Racial Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing

...These urban areas contain 33 per cent of the population and account for 45 per cent of the major crime, 55 per cent of the juvenile crime, 35 per cent of the fires and 45 per cent of total city costs, while yielding only 6 per cent of the tax revenues from real estate...

...Only one dissenting voice was heard in the general demand for government initiative...

...He described one of his projects in Cleveland, in which present FHA urban renewal financing would have required a rent of $110 for a two-bedroom garden apartment...

...There are frequently "two rents," the witnesses said—one "over the table" as reported to the State Rent Commission, and an additional rent "under the table...

...The population of these areas will increase by 50 per cent...

...Engel outlined in detail the tactics used to exclude Jews from some suburban and city areas...

...Over half the families displaced in urban renewal programs have been non-white persons who have almost no other housing to turn to, and the entire program has decreased the nation's housing inventory by 66,191 homes...

...It was duly registered by the Washington Recorder of Deeds, a Federal official...

...On February 2 and 3, in New York City, the Federal Civil Rights Commission held hearings on housing discrimination in New York City and Washington, D.C...

...Special assistance from the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie May") made it possible to offer the unit for $107...

...Many of the landlords, said the witnesses, are "absentees," living in Yonkers, Westchester County and New Jersey...

...Equal protection of the laws, he said, "must begin in the homes of all Americans...

...If a landlord wants to turn a tenement into cubicles and is prohibited by law from evicting the present tenants, a "suspicious fire" will sometimes occur, which will cause the building to be vacated...

...Frank C. Lowe, vice president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, stated that no problems had arisen from the open-occupancy policies in the company's large housing projects...

...Particularly since 1949, when New York City passed the nation's first anti-discrimination housing law, the groundwork of public understanding has been created that will make solutions possible...

...Scheurer stated that well over 500,- 000 units of government-insured housing have been built since World War II, less than one per cent of which was available to non-white residents...

...General James Andrews, testifying for the Real Estate Board of New York, opposed legislation requiring private owners to observe non-discriminatory policies...

...NATIONAL REPORTS Racial Discrimination In Metropolitan Housing By Ralph Lee Smith "No PART of the land hereby conveyed shall ever be used, or occupied by, or sold, demised, transferred, convey unto, or in trust for, leased, or rented, or given to Negroes or any person or persons of Negro blood or extraction, or to any person of the Semitic race, blood or origin...

...At a time when many Americans are just beginning to' 'become aware of the moral and economic dimensions of this problem, the witnesses before the Commission provided a remarkable record of the efforts of minority AmeriRALPH LEE SMITH, a free-lancer, has written for the Reporter, the Atlantic Monthly and the Reader's Digest...

...Restrictive covenants, declared unenforceable by the Supreme Court, are nevertheless used and observed, and often devices are used to punish a realtor who fails to honor them...

...At the center of these evils the witnesses found a failure of the Federal Government to accept responsibilities that clearly devolve upon it through the activities it is already committed to in the housing field...

...Yet the race relations staff of the Urban Renewal Administration has decreased from five specialists to one, and neither the Administrator's staff nor any of the regional offices has a race-relations expert...

...He also called for more imaginative government financing policies, which would make urban renewal possible at lower rents...

...which racial description shall be deemed to include Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Persians and Syrians, except that this paragraph shall not be held to exclude partial occupancy of the premises by domestic servants of the occupants thereof...

...After redevelopment, servicing cost will drop to $100,000 and taxes will jump to $2.75 million...

...By 1975, Scheurer said, 90 per cent of America's population will live in metropolitan areas, where segregation is presently in effect...

...We are talking about the face of America," said Rev...

...cans to compete freely for decent shelter, and not only in those cities...

...We sometimes despair of obtaining the benefits of liberty and the democratic way," said Canino...

...Even some integrated areas are being destroyed to make way for segregated housing...

...As several witnesses pointed out, the Federal Government is the largest single factor in America's housing picture today...

...The Government, said Algernon D. Black, Chairman of the New York State Committee on Discrimination in Housing, a coordinating agency of 39 civic organizations, is the single most important factor in the housing picture...

...A significant fact that emerges from the sheaves of documents presented to the Commission is the failure of the Federal Government to assume responsibility for what it does in the housing market...

...In a city like New York, the intelligent owner of rent-oontrolled property will "naturally cut down on maintenance" because the law and its administrators do not take "adequate notice of the owner's financial requirements...

...The real-estate man is "primarily a businessman, not a reformer...

...He cited a slum site he is redeveloping in St...

...However, he stated that in almost every major American city or its suburbs, neighborhoods exist in which devices are used to prevent Jews from buying homes or renting apartments...

...To facilitate its population count, the Bureau of the Census subdivides cities into geographical districts of more or less equal population sizes, called census tracts...

...In 74 per cent of the census tracts in the city there are either no Negroes at all or fewer than one in a hundred...

...Discrimination creates and worsens slums, since tenants displaced from minority slum areas by new building projects have nowhere to go...

