THE HOUSING STALEMATE
Dolbeare, Cushing N.
"The welfare state, for all its value, tends to provide benefits in inverse relationship to human need. And not—the point is crucial—because there is a conspiracy of the affluent, but as `a...
...Renewal subsidies became available to reduce site costs, permitting sensible development...
...The pro...
...And not—the point is crucial—because there is a conspiracy of the affluent, but as `a natural consequence' of the division of society into unequal social classes...
...Relationships are established directly between the federal government and the consumer...
...Programs designed to benefit poor people have had little appeal in this country...
...Existing health delivery systems were not equipped to respond adequately, and are now being reevaluated...
...Affluent people see the housing problem in terms of too much growth, rising taxes and, perhaps, if they are living in cities, changing neighborhoods and declining services...
...Two ingredients seem essential for real progress...
...But the major housing subsidies do not appear in the federal budget and are seldom accounted for...
...Our housing problems will not be met by half measures, or half-hearted proposals...
...The governmental support systems for housing, at federal, state, and local levels, have one thing in common: they are passive rather than active...
...For over three decades, beginning in 1937, the public housing subsidy covered only the interest and amortization of 40-year bonds floated on the private market to finance site acquisition for construction...
...Last year, inequitable to some and preferential to Representative Thomas Ashley of Ohio, others...
...Welfare families were discriminated against in a variety of ways...
...Tenants often do not recognize the cost squeeze that rising prices have put on landlords or the fact that many landlords see themselves locked into unattractive investments...
...At the root of the failure of our housing programs—and they have failed in scope and scale—is a failure of will and commitment...
...Louis have engraved this image dramatically on our minds...
...Even when suitable housing can be found, financing is difficult...
...Those with incomes below $2,000 spend an average of 16 percent of their income for real estate taxes...
...By now experience has taught us that supportive services are a key component of home ownership programs, at least for marginal-income people...
...The policy statement contained in the Housing Act of 1949 set the goal of "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family...
...During the depression, war, and im mediate postwar years, public housing was occupied primarily by working people and their families...
...It will not be elaborated here, except to note that it is often understated rather than exaggerated...
...Low-income housing victims perceive one set of problems...
...Less than 30 percent of all public housing is in cities of a half-million people or more...
...Instead, federal housing programs have since been designed to work either through or with active consent of local governments...
...Rents are high for value received...
...Public housing is critical because, given our present panoply of housing institutions, only public housing authorities are capable, under public control, of providing for low and moderate-income families what private developers and financing institutions provide for the affluent...
...Interestingly, however, there has been a recent revival of interest in public housing as the mechanism for either major or incremental improvement...
...Middle-income people face all these problems and more: taxes and maintenance-andrepair costs are rising more rapidly than incomes...
...As zoning restrictions, building code, subdivision requirements, and other suburban constraints have artificially forced up the price of housing by requiring builders to construct single-family houses on fairly large lots, builders increasingly support federalsubsidy programs...
...The other major axis of housing programs has consisted of the housing subsidies de...
...Rental income dropped and this, combined with rising operating costs and the absence of operating subsidies, led to declining quality of management and maintenance...
...A substantial portion of these families are paying more than they can afford for such housing35, 40, or 50 percent of incomes that are well below the poverty level...
...For many, control over their housing is at least as important as the adequacy of the shelter itself...
...The notion that it is society's responsibility to provide a basic level of income and the necessities of life has by and large been advanced timorously or apologetically, not as a self-evident truth...
...During the depression, when poverty was a majority fear though not quite a majority problem, there was a brief period of support for lowincome programs...
...But we will do this only by developing a concept of the necessary role and responsibility of government, and an active concern with the rights of all citizens to decent shelter...
...The expansion of effective demand, financed through medicare and medicaid, has led to recognition of a crisis in health care...
...There are no effective mechanisms providing for the construction, financing, or maintenance of housing in vast sections of the country: in rural areas, with few exceptions, and in inner-city areas...
...If they live in rural areas, neither decent housing nor decent jobs are likely to be available...
...Public housing has never really been tried in this country...
...CONSIDER THE ANALOGY OF HEALTH CARE...
...While their faults are not as great as current HUD and other criticism implies, they are cumbersome, costly, inadequate in scope, and totally unable to meet our housing needs of low-income people...
...True, there was public subsidy by the federal government and public management by the local housing authority —but public housing, in the sense that we have public roads, has never existed, and it has been equally resisted by governments, reformers, and private enterprise...
