To the Editor:
In his review of The Seventies: Problems and Proposals, edited by Irving Howe and Michael Harrington [Books in Review, March], Elliott Abrams, who was not very happy about the book as a whole, singled out for special critical mention our chapter, “What Do We Want Right Now: Legislative Proposals for Reform.” He was most upset by our housing proposals. We had suggested that everyone be given the opportunity to own or share in the ownership of the housing in which he lives. We believe that ownership of housing should be limited to those who occupy the housing or to community institutions (except in the case of small, owner-occupied, multi-family dwellings). Legislation phasing ownership of rental units to tenants and to the community should be introduced, providing just compensation to landlords and realtors. Immediate authorization and funding should be provided to enable community institutions, including cooperatives or nonprofit or limited dividend companies, to acquire and operate the large number of residential structures presently abandoned.
Even COMMENTARY’s reviewer ought to admit that this is an innovative proposal, in no way resembling efforts which the U.S. so far has made in the field of housing. (His chief complaint about our legislative proposals for the 70’s was that they were simply the warmed-over proposals of the 60’s.)
The business of providing housing for low and moderate-income areas is no longer a good business, no longer economically viable, which explains why private investment money is not flowing into it. Every city has its blocks of abandoned buildings—many in good condition until they were abandoned. They are empty, and they will remain empty, because their tenants could not afford to pay the rents which their landlords had to have in order to maintain the buildings and make some kind of profit.
At present a built-in adversary relationship creates distrust between tenant and landlord—exacerbated when the landlord is white and the tenants are non-white. The tenant, in any case, has no particular incentive to look after the landlord’s interests, and the landlord, in turn, cannot afford to be sentimental about his tenants: he is trapped by the economics of the situation: rising costs.
It is notable that among upper- and upper-middle-income groups the trend toward condominium living is accelerating. We are proposing to apply condominium economics to low- and middle-income housing. When tenants become owners, as in condominiums, their viewpoint shifts, affecting their motivation, as they must balance their needs and desires against maintenance and other costs. Many problems remain, but at least everybody is going in the same direction.
One other difference should be noted. Although people in low-income neighborhoods are poor, the high density of such neighborhoods means that money is there, and in considerable quantity. Approximately one third of the money in a low-income neighborhood goes into rent—and promptly goes out of the neighborhood, in the usual landlord-tenant relationship. When tenants become owners, more of the money circulates, at least for a time, within the neighborhood. . . .
In a more general criticism, the reviewer calls our legislative proposals a rehash of programs and proposals of the Great Society. True: in this chapter we are talking about the unfinished business of the 60’s—and in some cases the 50’s and the 40’s as well. Mr. Abrams has fallen into a trap designed by President Nixon, who once more has proved that any statement, no matter how patently false, will be accepted as true if repeated often enough. In this case the myth is that the nation spent billions on New Frontier and Great Society programs—enormous chunks of money which have disappeared down the rathole of welfare-ism. The plain truth, of course, is that we have never yet committed the resources of the nation to any war on poverty of the same magnitude as, say, a Manhattan project or an Apollo program. Until we do so, we cannot say we have tried money. The nation was able to spend $25 to $35 billion per year in Vietnam, in an undeclared war in which U.S. interests were obscure, at best—more than we spent on education, for example, in ten years. To borrow a thought, funding vast programs to deal with our problems hasn’t failed; it’s just never been tried.
One last carping note: the reviewer likes the rest of our proposals (rehash and all) but complains that they do not “embody a uniquely ‘socialist’ view.” He’s right; they don’t. They weren’t supposed to. These are legislative proposals aimed at the U.S. Congress, steps to be taken now, in an imperfect world, while the central committee is trying, presumably, to design a better one.
Leon Shull
Stina Santiestevan
Americans for Democratic Action
Washington, D.C.
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To the Editor:
Elliott Abrams . . . criticizes the housing recommendations given in The Seventies: Problems and Proposals. . . . It would seem, though, that Mr. Abrams’s comments indicate a lack of knowledge on his part about subsidized housing programs in this country. He suggests that “the federal housing program has collapsed amid scandal.” But if there is a “collapse” in federal housing programs, it is because this administration has decided to suspend all subsidized housing programs for eighteen months, not because the programs themselves are unworthy. There have been problems with subsidized housing programs in this country but there also have been significant successes, the most important of which is providing several million people with decent and adequate housing that otherwise would not be available on the private market. . . .
The reference to “scandals,” it seems to me, reflects not on the subsidized housing mechanisms but on the management and administration of those federal programs. We did not end the federal involvement in housing mortgage insurance through FHA when we had the “608” scandals of the early 50’s. We did not stop our federal highway program when scandals came to light in many states in the early days of that program.
Before the existing subsidized housing programs are abandoned, it would seem only reasonable to evaluate carefully these programs and hammer out new or revise existing programs so that we do not fall farther behind in meeting the needs of our low-income citizens. It should be emphasized that there has never been a reasonable level of funding in our subsidized housing programs to meet our needs.
Edward N. Helfeld
Housing and Redevelopment Authority of the City of Saint Paul
Saint Paul, Minnesota
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To the Editor:
I find it interesting that Elliott Abrams should profess to be unable to understand why socialists continue to espouse the big-spending, bureaucratic programs of the 60’s instead of, for example, income redistribution through direct payments. The reason (for socialists as well as for a broad liberal-Left range of opinion) is easily understandable in the context of what Irving Kristol terms the “embarrassingly vulgar” reality of the aspirations of the New Class. For, while income-support programs are egalitarian, they in no way promote the objective interests of the New Class. Their purpose and effect is to redistribute wealth from private individuals to other private individuals, not to the state and its bureaucracy.
