The Politics of Housing

...who cannot afford decent housing on the private market might cost an additional $7-8 billion a year...

...In virtually all cities where these newer programs have been tried, the amount of meaningful social and economic integration has been minimal, and in some cases nonexistent...

...One basic fact must be understood, then, in the public/private debate: there is no magic to be achieved— existing income levels and the costs of providing sound housing are "givens" (with little immediate alteration to be expected from programs of job creation and cost-reducing technological innovations in the building industry...

...An inescapable conclusion seems to be that, desirable as some amount of heterogeneity may be (and whether and in what ways this may be true is still not absolutly clear), political pressures, both overt and internalized, will be such that local administrators will avoid difficulties wherever possible...

...The stipulation of limited profit (which, in fact, with entrepreneurial slight of hand, turns out to be considerably above the presumed 6 per cent maximum) will not be a significant deterrent to the private developer—if unnecessary red tape is eliminated, if a built-in market is assured (through some form of rent supplement or rent certificate program), and if the system provides rewards for demonstrated ability to produce (in the form of lowered initial capital requirements, for example...

...control over the decisions that affect one's life and over one's own living conditions...

...The only way in which low-income families—at least those who wish to do so—will be able to integrate themselves successfully with families of higher socio-economic status is through a type of program that has not yet been developed: i.e., through creation of sovereign consumers by widespread use of rent or income supplements...

...Most of the newer forms of public housing, as well as the new rent supplement program, represent an attempt to eliminate the worst forms of isolation and stigmatization that have characterized traditional public housing projects...

...In the December 1966 New Republic, Frances Piven and Richard Cloward argue that stress on racial integration as a necessary component of housing programs has drained support for these programs...

...Nationally, 53 per cent of all families in public housing are nonwhite (an increase from 43 per cent in 1954), and in many cities there are virtually no white families living in housing projects...

...Even using the rule of thumb that families should pay no more than 25 per cent of their income for rent, these rent levels would require an annual income in excess of $4000 (in excess of $5000, if one uses the traditional 20 per cent ratio) . There are literally millions of families in the country who are unable to afford these rents...

...in exchange for this the private developer would agree to accept as tenants a certain percentage of certificate holders on a firstcome, first-served basis...

...The federal government and many local authorities are now insisting on an end to lily-white public housing projects...

...The legacy of 30 years of failure is that people are simply turned off to the notion of public housing, no matter how creative and subtle the form in which the public subsidy comes wrapped...

...It is in large part due to above-mentioned shortcomings that proposals have evolved for "unleashing the private sector," bringing the profit motive back into the low-rent housing field...

...This expertise refers to questions of financing, land acquisition, legal procedures, design and construction and management...

...Depressing as it may be to white liberals, the truth must be faced: to insist upon racial integration as a sine qua non of housing improvement is to consign millions of American families, white and black, to their present slum conditions for years to come...

...With few exceptions, the jurisdiction of these authorities is confined to a single municipality...

...A study commission of the Illinois legislature has just submitted a remarkable recommendation for abolition of local housing authorities in favor of metropolitan and regional authorities and programs, yet the plan is given virtually no chance of passage, due to the complex vested interests in the present, fragmented structure...

...But it represents only 1 per cent of the nation's GNP and less than four months of warfare in Southeast Asia...

...Yet should such a program be passed, it is fairly automatic and self-sufficient in operation and will not meet the repeated political pressures and battles that the local public authority must face each time it wants to move ahead...

...The program rejected a true "model city" approach that had been initially proposed (attempting, on a pilot project basis, to provide solutions to all urban problems in four or five prototypical cities) in favor of a "model neighborhood" approach—providing these same solutions for an area housing no more than 15,000 persons (or 10 per cent of the city's population in the case of large cities...

...Reliance on the private construction industry is purported to offer significant cost saving, too, but claims to this effect are at present of dubious validity, and if true, may derive from use of nonunion labor paid at less than union scale—a "saving" that may not be in the public interest...