...Subsidy Number of Households, 1970 Average Subsidy per Household $0-$2,999 $3,000-$5,999 $6,000-$9,999 $10,000 + $ 641 million $1,113 million $1,949 million $4,510 million 1.493 million 10.939 million 15.821 million 25.192 million $56 $102 $123 $179 THE HOUSING STALEMATE in agriculture do we have a comparable picture of federal subsidies for the rich while the poor are ignored or systematically deprived of their rights...
...Overarching these components of the broader housing problem is the fact that efforts to confront housing problems seem to bring out the worst characteristics of American politics and economics...
...Therefore, self-determination and consumer or resident control over housing must be an important part of any major housing program...
...Old people, too, have their special problems...
...Tenants, on the other hand, are confronted by unfair and often technically illegal leases, under which they waive rights established by law...
...The situation is dismal...
...Landlords increasingly find rental housing an unprofitable investment or, at best, less profitable than other investments...
...In 1950 total health expenditures were $12 billion, which was 4.6 percent of the gross national product...
...Similarly, we can decide to solve our housing problems, and we can make the necessary commitments of public responsibility, resources, and energy...
...Basically, however, they are failures to reach far enough in the direction of government sup port and responsibility...
...These words of Michael Harrington, in his pamphlet Socialism in America, come irresistably to mind upon reading the study Cushing Dolbeare has written for us about the housing problem in America...
...So goes the new wisdom...
...As this article is being written (early First, our housing needs are of such a July), the House and Senate each have magnitude that they are not likely to be met in a short period of time without a mas passed housing bills and a conference comsive commitment of the Nation's resources...
...This they did by contracting with local private architects and builders, financing the projects through bonds bought by private investors...
...Finally, governments, depending on their level and orientation, see a fourth set...
...They were authorized to construct and operate housing projects...
...The Housing Problem" indeed is an amalgam of many different problems, each problem affecting a particular segment of the population and affecting that segment differently...
...It was also the product, in part at least, of two searching examinations—one by the Douglas Commission and the other by the Kaiser Committee— of the nature and extent of our housing problems and, perhaps not least, the dawning recognition that prior to 1968 the federal government was, tax expenditures aside, as likely to make a profit on its housing programs as to spend money on them...
...It would be appropriate for the federal government to exercise its powers to override the objections of local governments to providing poor people with access to decent housing...
...That is, we have a limited number of programs, inade 540 quately serving selected groups of people, and a delivery system that is incapable of responding to a sudden surge of effective demand...
...In part, this is because efforts to meet housing needs often appear to threaten our citizens' few components of security in this insecure society...
...It would be appropriate to spend perhaps 10 percent of our gross national product for providing decent shelter...
...Housing authority boards, previously confined to "providers," became open to tenant membership...
...We have defined "reality" not in terms of the nature and extent of social problems but rather in terms of the constraints that bear upon their solutions...
...It could )e argued that the housing component of public-assistance payments should be inluded in this category...
...While there have been mortgage-insurance programs, interestsubsidy programs, loan-and-grant programs, even direct-subsidy programs for housing authorities—none of them operate independently of outside, nonfederal initiative...
...they must come to see that, in reality, they are being deprived of what should be a basic right in an enlightened society...
...Small projects of less than 100 units became feasible...
...THE HOUSING STALEMATE The words "public housing" almost invariably conjure up a vision of high-rise, high-density, often atrociously designed projects—poorly maintained, strewn with rubble and trash, with hallways and elevators reeking of urine...
...The failures of public housing are real, and should not be minimized...
...Builders operate largely in suburban areas, where there is a presumptive market, available land and financing mechanism...
...Through vigorous and radical reforms it is possible to offset— though not to remove—this inherent tendency within capitalist society to distribute public benefits according to the inequalities of private wealth...
...The very poor were largely excluded, rental income was steady, and the subsidy mechanism worked...
...The landlord's solution: condominiums— transfer the ownership and the attendant problems of maintenance to the tenants...
...It set a target of 26 million new or rehabilitated units to be added during a decade...
...Added to the concern for the safety of this investment, there now is a growing concern for safety, both in the home and in the community...
...While public housing, in the words of Anthony Henry of the national tenant movement, is "a roaring success compared to what the private market provides," it has not secured the loyalty of its residents...
...q 536 CUSHING N. DOLBEARE I t is easy to slip into oversimplification— to speak of "the housing problem...
...Within the past year, pictures of the dynamiting of one such project in St...
...In contrast to the foregoing programs, however, the constitu...
...After a generation of effort to expand the public housing program has resulted, at best, in only nominal progress, reformers have CUSHING N. DOLBEARE shifted their approach from advocacy of additional measures to aid the poor to efforts to create significant vested interests capable of providing an expanded level of support for housing programs...
...mittee is about to try to resolve two very difYet in view of other equally pressing social ferent approaches...
