National Reports

...Neighborhood opposition to locating new projects in predominantly white localities has intensified, making acquisition of new public housing sites more difficult...

...The Housing Authority had the Times story reprinted for use in explaining its program...

...Among white applicants, the previous priority system applies...

...By the end of 1959, approximately 22 per cent of the tenantry was white, 58 per cent Negro and 20 per cent Puerto Rican...

...Public housing, because it is virtually the most important source of decent urban housing for non-white families, has provided some of the most vivid examples of community reaction to a rapidly growing colored tenancy...

...The $15.000-a-year position was the first of its kind and the pioneer selected to break new ground was Madison S. Jones, special assistant for housing to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who had already held race relations positions with the federal Fair Employment Practices Commission and the Federal Housing Administration...

...The Authority's problems are further complicated by the fact that its phase program is operating in the shadow of illegality...

...The phases can be summarized as: I—whites first...

...For projects in phase I, white applicants take absolute priority over Negroes and Puerto Ricans...

...III—non-whites first, half the time...

...Not all projects show this history...

...The priority given whites in phase I and the priority given non-whites in phase III are intended to complement each other, and both efforts have encountered comparable obstacles to success...

...This course of action leads to an inevitable question: If the Authority's means are not those it announces, can its ends be those it avows...

...It now houses more than 400.000 persons in 107.000 apartments...

...Since economic opportunities are better for whites, a growing proportion exceed the income limits...

...Because public housing allows the maximum governmental control over who is admitted into a housing development, it has also been a major battleground for advocates of various approaches to the integration problem...

...Under phase IV, Puerto Ricans take precedence over Negroes...

...Some staunch advocates of racial integration have pointed out, however, that in the case of housing, particularly, too many Negroes coming into an area can be as bad for integration as too few...

...For example, two projects located in Harlem were placed in phase I when the integration program began...

...Apartments have been held vacant, sometimes for months...

...Since Negroes and Puerto Ricans made up approximately 12 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively, of the city's population, the proportion in public housing was almost three times greater than in the city as a whole...

...The New York Times, which gives extensive coverage to housing news, inquired about the race relations program...

...The ultimate objective is the continued, large-scale expansion of public housing in New York City...

...For the Negroes and Puerto Ricans crowding into the city in increasing numbers, public housing has been the principal source of decent housing at prices they could afford...

...The white applicants who have accepted apartments where the majority of tenants were Negro and Puerto Rican have usually been older couples who have no children living with them...

...On the basis of a long interview with top Housing Authority executives the Times published a story beginning: "The City Housing Authority is trying to bring about racial balance in its public housing projects without resorting to the quota system...

...The means by which a public policy is executed are as important as the ends to which it is directed...

...This will include an examination of the racial aspects involved in all policies and operations—planning, site selection, tenant relocation, tenant selection, tenant relations and community relations...

...One vital point, however, remained unexplored: What are the effects on both the public housing program and the public it is supposed to serve, when the criterion of race takes priority over the criterion of need...

...When the city's largest public housing development, the 3,501-apartment Fort Greene Houses in the Navy Yard section of Brooklyn, was completed in 1944...

...When Chairman Reid and his two fellow board members, who constitute the Authority's governing triumvirate, appeared before the Federal Civil Rights Commission at hearings held in New York City in February 1959, they noted many of these problems...

...Madigan: 'No...

...The problems which confronted Jones have developed largely during the last decade, when most of the increase in non-white tenants has occurred...

...The courts would probably rule the Authority is also violating these laws...

...For projects in phase II...

...Non-whites, although they comprise the majority of applicants, therefore compete for a greatly decreased supply of low-rent apartments...

...we don't favor the quota system as such.' " The Authority's third board member, Ira S. Robbins, also testified...

...and the secretive efforts now being made to deal with the situation provide a unique case history of the north's race-housing dilemma...

...At the same time it has suggested to race relations organizations that integration would be furthered if non-white applicants requested apartments in developments where most tenants are white...

...In addition, almost half the families displaced by slum clearance for private and public housing have been non-white, many of whom have been admitted to public housing...

...in other instances, four-room apartments, which normally go to families with one or two children, have been rented to childless white couples willing to accept them...

...Since the growing non-white tenantry has created increasing opposition to the allocation of new public housing sites, the Authority has decided that, for whatever length of time may be necessary, it is in the best interests of furthering the public housing program to exclude a substantial proportion of those who may need such housing most...

...The integration problem is usually presented in terms of balancing two groups, whites and Negroes...

...Most of the phase II projects, in addition, are the low-rent, state or Federally subsidized projects where average monthly rentals run from $10 to .$18 per room...

...In addition, New York State law requires that preference in admission to state-subsidized projects be given to applicants displaced from the project site or living within a one-mile radius of a project...

...To cope with this problem, some have suggested a quota system, or other equivalent device...