...The buildings are privately owned and managed and restriction on the number of public housing tenants in any one structure makes it likely that there will be some form of economic and social mix (although this depends largely on the character of neighborhoods in which the housing authority leases its units...

...The arguments for and against "mixing" are fairly simple, although they seem to be based more on assumption and ideology than on concrete evidence...

...homogeneity to develop in the future...

...The average family simply is not inclined to live near low-income families which exhibit any "deviant" attributes, such as having no male head of household, having too many children, living on welfare, causing or demonstrating any of a variety of social problems...

...as a result of a policy of "either integrated housing or no housing," those most in need of better shelter have been denied the benefits of potentially helpful programs, and are in effect paying the price for goals and ideals that are less important to the poor than they are to the reformers...

...families are living below acceptable standards—is composed of specific "types": families and individuals who lack and have little hope of earning adequate income...

...The costs of achieving the National Housing Goal, established nearly 20 years ago ("a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family") are big, and as a nation we just don't seem to want to spend big money these days for anything but killing Vietnamese...

...Nor should we have expected this: although systematic data are not available as of this writing (the author is currently making a survey of the local housing authority commissioners), it is generally knows that local housing authorities are governed by boards that are overwhelmingly white (whereas over half of all families in public housing are Negro) ; upper income (persons in the $10,000 and up income range...

...608 program of the postwar period made this abundantly clear, at the cost of great amounts of jerry-built housing and much bilking of the public...

...A direct and adequate subsidy of the housing expenditures of poor families, through a device such as rental certificates, available for new or rehabilitated standard housing, might permit social and economic heterogeneity, providing mechanisms exist to insure nondiscrimination against certificate holders by private landlords...

...There is also a large group to whom such thinking represents cultural imperialism, an attempt to destroy valuable unity and vitality among low-income groups...

...Clearly, questions of preference, life-style, patterns of spatial usage are all crucial to the proper planning of residential areas...

...If the economic basis of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Plan depends on satisfaction of the investment conditions set forth by the private sector, it is clear that one can speak of meaningful citizen control in only the most limited sense...

...But it is still a time of rhetoric, not of results, nor even of realistic plan-making...

...and the vague catchall category, "multi-problem families...

...If, instead of producing 30,000 units of low-rent public housing annually, we embark on a program which will provide new or rehabilitated housing for a minimum of 500,000 low-income families each year, the specter of massive racial shifts would create insurmountable problems with regard to financial appropriations and site selection...

...Model Cities, rent supplements, instant rehabilita tion, "turnkey," Percy Plan, Kennedy Plan, Ribicoff Plan are but a few of the terms flying thick and fast over conference tables and speakers' platforms...

...Any housing program for the 1960's must involve more than a bricks-and-mortar approach, must be prepared to deal with the entire set of living variables that make up residential and community life...

...rural slum dwellers...

...Needless to say, there is no immediate prospect of having anywhere near the amount of money required to implement current proposals, except on a token or pilot project scale...

...The "turnkey" approach to public housing, in which site development and construction is done by private developers who then sell the completed project to the local housing authority, also represents an attempt to avoid institutional design...

...The Kennedy Plan speaks of the necessity for the community to "create the conditions" under which private corporations and lending institutions will be willing to locate in BedfordStuyvesant...

...It is now absolutely clear to all but the most resistant that the vast majority of these 12 million families are not going to secure decent housing through the processes of "normal" mobilitiy, and that existing government programs to aid this sector of the population are hopelessly inadequate to the task, qualitatively as well as quantitatively...

...It is these areas and the ways in which they are dealt with under existing and proposed programs that form the hub of this essay...

...It is also becoming quite evident that provision of low-rent housing through the public sector has a great many fundamental and inherent defects...

...The argument is based on the need for increased activity and motivation...

...There are few areas where it is more imperative to have active and ongoing participation of the prospective clientele than in the area of housing and neighborhood planning...

...Inclusion of lowincome families is at the option of they private developer...

...The very words "public housing" are anathema to too many people, including the program's clientele...

