Demonstration in the Cities

...Or do you concentrate on making the ghettos liveable through rehabilitation-a policy which postpones racial integration until at least the next generation...

...The virtual autonomy, under HHFA, of the Federal Housing Administration and the Public Housing Administration was cut down, and the Secretary, through a deputy secretary and four assistant secretaries, was given direct administrative authority over the entire department (except the Federal National Mortgage Association...

...The emphasis will be on rehabilitation-as opposed to razing-of as many buildings as possible, and on attaining the "maximum feasible participation" of the residents of the target neighborhoods in all phases of the project...

...The biggest battle we are fighting today," Vice President Hubert Humphrey has declared, though with slight exaggeration if budget figures are a guide, "is not in South Vietnam...

...He also insisted on absolute secrecy: He wanted none of the "big thoughts" leaking out prematurely, as a plan for sharing Federal taxes with the states had spouted out of a task force under Walter Heller...

...One of the prime goals of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is to eliminate, as much as possible and as fast as possible, the racial ghettos like Harlem and Watts, and the less explosive but equally blighted slum neighborhoods that mar thousands of medium- and small-sized American cities...

...That Weaver wears a more somber mien in the face of such dilemmas than might a white liberal with the outward enthusiasm of, say, a Sargent Shriver, has probably hurt him politically...

...Probably, though, the extent to which the more impoverished Negroes desire to move into integrated neighborhoods has been exaggerated...

...Conflict was most intense over the Community Action program-the heart of Shriver's Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO...

...The results were, in March 1965, the first Presidential message ever to be devoted exclusively to the problems of cities, and a series of legislative proposals highlighted by the bill to create HUD and by the controversial rent supplement program (which Congress approved but has not yet funded...

...To appease Washington officialdom the Demonstration Cities Act contains a clause admonishing the coordinators not to perform "any function or duty vested by law in any department or agency of the Federal government" other than HUD...

...The thornier of the task force's two assignments was Executive reorganization...

...Shriver's supporters-led inside the task force by Kermit Gordonargued that Community Action would lose its identity as the keystone of the war on poverty, fall too much under the influence of big city mayors, and become lost in the bureaucracy if it were transferred over to HUD...

...In the end, all but two members of the task force (Gordon and Young) voted to recommend the transfer...

...he was the only holdover from Johnson's 1964 task force on urban affairs...

...Besides knocking heads together in the target area, the local Demonstration agency will provide a coathanging place for a new type of Federal official, the resident project coordinator, perhaps the most radical administrative innovation in HUD'S new approach to slums...

...and Senator Ribicoff...

...Quite possibly, the President's recent request for a Transportation Department, if it ever gets off the ground, may even result in HUD'S losing a substantial part of its domain, the mass transit program...

...or to OEO for a community action grant...

...This involves, as Johnson has noted, more than just building public housing units, financing private developers, and knocking down tenements and putting up shopping centers or high-rent apartments...

...Since the Demonstration grants will supplement other grants from various Federal departments under existing programs, there should be no shortage of money...

...But urban renewal by itself did not, and could not, provide the social tools to make cohesive new communities out of ghettos...

...Since the early 1960s, urban renewal has taken on what its advocates call "new directions...

...Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League...

...Walter P. Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers union...

...There has also been a much greater concern for the well-being of families that have to be relocated...

...Congress has been asked to finance the Demonstration Cities program with $2.3 billion in appropriations, starting with a mere $12 million this year for planning...

...Some city halls fear a potential "supermayor" or Federal "commissar...

...In any case, the rent supplement program, which leaves the ghettos largely untouched, is designed to create dispersed housing to accommodate those low-income families that want it...

...Robert C. Wood, now undersecretary of HUD, was put in charge...

...William F. Rafsky, a Philadelphia economist and developer...

...Thus the coordinator might help the Demonstration agency apply to HEW for funds to build a school in the target area...

...Neither has fulfilled its pledge of giving a decent home to every American...

