Desegregating Public Housing
KILLINGSWORTH, MARK R.
NATIONAL REPORTS Desegregating Public Housing By Mark R. Killingsworth Chicago Sixteen years ago Mrs. Dor-othy Gautreaux moved from her home in Chicago's South Side Negro ghetto to Altgeld...
...Bounded by railroad tracks, the Dan Ryan Expressway, an industrial area, and a private development for Negroes that "will be a slum in 15 years," the Federally-financed Altgeld project is "a regular reservation," Mrs...
...If the court fight insures the location of future projects outside the Chicago ghetto, it will integrate Negro tenants into a city that is highly segregated residentially...
...of the Chicago Housing Authority (cha) board, vehemently argued against the approval of one proposed site at board meetings in late 1963 and early 1964...
...Since 1950, only one of the 32 sites for cha projects has had a surrounding population less than 95 per cent Negro, cha has also sold sites it once owned in white areas...
...cha's "free choice" tenant assignment policy permits applicants to reject suitable vacancies in the projects and to try again without losing their place on the waiting list...
...Theophilus M. Mann, the one Negro member Mark R. Killingsworth spent the summer with the Washington Post...
...Gautreaux may make hud more zealous in enforcing its new policy...
...The Federal District courts are now hearing Mrs...
...Attempting to end some of the segregation in public housing, hud told all local housing authorities in July 1967, that unless "at least two-thirds of the housing projects . . . are desegregated on more than a token basis," they must scrap their present tenant assignment policies and place applicants who turn down vacancy offers on the bottom of the waiting list...
...Bitter about what she calls the "prison-like" qualities of project living, Mrs...
...the haa regulations pursuant to Title VI [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
...Dor-othy Gautreaux moved from her home in Chicago's South Side Negro ghetto to Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project on the city's far southern edge, where the median income is $3,775 and monthly rent for a two-bedroom flat is about $65...
...This seems clear from the experience of Chicago's public housing for the elderly: After cha pledged to give first-preference in projects for the elderly to nearby residents (the Housing Assistance Administration made cha drop the policy in 1964, claiming it was discriminatory), the City Council gladly approved over a score of projects, more than half of them outside the ghetto...
...As Mrs...
...Under this policy, 84 per cent of cha's white families have concentrated in mainly white projects...
...At one 3,500-family project no security men are on duty from 1 a. m. to 9 a. m., and plans for a pilot project involving increased police protection were quietly killed last year...
...They argue that many eligible whites will not enter public housing simply because they fear Negroes...
...And two months ago, tenants in Washington filed a suit charging that projects there did not even meet city housing regulations...
...Title VI prohibits discrimination in Federally-aided programs...
...In 1966, the Massachusetts Advisory Commission to the U. S. Civil Rights Commission found similar tenant complaints about Boston public housing...
...While the new rule may avoid future concentration of whites in one or two projects, it is not likely to undo past segregation fostered by the "free choice" system...
...He accused the cha of "doing nothing more than extending the ghetto...
...It won't end, and might increase, white fears about entering mainly Negro projects, further reducing hopes for integrated public housing...
...But ironically, some of Chicago's housing experts are not sure that desegregated site selections alone will foster much integration...
...A stingy Congress and scarce resources pose the ultimate dilemma: Is it better to spend money on a smaller number of high quality, hopefully integrated projects, or to build public housing for the greatest number, sacrificing quality and the goal of integration...
...But desegregated site selection by itself may not foster much integration within the regular public housing system, for 93 per cent of its tenant families are Negro, making attempts at "integration" seem hopeless...
...Unless a greater number of eligible whites enter the system, public housing will become even less integrated...
...Like the University of Chicago?some of the students may not agree with its ideas, but they want the degree...
...In February 1967, the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing (ncadh) charged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (hud)—whose boss, Robert C. Weaver, is a past ncadh president?continues to approve the construction of public housing projects on sites and in areas which reinforce and perpetuate segregated living patterns...
...The legal battle of this widowed mother of five children points up a prime irony in the nation's 31-year-old public housing program: The Johnson Administration has obtained fair housing laws and has more than quadrupled the number of public housing units available in 1968-71 to 425,000...
