Housing Message

The federal government's housing and redevelopment program has-moved a long way since the first housing act in 1937 and the first urban renewal bill in 1947. President Johnson's housing message to Congress represents another impressive step forward. It signifies Johnson's realization that the traditional approach to urban redevelopment has been neither as effective nor as intelligent as its original sponsors had hoped.

The President has wisely asked that the government abandon the approach to urban renewal that calls for complete demolition of neighborhoods. This policy, identified with such irrepressible planners as Robert Moses, too often has resulted in unhappy and unpleasant projects like that in Boston's West End. The spirit and sense of community were destroyed along with the slums, and the drab, institutionalized replacements are certainly less cohesive and hardly more attractive than the former slum neighborhood.

Johnson has turned to a more selective policy that emphasizes rehabilitation over clearance, and human needs over planners' dreams. The President has proposed that the government buy and rehabilitate some 50,000 existing units per year; he has also realized the need to protect areas which will themselves become slums without proper maintenance. At the same time he has urged a more careful approach to the tremendous task of relocation where the "human cost... remains a serious and difficult problem." 157,000 people have been displaced by urban renewal, and less than 17% of them live in public projects. Often in the past relocation has meant "only another slum dwelling and the likelihood of the same experience." To prevent this cycle the President has suggested an increased subsidy of $120 a year per unit for families who otherwise would be unable to afford even the lowest rents for decent housing.

Johnson has not neglected entirely two difficult problems before cities today: a shortage of housing and the sad fact (Jane Jacobs notwithstanding) that some housing is so blighted that rehabilitation is impossible. Unfortunately his proposal for 50,000 new units in addition to those undergoing rehabilitation is inadequate to cope with the present needs, much less with those that high birthrates among low income groups will create. The $1.4 billion allocation must be increased; moreover, the red tape that at present allows a lapse of up to five years between a project's inception and its execution must be reduced radically.

While the amount of housing should be increased, the quality of design also should be improved. The present type of barracks-like building too often jars aesthetically with the neighborhood in which it is located and discourages people who would otherwise want to live in public housing. In Boston's West End, for example, 74% of those who were to be moved said they preferred not to live in a project. More attention to attractive and thoughtful designs is necessary. Architectural competitions like those in many European cities and a few American ones should be mandatory.

Although President Johnson has glided too easily over the need for more housing and the importance of architectural diversity and imagination, this is not the major fault of his message. More important, he fails to see the potential uses of housing in combatting the large problems before all American cities. At present, expenditures for social services are, at very best, preventing problems from spreading rather than solving them; furthermore the money to permit expansion of existing programs is very limited. Already city tax rates are so high that many businesses and large property owners have moved to the suburbs to avoid them, and no sudden financial windfall appears likely.

What is needed is a new approach, or at very least an altered montage of present programs. The key to any such change lies in the neighborhood. If individuals within a community can be organized to deal with their own problems, if self-help can be encouraged, then cities might be better able to meet the giant challenges before them.

Housing is vital to the creation of a sense of community that could deal effectively with neighborhood problems. But President Johnson's message dealt only with the importance of neighborhoods in the suburbs. He failed to see that the need for them is greatest in the city.

Public housing in cities blocks a sense of community in two ways. First, often a project stands completely apart from the area in which it was built. As Jane Jacobs has written, "One of the unsuitable ideas behind projects is the very notion that they are projects, abstracted out of the normal city." Second, tenants in a redevelopment project have little contact with each other and little interest in the project itself. Life is fragmented, and responsibility is abdicated to the bureaucracy that runs the project. This situation has had a powerful effect on integration in housing; although Negroes live next to whites, usually there has been little interchange between them.

Although neither of these difficuties can be eliminated easily, much more could be done now. The Federal Housing Administration requires local authorities to obey certain rules before they can receive funds; it might extend its regulations to include the following:

* Projects should be designed so that they blend into their surroundings.

* Attention must be given to the effect of design on the inhabitants.

* Tenants should have an opportunity to become involved in the management of their projects.

* Community organizations (even those aimed at the management) should be encouraged.

* Self-help programs should be stimulated by trained staff-workers.

* The population of projects should be varied on the basis of income as well as race.

This is not to say that the President's message is unimpressive, for it is a thoughtful document deserving of Congressional action. But unfortunately the vision is neither as broad nor the goals as far-sighted as they should be.