...Ben W. Heineman, chairman of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad...

...Other members of the panel were Kermit Gordon, former director of the Budget Bureau...

...Hopefully, the on-site coordinators will be an effective substitute for the administrative disarray prevailing in Washington...

...The success of the Demonstration Cities program-given appropriation of the required funds-will depend on the ability of the Federal bureaucracy to cooperate smoothly, and on the capacity of the cities to respond, HUD plans to decentralize its cumbersome operations, giving more power to regional directors and thus speeding up decisionmaking...

...Nevertheless, a month after he signed HUD into existence, Johnson rounded up another task force and handed it the double assignment of recommending a reorganization of the Executive branch, and developing a new anti-slum program...

...As one HUD official put it, "the challenge of federalism today is that the locals have the problems, the states have the authority, and we, the feds, have the money...

...he plans, wisely, to hold more press conferences than he did in the past...

...Yet in terms of merit, probably no one in the country is more qualified to lead the war on slums than Weaver...

...Johnson's decision to attempt reorganization was, in fact, something of an afterthought, since HUD, as his original bill had designed it and Congress, with some misgivings, had approved it, was little more than a streamlined HHFA...

...It is a plan that HUD hopes to execute fastin six years, with maybe a little more time to tie up loose ends...

...The Demonstration project can only succeed with the full cooperation of many city departments...

...In response to mounting criticism, it has shifted toward rehabilitation of rundown housing rather than demolition, in order to minimize the displacement of families...

...it would be senseless if city hall did not control the Demonstration agency...

...There is the question, too, of whether the Demonstration Cities program will speed or detain the rate of integration in housing...

...or to the Small Business Administration for a small business development center...

...In attacking the problems of big urban ghettos, for example, do you tear down the slums and relocate tenants in other (hopefully integrated) neighborhoods-a process which disrupts community life and has been assailed as "Negro removal...

...Instead of the helter-skelter HHFA grants of recent years (a beautified park here...

...This is HUD'S battle-plan for the war on slums...

...The task force also recommended placing the air pollution program (but not water pollution) of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) under HUD...

...In addition, HUD will be a crucial link in our rapidly evolving Federal system...

...How to go beyond these programs, which except for relocation, were strictly limited to bricks-andmortar or dollars-and-cents, and to build the Great Society in place of poverty and slums, was the challenge President Johnson confronted shortly after taking office...

...Weaver's frankly cautious point of view is founded on years of experience in the housing field...

...These programs may or may not be administered by HUD...

...Weaver recently assured mayors that the resident coordinator will be "your coordinator, not mine...

...The function of the coordinator, as his name implies, will be to help the local Demonstration agency take advantage of all Federal programs and funds relevant to the Demonstration project...

...Johnson's first task force on urban affairs took up the problem in the late months of 1964...

...Getting the cities to respond presents problems also-especially since most of the 60-70 communities selected will be under 250,000 population, and probably will not possess the administrative talent, and possibly not even enough building contractors, to handle a large Demonstration project, HUD plans to establish urban training institutes for local government personnel and the potential importance of these institutes cannot be overstated...

...He is keenly aware that many of the goals of slum clearance are mutually conflicting...

...This means hiring local contractors and social workers, putting neighborhood representatives on the boards of the Demonstration agencies, and providing, along with rehabilitated dwellings, new community facilities and activities: schools, neighborhood centers, job training courses, birth control clinics, and so on...

...The net effect of Johnson's late-starting try to expanding HUD was thus nil...

...a public housing project there, and a health center somewhere else), HUD will inject, if Congress approves, massive doses of Federal aid into 60-70 selected urban neighborhoods around the country...

...the big city mayors would have liked one of their own in the Cabinet, or at least a more effective lobbyist for their interests than they consider Weaver to be...

...This the President rejected too...

...A pilot project of this type on 114th street between Seventh and Eighth avenues in Manhattan, though small in scope and still in its early stages, has won the support of residents and begun to uplift the block physically and socially...