...The present rent supplement program bears some similarities to this suggested program, but has several critical features (apart from its recent Congressional curtailment) which make it unlikely to produce any meaningful residential mixing...

...In a field as complex as real estate development, which involves so many resources—financial, human, and technical—delay and inefficiency become exceedingly costly...

...The new rent supplement and moderate income FHA Sec...

...Public controls must relate to site selection (to encourage and insure metropolitan planning and solutions) , and to adequate protection of the interests of those moderate- and low-income families who can secure decent housing only through government assistance...

...The new Model Cities approach, which arose out of experience under the urban renewal program, likewise lays great stress on "citizen participation...

...The infamous FHA Sec...

...Public vs...

...There is hardly a housing authority in the country, for example, that includes on its board a resident of a public housing project or a person eligible for residency there...

...Sensing that landlords—particularly in the sellers' market that presently exists in the housing field—will not participate in a public program that risks having to rent to lowerclass tenants, and that political pressures from unsubsidized families of higher income will lead to extraordinary controversy, administrators of these newer public housing programs have taken the path of least resistance and have avoided any meaningful socio-economic integration...

...In brief, where the private sector has been drawn into the public housing program and where mixing has occurred, the utmost care has been taken in tenant selection to choose only the most "worthy," middle-class representatives of the poor: intact, small families at the upper level of the public housing income range, usually white, employed and educated, with no suggestion of social problems which might cause conflict and resentment among their neighbors who "pay their own way...

...Rehabilitation programs developed by local housing authorities rely on purchase and remodelling of substandard private buildings and offer public housing that is architecturally no different from housing that remains in the private sector...

...The vestigial housing problem, although by no means trivial— at a minimum 12 million U.S...

...Many of the program's shortcomings might be effectively remedied through some of the newers forms of public housing described earlier...

...tion which is to assert effective control over housing and community facilities planning, plus a "blue-ribbon" board (on which sit men like C. Douglas Dillon and Thomas Watson of IBM) responsible for bringing in the industrial base which will support the community's economic renascence...

...This is the basic political fact which must underlie any discussion of housing...

...Finally, the rent supplement program carries this idea one step further in bypassing the housing authority altogether as agent for choosing apartments and tenants...

...What has undoubtedly been true in the past for relatively meager programs, (viz., Congressional curtailment of the rent supplement program and local opposition to public housing projects) will a fortiori be true of programs of the magnitude that have recently been suggested by more radical and impatient reformers...

...public sector: to what extent and in what ways can and will the private building industry meet the pressing housing needs of the country's low-income families...

...The Bureau of Labor Statistics' 1959 model budget for a family of four in Boston required $6100...

...As Negro families apply in ever larger numbers (in Boston, where 26 per cent of public housing families are Negro, over half of all applications are now coming from nonwhite families) , and as more and more projects "tip"—a process which is surely irreversible—the program will become in fact a Negro institution...

...The Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to induce localities, albeit with much difficulty, to move away from the project approach to public housing (in order to increase the possibility of racial integration, as well as for other reasons of a social and aesthetic nature...

...It is held by some that the grouping of low-income families creates stigma and reinforces deviant or pathological living patterns, whereas mixing low-income families together with families of higher socio-economic status (usually conceived of in terms of a marked disproportion, with the subsidized families representing 10-30 per cent of the total) will offer incentive, status, and alternative (and assumedly more desirable) models for behavior...

...Clearly, existing programs are avoiding the issue of economic and social integration (even though there is a nominal attempt in this direction...

...Dangers to physical well-being are still a notable part of slum living (ranging from rat bites, fires, and household accidents to certain housing-related diseases such as dysentary and skin ailments) . But the issue has now broadened to include the social conditions under which people live: issues of status and dignity...

...Given the program's general mandate—to improve conditions in the demonstration area for the area's resident's—the program in effect has become a "gild the ghetto'" program (save in those smaller cities where poor white neighborhoods were chosen as target areas, and in the one or two larger cities where a principal objective of the program is to provide open housing opportunities for the area's Negro residents...