...Boxed in by Chicago's segregated housing market, and pushed around by urban renewal programs, poor Negroes are limited to a choice between public housing and the ghetto...
...And last March the report of the Kerner commission said flatly, "To date, housing programs serving low-income groups have been concentrated in the ghettoes...
...Unrestricted by discrimination in housing, whites who could enter public housing don't...
...There are no legal precedents for the case, making its potential impact on public housing in Chicago and other cities enormous...
...One friend ignored the advice and found the living is not particularly gracious at cha's Robert Taylor Homes, sometimes ruefully called the "Congo Hilton" by Chicagoans...
...I beg my Mends not to go into the projects if it's at all possible," says Mrs...
...Gautreaux, however, along with many other public housing tenants, argues that eligible whites avoid public housing for only one simple reason: It's terrible...
...The result: Regular public housing is over 93 per cent Negro, but public housing for the elderly is only 48 per cent Negro...
...Tenants have plagued cha about inadequate facilities (elevators rarely work, washing machines often aren't available) and excessive utility bills...
...At first glance, therefore, the location of the projects seems to explain why whites are not in public housing—and how to attract them to it...
...The charge, incidentally, is not new, it has simply become more insistent in recent years...
...Gautreaux' suit alleging that the cha has "deliberately" situated its projects in Chicago's Negro ghetto "to avoid the placement of Negro families in white neighborhoods" (and the naacp has started a similar fight in Charlottesville, Virginia...
...And there lies the rub...
...Gautreaux wins her court fight, the cha's plans for a new 21-site, $54-million housing program would be blocked...
...In addition, hud would be barred from giving its usual financial aid to cha for the over 70 Federally-aided projects it now runs, cha would then be forced to turn these projects over to hud, and to submit any new site-selection plans to the courts for a ruling on whether they perpetuated segregation...
...You just level the horizontal ghetto and stack 'em up in a vertical ghetto," admits a Federal lawyer working on the Gautreaux case...
...But she adds that "building better projects is the best way to integrate them, even if some whites don't like Negroes...
...Thus some civic groups reluctantly—and privately—argue that if officials want integrated projects in Chicago, they will have to limit Negro occupancy to overcome white fears and attract more eligible white families...
...They point out that in mid-1954—before cha dropped a 20 per cent Negro "elastic quota" for its projects?7 per cent of the white families lived in mainly white projects and white families were 33 per cent of total tenants...
...A victory for Mrs...
...Gautreaux' attack on regular public housing probably contributed to the tighter hud site-selection standards announced in April 1967, which warn local authorities that "any proposal to locate housing only in areas of racial concentration will be prima facie unacceptable...
...Gautreaux comments dryly...
...The 100 per cent Negro high-rise cluster packs 4,328 families into an area where 2,500 lived previously...
...After the quota was scrapped in 1955, white concentration in mainly white projects rose to 84 per cent and the proportion of white families to total tenants dropped to 7 per cent...
...Tenants get "limited police protection, but not much," admits one cha official, even though this is cha's responsibility...
...Gautreaux feels strongly that "we have to push for good public housing whether it's integrated or all-black...
...If Mrs...
...Such huge high-rises, typical of Chicago public housing, overload nearby facilities, dominate the surroundings and antagonize the community, city planners note...
...But since the Public Housing Administration allowed cities to segregate public housing tenants by race when the program began, Federal funds were used to finance what is now the largest block of segregated housing in the country...
...They choose the former as the lesser evil...
...Virtually all observers agree that the 1,858 white families in Chicago's projects represent only a fraction of those eligible...
...When projects are located outside the Negro ghetto, whites are more willing to enter them...
...In an affidavit filed for the Gautreaux case, former cha executive director Alvin Rose explained that cha would not propose sites in white areas to the City Council because the Council had rejected such sites in the past and would do so in the future...
...Marie McGuire, commissioner of hud's Housing Assistance Administration, admitted in a September 1966, inter-office memorandum, "the effect, and in some cases the intent, of the tenant assignment practices of many local housing authorities is discrimination of the kind specifically prohibited under...
...It's 100 per cent Negro, and she and five other Negro public housing tenants are fighting a court case against segregated public housing...
Vol. 51 • October 1968 • No. 19