...Jack Conway, an aide to Reuther and an ex-deputy director of OEO who had his differences with Shriver, urged the task force to recommend transferring Community Action to HUD to give the department a more humanized tone, and to enable it to provide the important social activities that would be a major part of its new slum elimination program...

...President Johnson, it is widely believed, would have preferred as Secretary of HUD a man with a fresher, more dynamic appeal than Weaver...

...Johnson directed the task force to "think big" and to leave the political repercussions to him...

...Federal bureaucrats, and congressmen too, see possible infringement of their domains...

...Whatever ardent integrationists may think, this approach, coupled with an extension of the ban on discrimination in Federally-aided housing, is probably the only meaningful approach to integration that is politically feasible today...

...The new department Weaver heads has before it a myriad of urban problems besides slums...

...How much success they will have with Federal officials outside of HUD is, of course, a major question mark...

...One man who is not a starry-eyed optimist about conquering slums overnight is Robert C. Weaver, the first Secretary of HUD and former administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA...

...But in the short run, the shortage of local know-how may prove to be a bottleneck...

...Clearly, the emphasis is not on dispersion, but on improving the quality of life within existing neighborhoods-including ghettos...

...The local Demonstration agency that will run each project will be a broadly based group of public officials and neighborhood representatives, which in essence will combine the roles of a community action agency and a redevelopment authority, (HUD will not jump into OEO'S hornet's nest, however, by demanding a majority of poor on the board...

...Some members of the task force wanted to put the Community Relations Service into HUD, but the President had already decided to place it under Justice, and that matter was closed...

...Can HUD win the war on slums...

...but Johnson leaked word that Community Action would stay where it is for the time being-most likely because he is not prepared to emasculate OEO as long as Shriver is its chief...

...HEW, at least, has indicated at the upper level that it views the Demonstration projects as ideal for school funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act...

...But as Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D.-Conn...

...It was thought at the beginning that many of the Federal programs affecting urban areas might be combined under one roof, as the original bill had failed to do...

...Edgar F. Kaiser, president of Kaiser Industrial Corporation...

...Meanwhile, the Demonstration projects, though they will not attract many whites into present Negro ghettos, will, if successful, raise the aspirations and incomes of Negro residents, and make next-generation integration both more likely and less painful...

...In the number of human lives that will be directly affected, however, HUD'S most urgent task is to implement President Johnson's promise to replace slums with wholesome, stimulating communities...

...The toughest battle is the battle in our cities-the battle to give our people active participation in the life of the nation...

...One of his many new chores as Secretary must be to bring his public image into line with his true abilities...

...With the establishment of HUD by Congress last September, the opportunity arose for Johnson to do two things: launch a truly frontal attack on slums that would take advantage of the experience gained in the "new directions" phase of urban renewal and in the war on poverty...

...Already the spectre of the resident coordinators has given chills to mayors and to civil servants on the Potomac...

...It will deal, as did HHFA, with mass transit, metropolitan planning, urban beautification, mortgage financing, and construction of community facilities...

...More money may be raised through a $3 billion rotating fund financed by bonds...

...Peter Barnes covers Washington for the Lowell, Massachusetts Sun...

...and others had pointed out when the bill was before Congress, HUD was much narrower in scope than previous proposals for a Department of Urban Affairs, because it failed to absorb any of the dozens of urban-oriented Federal programs outside HHFA...

...Charles M. Haar, now assistant secretary of HUD for metropolitan planning and formerly of Harvard Law School...

...Federally supported public housing has been in business for over a quarter of a century, and urban renewal for nearly two decades...

...While Johnson did not go along with the task force's proposals on Executive reorganization, he wholeheartedly adopted its plan to make war on slums-the so-called demonstration cities program...

...but this approach soon encountered practical difficulties...

...and reorganize the Federal bureaucracy in such a fashion that the Great Society program as a whole would not get bogged down in red tape...