...Any program of housing subsidization that can make maximum use of existing ta'_ents in the private sector will clearly be that much better...

...Finally, we must refer to the issue of popular participation and control—that is, who makes and carries out decisions regarding housing programs and conditions for low- and moderate-income families...

...It seems quite probable that we have passed the point where massive integration of the races can be an element of a housing program that will improve the lot of the vast majority of slum dwellers, black as well as white, in a relatively short time span (say, within five to ten years) . Existing residential patterns are too firmly fixed, the population shifts and disruptions required would be too massive, and popular resistance to any program of this nature would be staggering...

...The issue is primarily one of money...

...Rather, ways must be found to bypass what has become an administrative roadblock...

...Most of the recent private-sector approaches to the housing problem in fact obfuscate the cost issue by underestimating the quantity of public subsidy needed or by offering a deceptive picture of which income groups will be aided by these programs...

...An ancillary effect, of course, is that by drawing these families away from the housing projects, the remaining public housing population becomes all the more atypical and deviant from the rest of society...

...Thus, Sen...

...Since the federal low-rent housing program has traditionally and painstakingly allowed for maximum local autonomy and discretion, there seems little hope of restructuring the present system of local housing authorities...

...But if we persist in the illusion that improvement of urban living conditions can and must be accompanied by racial integration, ten years from now we will discover that we have not progressed very far at all in solving the nation's slum problems, just as there has been but little improvement in the past ten years...

...Yet there almost certainly will be conflict and contradiction between the set of preconditions demanded by the private sector and the wishes of the local community...

...This critical feature of the Model Cities program has not been universally lamented: in fact the more progressive newcomers to the upper echelons of the HUD hierarchy see it as a sound development...

...Maximizing profit opportunities can only lead to increased housing >costs (and hence to increased public subsidies) and to irresponsible development...

...The litany of social, aesthetic, and administrative defects is already widely known and acknowledged...

...At the present we are being bombarded with new ideas, some good, some not so good, some really innovative, some merely rehashes of old proposals...

...In many persons" minds—back or front—lies the notion that if the private sector can be induced to do the job, this will reduce the need for public funds...

...because Negroes tend to have lower incomes and occupational and educational attainments than whites, most whites tend to see Negroes as lower-class, regardless of objective economic and social indices...

...A close look at the operations of these new programs provides some insight as to how we can expect the issue of heterogeneity vs...

...Thus, Robert Kennedy's two-pronged plan for Bedford-Stuyvesant envisions an indigenous community corpora...

...Because of who these people are and to whom they owe allegiances, it should not be surprising that they have not been a force pushing for more low-rent housing...

...And at least among some segments of the population, educational, occupational, and financial attainment are sufficient to erase most barriers imposed by race...

...A massive program of rent certificates tied to an equally massive program of low-interest development loans will of course meet with substantial political resistance from those who recognize and oppose this potential for social and economic mix...

...We don't even have any good estimates on the costs of attaining this goal (in part due to the vagueness of its definition...

...real choice with regard to residential location and housing type and a host of other considerations that have not traditionally been defined as "housing" issues per se...

...There is a great deal of ferment in the housing field at present, but not much action...

...At the same time these newer forms of publicly subsidized housing (leasing of private units, public rehabilitation of substandard units, joint public-private developments) are meeting a great deal of local resistance, in no small part due to the possibility of invasion of "good" neighborhoods by "problem" (i.e...

...One of the more advanced notions in true popular control of development programs is the community foundation, a combined governing body and development corporation, to which all local residents would belong...

...In short, local public housing authorities (with very few exceptions) have not been aggressive advocates of a vastly expanded and improved low-rent housing program, have not been true spokesmen , for the interests of persons in need of better housing...

...Further, th^re seem to be few, if any, forces , in the community that are assuming the advocate role which the local housing authority has abjured...