...Options to permit and encourage home ownership were introduced...
...But was public housing in fact public...
...Since medicare and medicaid were adopted, not only have total health-care expenditures risen sharply, but the public share has risen to almost 40 percent...
...Public expenditures accounted for 25 percent of this total or roughly $3 billion...
...Many are in small projects, well integrated into the life of their neighborhoods...
...The reality, however, is that four-fifths of all public housing units are in low-rise buildings: garden apartments or single-family homes...
...Fair play is important to most people...
...There has been much rhetoric on the hous ing problem of low-income and minority people...
...But since the end of World War II, in a time of prevailing middleclass prosperity, it has been tacitly assumed that poverty in this country was a social disease, curable by a combination of individual effort and public supportive services...
...There is little perceived common ground, say, between the problems of the occupant of a rural shack and those of the tenant in a city tenement...
...THE HOUSING STALEMATE...
...THERE is a variety of perspectives...
...Yet, very likely, their houses are their major economic assets, with secure alternatives unavailable...
...But "the housing problem" only means that shelter in this country is inadequate...
...While the scope and :ost of these programs are far smaller, these are the programs that have generated the liscussions, evaluations, freezes, and charges Af high costs, waste, inequity, or maladministration...
...We have 538 poorly located, high-density, high-rise public housing in many urban areas, not because planners and administrators were incompetent, but because they were allowed no other choice...
...No one, yet, has the prescription for adequate housing programs...
...A federal district court ruling that this was beyond the scope of federal authority has never since been appealed or challenged...
...rams have operated through intermediary institutions—state and local governments, nonprofit or limited-dividend development :orporations or housing authorities, builders, bankers, and investors...
...If they are owners, frequently the houses are an increasing burden: larger than they need, with maintenance costs and property taxes placing a growing burden on their budgets, while income is meager...
...Housing authorities were enabled to buy or lease existing housing, either in usable condition or for rehabilitation...
...Here, housing assistance has been regarded is a privilege rather than a right...
...Quantitatively, this new approach was enormously successful...
...This has a variety of causes...
...There is not a great deal of difference between a rental unit, a condominium, a cooperative, and a house being bought on a lease-purchase contract or a 40-year mortgage...
...igned for low- or moderate-income families...
...And the cost to the federal government is far higher...
...With the new awareness of the energy crisis, relationship to community facilities, including public transportation, will be of growing importance...
...Most people not only resent being pushed around themselves, they are not happy seeing others pushed around...
...Moderate-income people find no new housing available and the existing market tight, with little choice of location...
...A shift in occupancy patterns began in the 1950s, the product of improving economic opportunities, the widespread availability of new FHA housing for white families with steady incomes, and the mandate of public housing to provide shelter for people displaced by slum clearance...
...Often, the purchase of their home is the largest single investment of their lives...
...The availability of money to finance new housing, either for builder or consumer, is at the mercy of large financial institutions and federal manipulations of monetary policy to control inflation...
...a need a whole new approach to housing: one that deals with all legitimate housing problems—whether of young, old, black, white, rich, poor, urban, surburban, or rural...
...At the federal level, they have made political support of broad-scale housing programs seem hazardous at best and suicidal at worst...
...Clearly a failure—a solution to slums perhaps worse than the original disease...
...a comparable number of units is in communities with less than...
...Thus, public housing authorities were created by local governments and authorized to construct housing units—but, in practice if not in law, only in the numbers and locations approved by those governments...
...Public housing needs to be both expanded and reformed...
...The crisis resulted when those needing health care were given hope of access to it...
...For families with children, little choice is available...
...Yet, suburban communities are no longer expansionist—if they ever were...
...Rural and suburban areas, by and large, had no public housing...
...During the last decade, public housing development activities have been transformed...
...For the past five years, except for housing specifically designed for the elderly, public housing outside of New York City has been almost exclusively low-rise: the days of new monster, high-rise public housing projects are over...
...Tenants —in the eyes of most landlords—are troublesome and careless...
...The notion of a total housing subsidy system, framed so that the subsidy rises as income goes up, is so egregiously unjust that it is intolerable...
...FEDERAL HOUSING PROGRAMS have evolved along two rather separate axes...
...erally subsidized housing production, while Consequently, we must face the necessity the Senate bill, approved in April by a 76-11 of striving for and accepting only increvote, embodies a conventional liberal wis-mental improvements in housing conditions...
...owners 65 years old or over spend an average of 8 percent of their income on real estate taxes alone...
...Perhanc nnlv HOUSING SUBSIDIES — TOTAL — BY INCOME CIRCA 1970 Annual Income Est...
