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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 15. The Negro in the Public Economy - 6. Public Housing Policies
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352 An American Dilemma
but also additional space, and that both old and new Negro areas become
better planned.
In the North, on the other hand, there is some chance that the evils of
segregation can be removed by means of the gradual abolition of housing
segregation itself. In some Northern places, such as New York City and
Albany, there are already projects where white and Negro tenants live
scattered within a single project.®®
Another major problem concerns the financial feasibility of building sub-
sidized housing projects for all families who, for economic reasons, are
suffering from bad housing conditions. The American public needs to know
whether or not this program will ever solve the entire housing problem for
all low income households, or whether it is just going to assist a more or
less arbitrarily selected small part of the ill-housed families. This problem
has not been adequately faced.® Yet a complete financial plan is essential
for a rational continuation of the program, as well as for the purpose of
convincing the American public that continuation is worth while.
Connected with this matter is the problem of tenant selection. The
U.S.H.A. rehouses only families between an upper and a—somewhat
unofficial—slower income limit. A great number of relief families are
“The average federal net subsidy (gross subsidy minus government profit on loans),
according to the U.S.H.A., amounts to $77 per family per year. (Federal Works Agency,
Second Annual Reforty 1941,) In addition, there are municipal subsidies, usually in the form
of tax exemptions, averaging $60 (ibid., pp. 145 and i6oj United States Housing Authority,
“What Does the Housing Program Cost?” [1940], pp. 14-15), which makes a total subsidy
of about $137. This means that over 7,000,000 families, or one-fifth of the total in the
United States, can be rehoused for an annual cost of $1,000,000,000. It would be necessary,
in addition, to make all relief benefits high enough to enable all recipients of public assistance
to pay the rents in public housing projects. Such a large program, however, would involve
rural families, for which the cost certainly would be considerably smaller. Also, its comple-
tion would require several decades. The general income level may be so much higher at the
end of this period that the assistance could be restricted to a much smaller number of families.
Possible cuts in building and other costs may have the same effect. Even under present
conditions, it is doubtful whether the number of households which, for economic reasons,
suffer from intolerably bad housing conditions, is really so large j it should be kept in mind
that some slum families have incomes which would enable them to purchase adequate housing
if they only cared for it. Since the building of the projects ought to be concentrated in
periods of unemployment, a substantial part of the cost should be charged to the unemploy-
ment relief budget, and not to the housing budget. In other words, as unemployed construc-
tion workers must be given jobs on public works programs during depressions, the cost for
rehousing slum families is reduced by the utilization of these “free services.”
A real cost estimate should include quite a number of such considerations: the future
trend in number and size of rural and urban families j the extent to which bad housing con-
ditions are caused by factors other than low income j
the intensity of the need of various
groups living in substandard houses} the extent to which existing houses can be utilized for
subsidized families. Our unpretentious experiment with figures has been made in order
to bring home one point: that it is not economically impossible to give the whole people
a certain minimum standard of housing.
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