...If all families are to be housed decently (a National Goal set by Congress that will soon have its twentieth anniversary), the gap between these two "givens" must be bridged, and it must be bridged by government subsidies...

...creating low-income concentrations similar to those in public housing projects...

...We are beginning to see that many of our cherished "good government" institutions (such as draft boards, welfare boards, housing authorities) , putatively governed by disinterested civic types, above politics and with only the public interest at heart, in fact consist of a quite biased segment cf the population, with their own values, class interests, and preconceptions—all of which render them quite unrepresentative of (and possibly unsympathetic to) the clientele and segment of population served by these programs...

...Social and Economic Integration Related to the problem of racial integration is the question of social class integration, or heterogeneity vs...

...yet, using the 20.25 per cent rent/income ratio yardstick, decent housing costs at least twice that much in urban areas...

...Even if we were to achieve a guaranteed annual income (or some version thereof through a negative income tax), the levels presently being discussed would be totally inadequate to secure decent housing at present market rents...

...But the problem is distinct from the racial problem: it comes up as an issue among white families of different social classes and among Negro families of different social classes...

...While this shift was made in part to permit existing funds to go farther in political terms (more cities would get something from the program, thereby increasing its potential support) , it also had the effect of allowing cities to compartmentalize the race issue...

...Those with adequate income by and large are getting adequate housing, and the private sector, strategically assisted by the government—notably via FHA and VA mortgage insurance and urban renewal—works moderately well to satisfy the housing needs of middleand upper-income groups...

...Private One of the most salient political issues currently under discussion in the field of housing and urban development is the question of private sector vs...

...In Boston, for example, a city where 20-25 per cent of the population lives in substandard housing, not a single unit of family public housing has been constructed in 13 years...

...But it seems virtually impossible for the program to live down the reputation it has acquired over three decades...

...Kennedy's much heralded plan for Bedford-Stuyvesant envisions producing housing that rents for $85-90 per month...

...private production of housing...

...It would be fruitless to go into any great detail about the failures of the public housing program...

...Such controls over landlords and developers might be secured via incentives to participate in the program provided in the form of low-interest construction and rehabilitation financing or assistance in site acquisition...

...Among the newer programs and ideas, the Model Cities program seems to have accepted this argument, at least implicitly...

...In policy terms, the issue comes down to this: should housing subsidies require the grouping of low-income families together, apart from unsubsidized, higher income families, or should programs be developed which permit or require mixture of subsidized low-income families with families of higher income who do not receive a housing subsidy (or at least the same kind of subsidy, since in our peculiar folk logic such things as FHA insurance and urban renewal land write-downs for middle- and upper-income housing are not regarded as subsidies...

...More help will go to those most in need of government assistance, and if integration is ever to come about, it will be only after the ghetto and its residents have developed economic and political strengths...

...Based on 1960 Census data on the incomes of families presently living in substandard housing and using 1959 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on the costs of obtaining "modest but adequate" housing in metropolitan areas, a program of housing subsidization for all families in the U.S...

...nonwhite minorities (with and without adequate income...

...The income subsidization approach does not seem feasible at present...

...Many housing experts are questioning the efficacy (and even the good intentions) of the local public housing authority...

...homogeneity...

...As projects lose their all-white character, the number of white applications decreases and white families move out of the projects in increasing numbers, frequently to worse and/or higherpriced— but "safe'—housing...

...over $1200 of this sum went for rent, in order to achieve a "modest but adequate" standard of living, and that figure has undoubtedly risen in eight years...

...Arguments against social and ecomonic integration range from those of the economic conservative worried about the effect on incentive of having persons of different incomes, paying different rents, living in essentially identical quarters—to those of the sociologist, concerned that differences in life-style, child-rearing patterns and the like will in fact exacerbate inter-class tensions and conflict rather than create mutual understanding and a "rub-off" effect...

...the relation of design to behavior...

...there is, however, no corollary requirement that developers who build with the aid of these government-assisted loan programs also participate in the rent supplement program...