...This 26-million-unit target ignores the factors of suitable living environment, freedom of choice, and ability to pay...
...Builders tend not to operate in the inner cities or in rural areas...
...Until the adoption of medicare and medicaid, government spending for health services, primarily veterans benefits at the federal level and other hospital and medical care at the state and local level, were onequarter •of all health expenditures...
...Much rhetoric has been directed at the need to revitalize our inner cities but little of it at concrete, responsive programs...
...Young people, who are just setting up their households, have another set of problems...
...One enters, if at all, fearing for life or limb...
...The voices of consumers and their friends—tenants, rural people, and a scattering of others—are either silent or effectively drowned out...
...Too often the perceptions of the victims have been left out...
...operating costs—and usually part of the amortization, too—were covered by tenant rents...
...We need to see decent housing as a right and its provision as a public responsibility...
...In 1934 the federal government set out to build housing for low-income people, partly to provide shelter, but more to provide jobs...
...There have been, over the years, a number of efforts to unite the perceptions of reformers, builders, and government...
...We need to design new institutions and delivery systems that are genuinely responsive and controlled by their consumers...
...And those with housing problems must stop seeing themselves as being in the grip of unfortunate circumstances...
...Millions of American families live in shelter that is unsafe, unsanitary, or lacks basic facilities...
...Finally, we need a commitment of government financial support, initiative, and action to bring all this about...
...We succeeded...
...perhaps the chief architect of this legislation, described three "realities" affecting all housing legislation: Ironically, while as a society we have moved from accepting public responsibility for education—accomplished a century ago —to greater acceptance of public responsibility for health and nourishment, we are simultaneously moving away from accepting public responsibility for providing shelter...
...It is in the hands of producers, predominantly speculative builders...
...families...
...FHA and VA mortgage .nsurance, particularly on new construction...
...They have another common element: the initiative comes not from the consumer but from the producer...
...They are provided through the tax sys: em: deductibility for home owners of mortgage interest and local property taxes and, for investors, accelerated depreciation on rental housing and tax-free bonds issued by local housing authorities...
...Rural areas have been spared both the rhetoric and, except for the Farmer's Home drops in the bucket, the programs...
...Additional millions of households are living in housing that meets minimum standards of physical adequacy but costs far more than they can afford—again, 30, 40, 50 percent of their incomes or more...
...Most housing consumers have been priced out of the market, and more by local governments and governmental practices than by the builders...
...The first, and older, is represented by programs with broad standards of eligibility, available as a matter of right to all eligible people...
...Presumably, some legislation will emerge And third, any program that applies and, with a little luck, several 100,000 limited resources to problems of great magAmerican households with serious housing nitude must in some respect appear to be problems will get a little help...
...Thus housing is neither in the hands of government, except negatively—to prevent various "undesirable" things—nor in the hands of consumers...
...Second, there is no inexpensive way of Deal, and Great Society, which the Adproviding housing assistance to low-income ministration has sought to bury...
...Locally, they have prevented the introduction of subsidized housing or even of moderate-density zoning...
...The bundle of prejudices commonly know as the Protestant Ethic operates to reduce the role of government and extol the virtues of private enterprise and individual intiative...
...It should be reformed through provis' for greater tenant rights and participation, and through elimination of local vetoes over project location...
...So is the cost of new housing, which is often unavailable at hoped-for prices or in hoped-for locations...
...Reformers, often, see another...
...ncy is low-income, eligibility is far from an -stablished right, and payments differ from state to state...
...These fears have been translated into effective political power, at both the local and national levels...
...In suburban communities, housing for sale is beyond their means, and rental housing is often excluded under zoning laws or, if available, is exorbitant...
...A longtime truism has it that the last person to move into a suburban community wants to remain just that: the last person to move in...
...These programs are designed for predominantly middle-income and affluent people...
...They are likely to complain, even occasionally to withhold rent...
...mnd savings deposits in member institutions Af the home-loan banking system...
...Maintenance lags behind need...
...Our other direct housing programs have even less appeal...
...We must lay to rest the myth that housing is a private commodity best supplied by the private market...
...Home ownership is as impor tant as a symbol of self-determination as it is as a financial arrangement...
...The combination of our laws of eminent domain and federalsubsidy constraints forced public housing authorities into building high-density buildings in order to absorb the inflated site costs of compensating slumlords for the income stream they had been receiving from their former "investments...
...New housing, with few exceptions, is priced beyond the reach of all but the most affluent 20 percent of Americans...
...The crisis generated by these programs is not new: there always has been a need for health care...
...The Housing Act of 1968 put some con crete figures on the first half of the 1949 goal: "the decent home...