In fact, it could be argued that a genuine redistribution of wealth and power in America would be as much anathema to the New Class as to more traditional centers of reaction. For—while generalizations may be unfair to some individuals—the protagonists of Left politics represent a counter-oligarchy. Admittedly, they do not think of themselves in this way; their intentions (at least their conscious intentions) are benign. They define their functions—planning, regulation of private interests, provision of social services—as synonymous with social justice, and in any given place and time these definitions may, in fact, be valid. But power remains the objective, and it should surprise no one that the accumulation of it in their own hands should remain the dominant feature of the agenda of a great many of those who profess to be working for a more just society.
John McAdams
Columbus, Mississippi
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To the Editor:
. . . Elliott Abrams writes: “It is now a commonplace to state that the Great Society represented an attempt to solve social problems by throwing money at them and that it largely failed.” Yet Michael Harrington, among others, has been . . . quite persuasive in knocking down this view. . . . His argument is that the money promised for the Great Society programs was never really delivered except in two areas—Medicaid and an increase in Social Security—which received wide support from moderate liberals. Harrington seems to be suggesting that money on the scale needed for real social reform won’t be forthcoming until the Left can persuade moderate liberals that the money will be well used. As long as moderates are able to delude themselves into thinking that somehow the “money” approach was tried and it failed, then there is little hope for any practical program of social reform.
Robert Chappetta
New York City
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Elliott Abrams writes:
The more Leon Shull and Stina Santiestevan explain their housing proposal, the less sense it makes. If they are suggesting merely that we aid people to own their own homes, this idea is far from innovative. It is embodied in sections 235 and 236 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and it is precisely the scandals surrounding these programs which I had in mind when I criticized the federal housing mess. If they are actually suggesting that privately owned rental housing be prohibited by law and that all housing ownership be limited to occupants or community groups, then I stand corrected. Their proposal is not only “innovative,” but positively astounding. To state but a few of the objections which jump to mind: The proposal is highly coercive and ignores the millions of people who prefer living in rental housing. It would presumably forbid further construction of rental units by private owners, thus drying up a significant source of new housing units. It would create disorder in the capital market while hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages and loans had to be shifted around, and this again would undoubtedly lead to a decrease in new construction. Finally, it is not in any case clear that home ownership is a good idea for people with very low incomes, who may be unable to afford the repair and maintenance costs required. The idea of encouraging home ownership is not new, but the notion that this must be the sole federal housing program is startling in its inflexibility and lack of appreciation of the realities of the housing problem.
The ADA spokesmen do not analyze the successes or failures of the section 235 and 236 programs, nor of the federal housing effort in general. They simply present their plan, and both its immeasurable ramifications and staggering costs go un-discussed. I am therefore led to restate the questions I asked in my review: Where is the necessary appraisal of which programs have worked and which failed? Where, amid all the talk of priorities, is an evaluation of which programs are worthy of the political capital at one’s disposal, which merely peripheral?
Nowhere in my review did I imply that major social problems could be solved without large expenditures of federal funds. If I thought that parsimony were a central virtue, I would most likely be a Republican, which I am not. What I do object to is the massive expenditure of funds on programs that are untested, unrealistic, or, worse, already clearly unsuccessful. And I do object to the notion that programs which were failures or partial failures at $10 billion, would uniformly have been successes if only their size had been doubled. It is true that not enough was spent on Great Society programs to solve all our social problems; but it is also true that quite enough was spent to prove that many of the programs were poorly designed and poorly implemented. Until liberals like these ADA spokesmen (and Robert Chappetta) realize and admit this, and stop harping on the need to spend more, Mr. Nixon and his associates will continue to win elections.
The ADA spokesmen are not to be criticized for submitting to Congress a set of proposals which are not “uniquely socialist.” My point was that Mr. Howe and Mr. Harrington presented no legislative program which was socialist, but instead borrowed one intact from the liberals. One might infer from this that socialists have no legislative suggestions of their own which are politically realistic, and that is precisely the inference I drew.
Several of Edward N. Helfeld’s points are well taken. The difficulties of the subsidized housing programs were largely the result of poor management and administration. There were some more serious problems as well, however; for example, Anthony Downs has argued that the 235 home-ownership program should include a minimum-income requirement, excluding those who truly cannot meet maintenance costs and thus are likely to default on their mortgage payments. In any case, Mr. Helfeld is correct in saying that careful evaluation of new and existing programs is what is needed, and not the Nixonian freeze on all subsidy programs. And he is correct in saying that if we wish to provide good housing for all our citizens, expenditures on housing subsidies will surely have to rise.
I am in general agreement with John McAdams’s suggestions as to the interest of the New Class in the growth of bureaucracy, but I think it unfair to go too far with this notion. For one thing, liberals and socialists may be interested in power, but certainly no more so than others along the political spectrum, who likewise “profess to be working for a more just society” and are usually doing just that. For another, an overly jaundiced view of others’ motives may well lead to giving their proposals a less exhaustive or open-minded review than the proposals in fact deserve. I am sure Mr. McAdams would agree that policy proposals should stand or fall on their own merits, since the merits are entirely independent of the proponents’ motives. To take a case in point, no one who knows Leon Shull or Stina Santiestevan, as I do, will ever doubt their commitment to a more just society; but even their closest friends can probably be persuaded that their housing proposal is an absolutely terrible idea.