...In combination with more systematic forces (Negroes apply to public housing in disproportionate numbers because of lower incomes and a narrower range of housing choice) , this policy is turning public housing into an all-Negro program, and not too gradually at that...

...A good deal of overlap exists here...

...The private sector can and should have a crucial role in an expanded government housing program, but only if it is willing to accept moderate profits and to adhere to necessary public controls...

...In this program the private developer directly contracts with the Federal Housing Administration to accept a certain number of low-income tenants, and in return receives the difference between the rent established for the low-income family (25 per cent of family income) and the market rent for the unit...

...The clearly metropolitan character of housing problems and housing markets thereby finds no corresponding administrative mechanism for dealing with these issues...

...The leased public housing program, under which individual, privately owned units, usually in multifamily buildings, are leased by the housing authority at market rents and then subleased to public housing tenants at reduced rents, is one of the most far-reaching attempts to blur the public-private distinction...

...Rhetoric has far outrun (and in a sense diverts attention from) any corresponding commitment to allocate resources...

...Yet in only very few places is there the possibility that this will mean true control—the right ultimately to approve or disapprove locally any plan for the area, backed up by a commitment of funds to permit a_ democratically selected local decision-making body to retain its own professional planning staff to assist in the evaluation of official agency plans and the development of alternative plans...

...What is needed is a government agency with the power to operate over an entire metropolitan housing market area, which will give private developers—operating on a limited-profit basis—maximum freedom to use their talents within the broad program and planning objectives established by public policy...

...The housing problem is shaking down to an easily identifiable form, following resolutions of the anomalies caused by the Depression and War...

...It is axiomatic that if incentives are made sufficiently attractive, the private sector will produce...

...No amount of "plans" for the private sector, however ingenious, is going to alter that basic fact...

...heavily weighted toward business, real estate, insurance, and other occupations that suggest an inherently conservative outlook...

...If the community corporation, or some variant thereof, became developer of new and rehabilitated housing in the area, hiring professional contractors and making maximum use of employment opportunities for local residents, the proper sensitivity to residents' needs and desires would be structured into government programs of housing subsidization...

...The income floors being discussed are on the order of $3100 for a family of four...

...There is unquestionably a severe shortage of expertise in the housing field, and a large part—if not most—of the technical capabilities regarding all phases of residential development is to be found in the private sector...

...The most rational approach to providing decent housing will often involve use of outlying vacant sites and dispersal of families thrcughout a metropolitan area...

...Most large cities chose one of the worst Negro slums as their model city target area...

...This situation can only intensify as nonwhites increasingly experience and suffer the effects of second-class citizenship, and as resentment of and insurrection against this status takes ever more hostile and violent forms...

...Yet there has been a traditional gap between the purveyors and users of housing programs for lower-income groups...

...on the private sector's freedom to maneuver and reduce red-tape and political constraints...

...Race Any housing program must face the fundamental fact that the overwhelming majority of white Americans are afraid of and do not want to live anywhere near nonwhite Americans, and that at least a substantial portion of the nonwhite population, if not the majority, does not consider integration into white America (at least on the majority's terms) a very high priority...

...The local housing authority also builds crucial geographic limitations and distortions into any program for housing reform...

...Similarly, we are beginning to recognize the failings of the administrative mechanism through which low-rent housing has traditionally been supplied to the city...

...It is indisputable that the realities of land and construction costs have made and will continue to make it impossible for the private sector, unaided, to meet the housing needs of this segment of the population...

...Generally, the heterogeneity argument is buttressed by terms such as "more democratic," although why this one manifestation of inequality is chosen as a symbol of nondemocracy in a society with such wide income disparities and such unwarranted poverty is unclear...

...Adherence to a general set of public policy controls would become a quid pro quo for receipt of government aids, in the form of lowinterest loans and land acquisition assistance...

...It should be recognized, however, that part of the motive underlying this move toward the private sector is traceable to some very unrealistic notions regarding the comparative costs involved in public vs...

...Negro) families...

