Room at the Bottom

"We intend," said President Johnson last week, "to help only those who help themselves." Toward that end, he sent two messages to Congress proposing experimental programs that represent a realistic new approach to the disparate problems of decaying cities and poverty-straitened rural areas.

The promise of increased federal financing is aimed at encouraging local authorities to initiate their own long-range planning, mobilize their own resources and cooperate with their neighbors to remedy their ills. As one Administration official put it: "Human and physical planning cannot really proceed down two lines; they are components of a closely related development process. In these kinds of domestic programs it is unlikely that any federal, state or local agency can carry out its mission within its own jurisdictional borders."

A Dozen--or a Hundred. Johnson's most ambitious idea would create a "demonstration cities program" to be administered by the new Housing and Urban Development Department. Under this scheme, a city applying for federal aid would select a single blighted neighborhood and submit an overall plan for its rejuvenation. The project would include housing for different income groups and the public health, education, recreation, welfare and transportation services necessary to "change the total environment."

Beyond those guidelines, it would be up to city officials to determine precisely what to build. Said Johnson: "Let there be experiment with a dozen approaches, or a hundred." Previous federal assistance efforts under the Urban Renewal and Public Housing agencies, now part of HUD, have tended to be spotty and so vulnerable to bureaucratic snarls that they have created almost as many problems as they solved. To avoid these pitfalls, the new plan demands concentration on a single showcase area if a city wishes to qualify for federal aid. It sets 14 criteria to assure that initial goals are maintained and that work goes on rapidly and efficiently. For instance, a city would have to designate a single authority to supervise the project. Washington in turn would have to appoint a special representative to coordinate local efforts with those of the different federal agencies concerned.

Local Initiative. The Federal Government would put up 90% of the public funds involved. Private investment would be encouraged. Primarily because of budget pressure resulting from the Vietnamese war, Johnson has asked only $12 million initially to help underwrite planning for the 60 to 70 cities expected to take part. After that, he estimated, the program would cost $2.3 billion in its first six years, adding $400 million to the $691 million a year in federal money now being spent in 800 cities for urban renewal and public housing.

The cities, which have 70% of the nation's population and are still growing, so far have rightly loomed larger in the Great Society than the countryside. Nonetheless, nearly half the nation's poor are still concentrated in rural areas. In a new attempt to help them, Johnson proposed a $5,000,000 program to stimulate locally originated "community development districts" comprising towns, villages, and sparsely populated counties whose common needs are frequently frustrated by political boundaries.

In areas where a school, a hospital, an industrial site or a library is needed by all, the facility is often too expensive for any one community. The development district, ideally embracing a population of 75,000 to 150,000, could not only make more efficient use of the resources within it, but would also qualify more readily for federal and state grants. Participation would be voluntary, as with the demonstration cities program, and the local group would have to take the initiative.

Marriage of Convenience. Both the urban and rural plans incorporate the Johnson Administration's concept of "creative federalism." It concedes in essence that the problems of America today demand more than ever a marriage of national and local government. Washington does not have the brainpower or even the manpower to resolve all the problems of local communities, while metropolis and hamlet alike lack the money and the political framework for collective action to overcome their own difficulties. Thus, as Lyndon Johnson has put it, "the Federal Government can assist and encourage--but in the last analysis, the success or failure of programs of community development depends on those most directly involved."

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