system that according to anyone who knows what he's talking about. Offers no real possibility of making the nation any more secure. And compared with the six billion dollars we're spending so that a few of us can get to Paris and London in two and a half hours instead of six hours. The money's there it's a question of how we spend it. And quite simply the time has come as a nation to say no to the priorities we've had for the last 25 years. First things first and the number one task for our nation. Is to provide all of its citizens with a decent standard of living. Both social justice and the continued existence of our cities demand that. But even if the dollars that I'm talking about suddenly were made available. I'd be more than a little worried because they're right and wrong ways of spending housing subsidies. Which we've managed to spend most of it wrongly over the last 20 years. It's not that we don't know better or shouldn't know better.

In fact the kind of line which says that we need more experiments more research more pilot projects more ideas. There's really no more than a way of delaying action research in some cases can be a very dangerous thing. We have enough evidence now from our mistakes from our successes. And from the pilot projects and experiments of the last few years. To create a sound program of housing in this country right now. The emphasis in recent years have been entirely too much on new gimmicks. And this takes our eyes off the real ball game which is the totally inadequate allocation of resources. And besides if we make a few mistakes it's not all that critical. God knows we make enough of them and other programs such as eye weapon systems there to begin and get on with the job to learn what we still need to know as we go along. Rather than delaying until that moment of perfect knowledge arrives. Arrives. All those months and years that we procrastinate a months and years that millions of our fellow Americans are suffering the physical and emotional damage as a poor housing.

As I inferred earlier. One pretty good guideline for the future might be don't do what we've done in the past. Again an exaggeration. But by this I mean let's do anything to avoid the dominant form of publicly subsidized housing over the past 20 or 30 years. That is a. Large development. Built owned and managed by a special public body. For the exclusive occupancy of the puir project as it's known in the trade. It doesn't work particularly when these developments are located in the most unattractive parts of the city. And design with all the grace and amenities of a tanning factory. Take a map of any large city locate the juncture of railroad tracks in the city dump and dollars to donuts you'll find a housing project there. Right around any strange city and you can spot the projects right away. Barren ugly dreary totally out of line with the surrounding neighborhood. None of this is accidental however. Sadly he represents. An architect tonic with perfect expression. Of a critical aspect of our values and attitudes. The message of these projects is quite

clear. If you're poor society may provide you with a house that's structurally sound and Fireproof has central heat and good plumbing system. But we're damned if you get anything that's otherwise comfortable or a pleasant place to live and no amenities no frills early public housing for example. Didn't have closet doors didn't even have covers on the toilet seat. And the reason for this given was the cost. I don't know the cost of something like a toilet seat cover but I imagine it's in more than a dollar. Certainly the reason for this was not in cost but in this kind of attitude that I've been describing. When it comes to designing housing for the poor. We have no real sense that we should be creating a decent environment as well. Well this whole system just hasn't worked. The social and architectural message gets through very easily and people resent living there. They also resent being isolated and stigmatized as living in separate easily identifiable compounds. They dislike being placed only with others who meet the various income and social requirements for entry into public housing. It is like having a landlord who burdens them with excessive

rules and excessive intrusions on their privacy. Large public housing projects in our big cities are a mass. Residence for the most part living there. Physically some of the projects are very much very much better than the slums they were supposed to replace. Turnover and vacancy rates are shockingly high. Which indicates that a lot of these families are actually showing a preference for the very slum they return. They came from so long with a bigger system of housing subsidies we've got to have a better system. One possible but partial answer is the rehabilitation of existing housing. There is potential here as well as a lot of problems. But even under the best of systems less Let's realize that it's only part of the answer because they simply aren't enough units suitable for rehabilitation and an economically feasible cost to solve anywhere near the whole problem. Rehabilitated housing does have the advantage of looking and being like any other housing. And because of the social and personal meaning of housing I described earlier this is terribly important. There is however a great danger in any programme of housing upgrading of code enforcement

or slum removal. If we don't accept the economic realities of increased rents and the. Housing shortage. We do no favor at all to those living in poor housing. With our crash code enforcement programs in our slum removal campaigns. If that's all we do. And that's very frequently the case. The net result of all of this. Is just to reduce the supply of low rent housing and head for the rent burdens to an already overburdened family budget. The real me then is the new construction and this raises all kinds of questions where. By whom. For whom and of what type. Let me deal with these questions in reverse order. I've already given some indication of what I feel the answer should be as to what type of housing should be built so that it negatively. Housing occupied by families receiving subsidies should not substantially differ at least externally. From the kinds of housing being built for families not receiving subsidies in the past we've tried the subsidy to the house on the subsidy

produced a certain kind of housing. Where we've got a saying now is that the subsidy is essentially separable from the house and that it can be used to produce any kind of housing. And that it is attached to the family that needs it and not to the house itself. One of the real tragedies of traditional public housing is that when a family's income exceeds the maximum stipulated amount. It has to move so that apartment they become available to another needy family at some arbitrary point that is not necessarily the point when the family wants to move or psychologically or financially ready to move. It has to break whatever social and personal ties exist to their home. And incur the expense of moving them to seek another place to live. A more flexible system of subsidies would permit the family to remain where it is once the need for the subsidy is passed. With a subsidy then being transferred to another family in need. We should be aiming for the best possible design in the most appropriate and acceptable form of housing. Whether this be high rise garden apartment single family whatever. In all of our new construction the necessary subsidy to allow families with a sufficient income to live in decent housing is a

separable issue. And this of course relates to the question for whom. As I've already indicated my answer to that question and the answer that must follow from any serious reading of the National Housing goal is for all families in need of decent housing. But part of the for whom question also relates to how families are grouped. We've seen the damaging results of hurting the economically and socially disadvantaged into a single development surrounded only by each other creating their own world separated from the rest of the city. My answer to this question is this to provide a system of subsidization that allows maximum free choice. Creating what might be called Sovereign housing consumers through the use of subsidies instead of providing only one type of housing on a take it or leave it basis. Subsidies should be provided in such a way as to permit families maximum choice as to location and housing type. A widespread system of rent certificate is good for a wide range of housing types. Could provide families with this freedom of choice. I do believe in the essence of the aphorism a man's

home is his castle. And a real degree of choice and commitment in choosing which castle to live in and seems to be a necessary part of that principle under a system of rent certificates. People would be relatively free within a fairly wide range to choose when they want to live within where. That's how I would answer the question about how to group people by saying that they should be free to make this choice themselves.