...In February 1959, a new policy for selecting tenants was put into effect, its objective to control the number of whites and non-whites (Negroes and Puerto Ricans are both included in this category) admitted into each project...

...II—whites only...

...Non-white tenancy has always been low, largely because of rents...

...When the Authority tried to secure a substantial majority of whites in new projects accepting their first tenants, the degree of success again depended largely on the composition of the surrounding neighborhood...

...They have argued that more public housing there cements segregation and increases overcrowding when families are displaced for the new construction...

...By 1959, when the Housing Authority undertook to reverse this trend, Negroes constituted more than 39 per cent and Puerto Ricans more than 17 per cent of all public housing tenants...

...Phase III provides little compensatory advantage, not only because few non-white applicants are willing to pioneer integration far from their familiar environs, but also because almost all phase III projects are among the city-sponsored, middle-income developments, where average monthly rentals run from $18 to $24 per room...

...At the same time, some Negro community leaders have objected to any increase in the substantial number of public housing developments already located in Harlem...

...How can the white public be educated to understand and accept that the growing Negro and Puerto Rican population must inevitably become more widely distributed throughout the city...

...Eligible white families have increasingly refused to move into public housing unless it was clear their apartments would be in projects that were predominantly white...

...The New York City Housing Authority is the country's largest landlord...

...Viewed in these terms, the public disservice resulting from the Authority's equivocation becomes more apparent...

...Madigan: 'We would say that when the . . . white occupancy gets below 60 per cent that you have a marked increase in the movement of the whites.' "Commissioner Hesburgh: 'Do you adopt anything like a quota system?' "Mr...

...Phase III is in part the reverse side of phase I. These projects have a comparatively low proportion of non-white tenants and the authority is willing to allow the number to increase on a controlled basis...

...In recent years, the result of this open-rental policy has been a constant increase in the proportion of Negro and Puerto Rican tenants and a continuing decline in the percentage of white tenants...

...Madison S. Jones was quoted on the Authority's objectives: "We're trying to kill the idea that public housing is minority housing...

...In announcing Jones' appointment in July 1958, Authority chairman William Reid, New York City's first deputy mayor under William O'Dwver and currently one of Mayor Robert F. Wagner's appointees to the state commission investigating the city's operations, said that the new consultant "will be responsible for guiding the authority on race relations matters...

...There was more hope than expectation behind this effort...

...Whatever legal judgments may be rendered, the New York City Housing Authority has committed one of the prime bureaucratic sins in a democratic society—undertaking to act as a benevolent autocracy...

...Phase IV projects have substantially more Negro than Puerto Rican tenants, and most of these phase IV projects are already in phases I or II...

...Both Madigan and Robbins are lawyers who have held high posts with Government housing agencies...

...Do Negro and Puerto Rican community leaders know and accept that the consequence of the Housing Authority's integration program is the loss of access to a substantial amount of low-rent housing...

...For example: • Considering the acute shortage of low-rent housing for non-white families, and the effect of this shortage on efforts at slum clearance, to what extent is it desirable to divert part of this housing supply in order to serve a different social purpose...

...Most of New York City's public housing developments have been placed in one of three groups called "phases...

...Applicants are asked to list three projects in which they would prefer apartments...

...This February, one year after the New York City Housing Authority introduced its integration program, it added phase IV and undertook to try balancing three variables...

...Queens and the Bronx in predominantly white neighborhoods...

...Mr...

...The Authority has therefore found it necessary to appease both white and non-white groups...

...The efforts to increase the proportion of white tenants in public housing projects throughout New York City have met with both failure and success, depending on the area in which a project is located and the proportion of white families already living there...

...Many of the white families who once lived in public housing, especially the young, married veterans who moved in during the late "40s, have left for more expensive rental housing or bought suburban homes...

...Further, it has avoided consideration of what role the Authority, as the city's largest landlord, is best suited to play...

...No public announcement was made of this break with past policy...

...In seeking local support for new public housing in white neighborhoods, the Authority has assured community groups that the racial balance of the neighborhood would be maintained...

...Since 1939 the Housing Authority has been bound by the New York State public housing law, which forbids discrimination against applicants for public housing on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin...

...This means that, except for half a dozen combined phase II and IV projects which admit some Puerto Ricans, apartments becoming available in these projects are restricted to whites only...

...The Authority has followed two policies in phase II projects where there are not enough white applicants...

...By trying to promote racial integration, it is operating within the spirit of those laws that bar discriminatory treatment on the basis of race or color, but the courts would likely find the Authority is nevertheless violating state and city anti-bias laws by discriminating against Negro and Puerto Rican applicants...

...Abraham Lincoln Houses had about three white tenants out of 1,286 and Stephen Foster Houses about 31 out of 1,379...

...The ethnic composition of a project usually reflects the surrounding neighborhood, and there are projects, usually higher-rental ones, where whites continue to form a substantial majority...

...The new tenant selection program went into effect that same month...

