Situation Report

BLACK Americans pay more than whites for comparable housing, and are four times more likely to live in substandard housing. In black slums, housing density (3,071 units per sq. mi.) is almost double that of middle-class urban areas, and 100 times greater than in suburbs. The density helps spark ghetto fires; in Brooklyn's East New York area, for instance, fire alarms are increasing an average 44% a year. Density also defeats garbage disposal, litters streets with junked cars (1,437 in Detroit's Fifth Precinct in the first five months of 1969). Of all black Americans, including non-slum dwellers, says TIME's Harris poll, 25% have leaky ceilings, 26% are overcrowded, 29% say they have rats, 32% complain of faulty plumbing, and 38% report having cockroaches.

Poverty and discrimination condemn blacks to bad housing. Less obvious factors include the decay of public housing (50.8% occupied by blacks) and maladroit federal programs, such as urban renewal and highway building, which razed 800,000 city units between 1949 and 1967. The Government has also speeded the white exodus from cities. Since World War II, it has financed only 800,000 urban units, while insuring the financing of 10 million suburban homes. Fortunately, the Federal Housing Administration has begun to change this pattern. More than 50% of FHA's mortgage insuring activity has lately been shifted to properties in central cities. Blighted urban areas now account for more than 8%, compared with 2.5% in 1964.

In 1968 Congress called for 26 million housing units by 1978, to provide "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family." The goal may be unreachable. Reasons: inadequate federal funds, tight money, restrictive union rules, antique local building codes that bar experimental building methods. So far, good design is as rare as black designers. Of the American Institute of Architects' 24,000 members, about 450 are black; of 8,500 U.S. city planners, about 80 are black.

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