AGAINST URBAN RENEWAL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Mary Wissler's conclusion in her review of The Federal Bulldozer that Anderson avoids the problem of slum housing misses the main point of the book: that urban renewal itself is the single largest housing problem faced by the poor today.

If the government is really concerned with low-income housing, there are numerous agencies which could directly handle the basic problems--the Public Housing Authority to construct new dwellings and subsidize rents; Building Departments to enforce codes and prevent deterioration; the FHA to provide mortgage money for urban areas instead of draining it away to the suburbs. The history of dismal failures by these agencies would appear to indicate that no overwhelming desire to help the poor exists.

In this context the poor are surely better off in a private market which has had some success in meeting their needs and even whose injustices are carried out by men who admit to doing well instead of pretending to do good. Direct exploitation by a slumlord is easier to accept or battle against than the hypocrasies of an urban renewal program which declares that "we can't let people live like that" (in vauable real estate) and proceeds to throw them out to make way for expensive housing. Steve Goldin '64-6