...White applicants for phase I projects, in which non-whites predominate and often located in largely non-white neighborhoods, have been far fewer than needed to serve the program...

...An additional 40,000 apartments are in various stages of construction or design...

...Where Puerto Ricans are a factor, they are usually grouped with the Negroes...

...When no whites had applied after six months, both projects were dropped from the phase program...

...or, as in the case of some projects that had steadily maintained a 50 to 75 per cent white tenantry for a period of years, normal turnover provided the ethnic balance the Authority was seeking...

...The effect of this dual-phase program is to set up a preference sequence of whites, Puerto Ricans and Negroes in combined phase I and IV projects, and of whites and Puerto Ricans only in the combined phase II and IV projects...

...In New York City, where all urban dilemmas assume skyscraper dimensions, the effects of the growing proportion of Negro and Puerto Rican tenants on the public housing program, the muted but fierce debate over what to do about it...

...Negroes and Puerto Ricans together comprised the majority of tenants in 49 of the 87 projects then in operation...

...If we can get into this thing sensibly with the community groups, we can reverse the tendency towards segregation...

...Non-white applicants, therefore, are given first priority for one-third of the apartments becoming available in phase III projects...

...One-third of the city's public housing is now in phase II...

...About 15 projects were omitted from the phase program...

...As the non-white tenantry of most public housing projects has increased, there have been significant consequences...

...Under the new policy, the applicant's race, rather than need for housing, is the first consideration in most cases...

...As little as 10 per cent Negro or Puerto Rican tenantry would be regarded satisfactory for a project in a district that had been solidly white...

...no Negro or Puerto Rican applicant is accepted in any case...

...A Negro influx into a neighborhood or housing development usually starts a white exodus...

...Public housing is intended for low-income families, and Federal, state and city regulations under which the New York City Housing Authority operates limit tenancy to families earning no more than a set amount, depending on family size...

...Either, as in the case of some Harlem projects, no whites were expected to apply...

...Non-whites have been similarly reluctant to apply for phase III projects, many of which are located in comparatively outlying areas of Brooklyn...

...One commissioner, the Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, questioned the Authority's vice chairman, Francis V. Madigan, about the reaction of white tenants to non-white move-ins: "Is there a tendency for the white occupants to leave after the non-white occupancy goes to a certain level...

...If there are no white applicants for apartments in the available size, Negro and Puerto Rican applicants are then considered according to the regular priority system...

...Federal law provides that preference in admission to Federally subsidized projects be given to displaced families and to veterans' families...

...Whether some form of quota system should be introduced to keep the proportion of Negro and white tenants in equilibrium has been one of the most difficult questions confronting public housing officials in those northern cities where apartments have been rented on a nondiscrimiBERNARD ROSHCO was assistant director of public relations for the New York City Housing Authority...

...Seven months before, the Authority had announced to the press that it was going to develop an overall program for dealing with its race problem and the first step was the appointment of a consultant on race relations...

...To attract white tenants, it has established higher income limits for admission to new public housing projects and actively solicited white families to apply for apartments...

...If necessary, apartments are held vacant until suitable white applicants appear...

...The Authority's motivation is better understood once it is perceived that the integration program itself is largely a means to an end...

...The Authority has obscured the critical problem of how the nation's largest city will have to absorb the enormously expanded non-white population anticipated during the coming decades...

...It revised the old policy which carefully assigned priorities to applicants according to their need for housing...

...By operating behind a fog of semantic obscurantism, the Authority is avoiding the possibility that either its objectives or its methods might have to be revised in the light of public analysis and debate...

...Whatever the long-range benefits that may accrue from the integration program, the immediate result for non-white applicants is a sharp reduction in the number of apartments available...

...None of the board members, however, mentioned one of their proposed solutions: the new tenant selection program...

...NATIONAL REPORTS The Integration Problem and Public Housing By Bernard Roshco APART FROM those who worry about whom their sisters will marry, most persons concerned with racial integration interpret it to mean Negro admission into areas of the community previously closed to them...

...the tenantry was 83 per cent white, 17 per cent Negro and there were no Puerto Ricans...

...Still, the shift toward a non-white tenantry has been continuous and the reasons are easily explained...

...What the Authority meant by "racial balance" the Times reported as follows: "The Authority is working from the practical viewpoint that racial balance is not a hard and fast formula to be applied without modification in all parts of the city...

...natory basis...

...In the absence of white applicants during the phase period, non-whites continued to be given apartments...

...The first public description of the Authority's efforts to change the composition of its tenant body appeared in July 1959...

...Accepting racial integration as a legitimate objective of the Housing Authority, answers still have to be provided to a number of specific questions the Authority has skirted...

...Recently, this was increased to one-half the available apartments...

...And a white tenancy of 50 per cent would be considered well-balanced in a project where the surrounding community was now 90 per cent Negro and Puerto Rican...