Dublin Core
Title
Box 22, Folder 18, Document 30
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
June 2, 1967
MEMORANDUM
To: Task Force Members
From: Richard C, Leone
Downs, MacInnes, Frederic and I had a long and rambling session with
Assistant Secretary of HUD Charles Ilaar and his deputy. The following
two portions of our discussion may be of interest to the Task Force,
1. It's quite clear that the metropolitan development plans of HUD
do not take the ghetto and dispersion into account, The reasons for
this are not a lack of interest or understanding of the problem. It
is simply that the metropolitan programs themselves are ''a weak reed"
to carry the heavy burden of integration. Our discussions brought out
the unremarkable fact that we would be likely to lose our metropolitan
programs if we attempted to force integration through the use of them.
2. It is generally agreed that a more promising route for approaching
the metropolitan aspects of integration is to the use of the states
or providing the cities with special leverage on suburbs. To discuss
only the state example here: it appears much more likely that a political
executive responsive to pressures from Negroes and indeed to pressures in
general will be more likely to work on the kind of problems we are
interested in. We should be thinking here of the urban governors of the
large northeastern and midwestern states who are undoubtedly somewhat
responsive to the problems of central cities, These areas include a
large proportion of the cities we are most concermed about.
In short, our feeling was that placing the responsibility for some of
these movements in populations (even by the most roundabout means) would
be most likely to have a payoff if we depended upon political executives,
I think that one of the principal advantages we've seen in our discussion
of metropolitan approaches to the problem goes beyond the feeling that
metropolitan-wide solutions are rational, Some of us have seen the
metropolitan unit as less responsive to the anti-intcgration pressurcs =
just as the courts are less responsive than the Congress. The problem,
of course, is that the courts exist and metropolitan bodies do not,
This has led us in turn to suggest that in round "one" we might create
such bodies working with the "winners" such as water and sewer grants,
etc., and, then, in round ''two'' ask them to take on some of the tasks
of integration, My reaction to this is based largely on the experience
with authorities in the New York Metropolitan region, They too have
taken on the winners but no one has yet figured out a way to force
them to take on some of the losers (the commuter railroads, for example),
This is not meant to say that we should leave our metropolitan development
corporation, metropolitan services corporation, etc., out of the final
report but that we should think about them a bit more in the perspective
of what are the most effective and promising ways of building something
larger than a city and to the integration p blem.
)
|
ecretary
MEMORANDUM
To: Task Force Members
From: Richard C, Leone
Downs, MacInnes, Frederic and I had a long and rambling session with
Assistant Secretary of HUD Charles Ilaar and his deputy. The following
two portions of our discussion may be of interest to the Task Force,
1. It's quite clear that the metropolitan development plans of HUD
do not take the ghetto and dispersion into account, The reasons for
this are not a lack of interest or understanding of the problem. It
is simply that the metropolitan programs themselves are ''a weak reed"
to carry the heavy burden of integration. Our discussions brought out
the unremarkable fact that we would be likely to lose our metropolitan
programs if we attempted to force integration through the use of them.
2. It is generally agreed that a more promising route for approaching
the metropolitan aspects of integration is to the use of the states
or providing the cities with special leverage on suburbs. To discuss
only the state example here: it appears much more likely that a political
executive responsive to pressures from Negroes and indeed to pressures in
general will be more likely to work on the kind of problems we are
interested in. We should be thinking here of the urban governors of the
large northeastern and midwestern states who are undoubtedly somewhat
responsive to the problems of central cities, These areas include a
large proportion of the cities we are most concermed about.
In short, our feeling was that placing the responsibility for some of
these movements in populations (even by the most roundabout means) would
be most likely to have a payoff if we depended upon political executives,
I think that one of the principal advantages we've seen in our discussion
of metropolitan approaches to the problem goes beyond the feeling that
metropolitan-wide solutions are rational, Some of us have seen the
metropolitan unit as less responsive to the anti-intcgration pressurcs =
just as the courts are less responsive than the Congress. The problem,
of course, is that the courts exist and metropolitan bodies do not,
This has led us in turn to suggest that in round "one" we might create
such bodies working with the "winners" such as water and sewer grants,
etc., and, then, in round ''two'' ask them to take on some of the tasks
of integration, My reaction to this is based largely on the experience
with authorities in the New York Metropolitan region, They too have
taken on the winners but no one has yet figured out a way to force
them to take on some of the losers (the commuter railroads, for example),
This is not meant to say that we should leave our metropolitan development
corporation, metropolitan services corporation, etc., out of the final
report but that we should think about them a bit more in the perspective
of what are the most effective and promising ways of building something
larger than a city and to the integration p blem.
)
|
ecretary
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