A Very Small Suburban Wedge

"I stand by the court's decision," said Scoop Jackson, but he would not go much further. "It's O.K.," was the laconic and unenthusiastic response of Jimmy Carter. Only Mo Udall came out foursquare for the court. "It's a good decision and I support it," he declared. "The minorities and the underprivileged should not be left to rot in high-rises and tenements in the inner city. The only way that urban problems can be tackled is if all communities do their share."

The case the three leading Democratic presidential candidates were talking about dealt with an explosive political question: whether the Federal Government should sponsor large-scale housing for low-income groups, which could break up what Carter described, in a moment of uncustomary carelessness, as the "ethnic purity" of neighborhoods. By a vote of 8 to 0, the Supreme Court agreed that a U.S. district court could direct the Federal Government to do just that--but only under carefully prescribed conditions. Those conditions, in fact, made it certain that the suburbs were in no immediate danger of being invaded by large-scale migrations of poor people from the inner cities.

Legal Loophole. The case was initiated in 1966 by Dorothy Gautreaux --who died in 1969--and five other blacks. They sued the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for perpetuating segregation by building low-cost apartment complexes for blacks almost exclusively in inner-city black neighborhoods. The plaintiffs subsequently argued that the housing units should have been built instead in the white-dominated wards of Chicago or in the suburbs that lie just outside the city. In reply, HUD claimed that since the suburbs were not accused of practicing segregation, the Federal Government had no business integrating them, and thus interfering with the affairs of local government.

Two basic points led the court to decide otherwise. The court noted that HUD had violated the blacks' basic constitutional rights in the first place by helping to confine them to segregated housing within Chicago's city limits. The housing plan, said the Justices, should have included the entire Chicago metropolitan area instead of just the city. Ordering HUD to put low-cost housing in the suburbs would not restrict the freedom of local governments, the court ruled further, since the suburbs would still be able to exercise all their powers regarding zoning requirements and other land-use restrictions.

Through that legal loophole the suburbs could attempt to block subsidized housing projects and could probably tie up the building of low-income housing in well-to-do communities for years to come. Moreover, in sending the case back to the U.S. district court in Chicago, which must now devise a suitable plan to give relief to the city's blacks, the Justices left another large escape hatch. They ruled that while the district court has the power to put blacks in the suburbs, it does not have an absolute obligation to do so. In theory, therefore, the district court could recommend that HUD support a new low-income housing program within the boundaries of Chicago rather than in the suburbs--although that seems an unlikely outcome.

Some civil rights spokesmen were quick to hail the decision as a landmark in the long fight to get the suburbs to share in solving the problems of the cities they surround. Margaret Bush Wilson, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called the finding "historic, bold and necessary to halt the constitutional movement in this country toward apartheid. " But other leaders of minorities, noting the extremely limited nature of the precedent and knowing the long court battles that almost certainly lay ahead, were much more guarded. "I'm pleased, but I'm not elated," said Dr. Robert Weaver, Lyndon Johnson's HUD Secretary and the first black to hold a Cabinet post.

Court Cue. Weaver's restraint was shared by Attorney Alexander Polikoff, who argued the case for the blacks. "The change is only potential," he warned. Before they could get similar relief, blacks in other cities would have to bring suit and prove on a case-by-case basis that HUD had violated their basic constitutional rights. "The real hope," said Polikoff, "is that HUD will take the cue from the court and, on a voluntary basis, pass out their dollars to developers in metropolitan areas." The resulting housing projects, he continued, should be accessible to people from the inner city.

As the Supreme Court pointed out, HUD does have the power right now to support low-cost housing in the suburbs that could attract inner-city minority groups. Under a provision, known as Section 8, of the 1974 housing law, HUD subsidizes the rent paid by low-income families who live in new, renovated or existing housing. But in this fiscal year, only a small portion of the 325,000 dwelling units under the program are housing families from minority groups in predominantly white areas.

Even if HUD increases its efforts--as it shows solid signs of doing--the department could still run up against the legal defenses of recalcitrant suburbs, which could plead that the proposed housing would violate their zoning. HUD has had trouble enough accomplishing a simpler task: integrating low-income minorities into middle-class white neighborhoods within a city's boundaries. During the early '70s, for example, middle-class whites in the Forest Hills section of New York City bitterly fought a proposed housing project. They succeeded in reducing its size from about 830 apartments to 430 and increasing permissible income levels to the point that 60% of the residents are now middle class. Only 30% of the residents belong to minority groups.

Vicious and Violent. One of the obdurate truths of political life in the '70s is that most suburbs ringing the nation's decaying cities are adamantly against low-cost housing. They fear that such housing would bring an influx of the poor, including minorities, into their communities. The town of Hempstead, L.I. (pop. more than 800,000), for example, which adjoins New York City, has been denied $758,000 in federal aid because it did not propose an acceptable low-income housing program. Admits Francis Purcell, the town's presiding supervisor: "Most of the people in our communities are viciously and violently opposed to having low-income housing. They've all run to get away from the deterioration of New York City."

Even when outsiders are not involved, communities can be meanly defensive. In eastern Massachusetts, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has been trying since 1972 to build four mixed-income, multifamily, racially integrated projects on its own land. The aim of the plan is to handle local housing needs--not to attract welfare cases from Boston. Yet the local hearings have been acrimonious. In the town of Scituate, opponents of the plan tried to persuade the town to seize the church's land by eminent domain and use it for a cemetery. So far, the church has been able to complete only one development: a 98-unit project in the well-to-do suburb of Beverly.

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