...Black also cited a New York Times report of November 14, 1958, quoting Albert Cole, recently-resigned head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency: "It is not incumbent upon the Federal Government to impose integration in any form of Federal housing that receives Government aid...

...This urban renewal program has become the keystone of Federal housing activities...

...Where state laws prohibit discrimination in housing, the erection of luxury apartments on the sites of former slums has the effect of nearly complete segregation and intensification of the modern urban problem...

...Additional "search fees" are charged to new Puerto Rican arrivals...

...Over 70 per cent of New York City Negroes live in 4.7 per cent of the city's census tracts...

...Hesbergh, "and that face must have the beauty and dignity and harmony of the Constitution...

...Integrated housing, he added, is a financially dangerous undertaking for a businessman, and should not be compelled by law...

...In common with many other witnesses, Scheurer foresaw problems of "catastrophic proportions" within a decade or two unless action is begun now on segregation...

...He noted the numerous efforts of civic leaders and organizations to secure the end of discrimination in Federally-assisted housing, and pointed out that President Eisenhower and other Administration officials had repeatedly promised equal opportunity in such housing—promises as yet unfulfilled...

...Progress has been notably peaceful, which augurs well for the future, especially with strong moral leadership from the Government...

...Additional dimensions of the problem were presented to the Commission by Ronton Martinez and Pedro Canino, representing 54 Puerto Rican and Spanish civic, social, cultural, religious and fraternal organizations in New York City, and by Irving M. Engel, President of the American Jewish Committee...

...People want segregation, and to stop it would be the end of freedom...

...Such policies create slums, "a costly luxury...

...Black went on to report that even in public housing, which has been almost the only source of new housing for Negroes, 80 per cent of all projects are segregated...

...Civic organizations cited extensive studies to show that the assumption is largely a legend...

...Louis, which presently yields $300,000 in taxes and costs the city $200,000 to service...

...Segregation, he suggested, is largely voluntary...

...It spends tremendous sums of money, but so far has not recognized its obligation to prohibit discrimination in publicly-assisted housing...

...The areas of Negro congestion are also the areas that report the highest rates of tuberculosis and infant mortality, the greatest incidence of fires and disproportionately high rates of juvenile delinquency...

...If it could have been financed under the type of financing available in New York under State programs, the apartment could have been offered for $79...

...The Urban League of Greater New York went into detail to give the Commission a picture of how segregation works in one city...

...Theodore Hesbergh, President of Notre Dame University and a member of the Commission, as "particularly disturbing and moving," gave the Commission a graphic description of housing conditions in "Spanish Harlem...

...Many witnesses noted that great progress has been made since the end of World War II...

...American cities, Scheurer said, cannot be renewed unless discrimination is discontinued...

...Racist policies in Federally-assisted housing have created a moral vacuum within which genuine advances have been rendered exceedingly difficult...

...Sometimes several hundred dollars are charged "for the key...

...The language of the deed, and the fact that it was given official status as a matter of oourse, typify the barriers that hinder progress toward equality of opportunity in housing in America...

...Many pioneering steps have been taken, and in many areas Negroes are entering white communities for the first time...

...James H. Scheurer, sponsor of urban renewal projects worth nearly $100 million, stated that racial discrimination in the housing industry is simply bad business...

...Twenty-five years of Government- sponsored segregation and the continued support and sanctioning of housing segregation by the Federal Government have left theii mark," he said...

...New segregated units are being planned, approved and constructed...

...He noted that Jewish exclusion is not universal, and that discriminatory and non-discriminatory areas sometimes exist side by side...

...Taking a nation-wide view, the League reported that slums and blighted areas, bred to a great extent on segregation, are a maj or problem in 20 per cent of America's urban areas...

...Such renewal, possible only when segregation is defeated, is the only way forward for America's cities, Scheurer said...

...General Andrews assumption about the financial infeasibility of open occupancy policies by builders and realtors was challenged many times by the statements and facts presented by other witnesses...

...Under such policies, Black stated, entire Negro neighborhoods are being wiped out to make room for housing restricted to whites only...

...Speaking for the Commission, Rev...

...Under such circumstances, urban renewal can increase blight...

...In one instance, the Public Housing Administration is a co-defendant in a lawsuit by a Negro who has sought in vain to enter a Public Housing project...

...The tuberculosis death rate in the city is 20 per 100,000 for whites and 91 per 100,000 for non-whites, "largely because of congestion in segregated (slum) areas...

...Martinez and Canino, in a presentation described by the Rev...

...This clause appears in a property deed signed in Washington, D.C., in 1955—seven years after the Supreme Court had declared such restrictive covenants unenforceable...

...Hesbergh said at the end of the hearings that it had been demonstrated beyond a doubt that the problem was national in its scope and implications...

...It will then be "reconverted," with the landlord realizing 1,000 per cent or more profit on the "improvements...

...Old tenements are broken up into tiny rooms, in violation of the law, and seven or eight persons are boused in each room, each paying a weekly rent of $10 or more...