...Down payments have to be substantial, and interest costs over the life THE HOUSING STALEMATE of the mortgage are at least double the nominal cost of the house...
...Commonly, this is a debt difficult to pay at the outset and, with rising taxes and repair costs, often growing increasingly onerous...
...25,000 people...
...The type of structure—location and age and whether it CUSHING N. DOLBEARE is a single- or multi-family unit—is probably at least as important as tenure...
...6 million of these— the number of existing substandard units to be replaced—were to be subsidized...
...Thus the availability of land zoned for moderatedensity housing is the result of interaction between community people who don't want it, and builders, often with strong political influence, who do...
...nor does public housing provide a rallying point for those wishing to deal with housing problems...
...In 1970, by contrast, total health expenditures were $68 billion, 7 percent of the gross national product, and the public share was 37 percent, or $25 billion...
...Public housing was increasingly occupied by very poor families, often receiving most or all of their income from public assistance...
...Any movement that attempts to carry out such reform will be going against the grain of the system itself...
...This increase was prompted by two important decisions: to provide health services to elderly people, regardless of income, and to low-income people, regardless of age...
...If the inequities of our present total housing programs were to be demonstrated, and if there is genuine understanding of the nature and extent of our housing needs and the inadequacy of current public and private institutions to meet them—then we might, conceivably, achieve a successful housing program...
...Current rental costs are so high that it is difficult to make the necessary savings for a down payment...
...In housing, we may now be at the premedicare stage of health programs...
...For 30 years, local housing authorities were composed of builders, realtors, and bankers, with an occasional minister or other reformer thrown in—but they never included a lowincome person or a tenant...
...Public housing...
...The Housing Act of 1968, which resulted in a five-fold increase in the production of subsidized housing, was not alone the product of an awakened and aggressive lobbying effort by housing producers...
...They include income tax deductions for local property taxes, mortgage interest, and depreciation, the tax-free features of hous ng authority bonds...
...The current indignation over minimum rents in public housing is a tempest in a teapot compared to this inequity...
...Crudely stated, the House needs—in providing improved health ser bill, passed on June 20 by a vote of 351-25, vices, quality education, and a cleaner en represents a compromise with the Adminis vironment—housing simply will not receive tration in order to achieve some kind of fed a priority claim on the Nation's resources...
...The four years following the Housing Act of 1968 produced more subsidized units for moderate-income families than four decades of public housing efforts have produced for low-income families...
...Many housing authorities became less paternalistic and more genuinely responsive to tenant needs and concerns...
...While only crude estimates are available, it seems clear that housing subsidies for households with incomes above $20,000 are at least four times as great as housing subsidies for families with incomes below $3.000...
...Housing programs operate in an atmosphere of pervasive racism and prejudice against poor people...
...Indeed, the dis tinctions between rented or purchased hous ing are becoming increasingly blurred...
...dom, continuing, in spruced-up form, the To promise more is to raise false hopes housing programs of the New Deal, Fair among those we most wish to help...
...Two essentials, at least, need to be added: freedom of housing choice and ability to pay...
...Minority families and families on welfare have even less choice...
...One obvious answer to the problem of rising suburban costs—building either in inner cities or in rural areas—seems beyond the capacity of our present institutions...
...In order to try it now, it would be appropriate to provide for public financing, production, and operation of housing, at least for those who cannot afford decent private housing...
...Public housing's image has been determined by the large number of projects constructed in big cities during the 1950s and 1960s, mostly on cleared sites...
...When we decided, for better or worse, to reach the moon during the 1960s, we were not detained by cost or the problems that had to be solved in the process...
...Owners and builders see a third...
...Moreover, the most effective lobby for subsidized housing on Capitol Hill is now the National Association of Home Builders...
...Thus it grossly understates the crudest measurements of housing needs...
...Even those most insulated from the realities of American life could recognize that we could not solve our housing problems without spending some money...
...As almost everyone has a personal housing problem, our citizens find it difficult to sympathize with others who have different problems, and to support programs of no immediate personal benefit...
...It should be expanded through legislation guarantee ing both development and operating subsi dies and mandating sufficient production, acquisition, or rehabilitation to provide shelter for all low-income families needing it...
...The traditional supporters of public housing, represented most visibly by the National Housing Conference, have been largely reduced to haggling among themselves over whether they should continue to serve very-low-income people, or whether the route to housing salvation is through an economic mix—which translates in practice into eviction of the very poor (and therefore "undesirable") in favor of the less poor and upwardly mobile (or "desirable)" tenants...
...The true cost of federal housing subsidies, :ounting everything, is massive...
Vol. 21 • September 1974 • No. 4