...The idea, originally developed by Milton Kotler of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, is getting its field test in an area of Columbus, Ohio, and was warmly received and well publicized during the 1966 session of the Ribicoff hearings...

...221 (d) (3) programs, which were designed to circumvent the local housing bureaucracy in favor of direct negotiation between FHA and the private developer, offer a form of controlled freedom that, with some changes, would seem to be amenable to private developers and at the same time capable of meeting desired policy objectives...

...The newer, privateenterprise approaches to community development similarly overlook the issue of popular participation and control, or fail to realize the implications of the concept...

...And nascent projects which combine public and private sponsorship of developments with mixed middle- and low-income occupancy also carry the integration idea to an extreme form, relegating the public presence to the background, so as to create no invidious distinction between the subsidized and the unsubsidized...

...In many communities these boards act as a restraint and control on the number, type, and location of lowrent housing developments...

...Furthermore, FHA has set no upper limits on the number of rent supplement families which may be included in any one project, with the result shat many of these projects (the majority of the first batch to be approved) are using rent supplements for 100 per cent of their units, thu...

...These programs attempt to skim the cream off the top of the public housing population and in effect provide no information (except, by inference, negative information) about the impact of and prospects for this kind of mixing...

...This issue ranges from broad questions of participation in the planning process to more specific issues regarding changing concepts in the landlord-tenant relationship...

...It should not be a matter of great wonder that public housing projects stand as a monument to the insensitivity of program designers to the needs and satisfactions of the program's clientele...

...The "scattered-site" type of development focuses on the problem of scale: projects should be small, located in viable neighborhoods, and designed so as to blend with existing buildings...

...yet at present planning and control mint stop at the municipal boundary...

...Current efforts at least make clear the fact that unless lowincome families have the effective buying power and concomitant freedom of choice of their more affluent brethren, and unless ways can be found to guarantee that private landlords will in fact not discriminate against subsidized tenants, govermnent housing programs will produce no significant amount of meaningful heterogeneity...

...This is not to say that a housing program must proceed on a strictly segregated basis: ample opportunity and protection must be provided for those minority-group families who value integrated living highly and are willing to endure the hardship this course may entail...

...on the potential that American corporative know-how offers for innovation in the production and marketing of housing...

...And in order to induce participation, private developers are given complete discretion in tenant selection, a policy which insures that only the "cream" of the poor will get in...

...This figure would be somewhat higher if housing subsidies were also to be made available to reduce housing costs for families living in standard housing who are devoting an excessive portion of their income to rent...

...The importance of housing and housing programs now encompasses far more than the traditional realms of health and safety, those basic considerations which so strongly motivated the slum fighters of an earlier generation...

...Specifically, the public agency must insure that an ample number of low- and moderate-income families will be accepted as tenants (and as owners—for there is no reason why outright ownership, cooperatives and condominiums should not be included as options under programs of public subsidization) , and that they are being accepted and retained in a non-discriminatory way (i.e., without prejudice as to race, welfare status, family composition, and other social criteria...

...The paucity of entrepreneurial talent in the public or quasi-public sector has been amply illustrated in the difficulties which nonprofit organizations have experienced in developing housing under several current government programs...

...This looks awfully large when compared with present expenditures for housing the poor (less than $400 million annually, plus whatever portion of welfare payments is used—generally speaking, wastefully—for housing...

...But even if the problem of resource allocation could be solved, there would still be an imposing array of fundamental problems, conflicts, and decisions to be faced...

...This corporation, or foundation, is responsible for the administration of government programs for community development and would build up the economic strength of the area by bringing in new employment opportunities and increasing local ownership of housing, stores and other economic assets...

...One need only look at current government low-rent housing programs to gain insight into the future...

...the words evoke images of massive, ugly projects, located in the most undesirable parts of the city, teeming with problem families, governed by harsh and arbitrary regulations...

...location and character of community facilities...

...the elderly...

...The program is tied to the governmentassisted market-rate 221 (d) (3) program (for moderate-income families...