New Look at Housing

Retiring Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) will need all of his optimism and energy to grind out gains in his next post as President-elect George Bush’s secretary of housing and urban development.

President Reagan paid scant attention either to housing or to Samuel R. Pierce Jr., his low-key housing secretary and only black Cabinet member. The critical housing shortage, especially for poor renters and first-time buyers in many big cities, deserves better.

The Reagan Administration has cut housing funds by nearly 80%. Deficits make a major new construction program unlikely. In that atmosphere, it will take all of Kemp’s cunning to make good on his warning against balancing the budget “on the backs of the poor” and at the expense of housing programs.

During the Reagan years, homelessness has become a way of life for as many as 1.3 million Americans, including at least 100,000 children. A growing percentage of the homeless work but, with incomes below $10,000 a year, cannot find decent housing within their means.

Eventually Kemp will find that solving homelessness and providing decent shelter for all Americans will require coordinating an aggressive jobs program, intensive training programs, steady rehabilitation of old housing and steady construction of new. It cannot be done piecemeal.

Bush, for example, supports full funding of the McKinney Act, which would provide about$642.5 million for transitional housing, emergency food, education and job training, mental-health services and alcohol- and drug-abuse programs. But temporary shelter, even when it exists, is a temporary solution, and it does nothing for the long haul.

Public housing also demands more federal attention. Neglect, and a loss of control, has allowed aging housing projects to fall into disrepair and disfavor with poor families. Kemp favors allowing tenants to buy public housing, but pride of ownership works only in special circumstances. He may have in mind the Kenilworth-Parkside public-housing project in the national capital,but that project stems from a combination of tough and charismatic leadership and a strong and stable tenant presence--conditions not often present in the projects.

Vouchers, another Kemp favorite, cannot work in cities with serious housing shortages. Rent subsidies are not enough when housing is tight. Subsidies rarely stimulate building, because there it not enough money involved.

Despite these severe problems, Kemp has some things going for him. The demoralized housing agency can go no place but up. He can build on what works--notably state and local experiments that were started when federal help collapsed. Public and private partnerships to finance construction and tailor it to the greatest need are beginning to flourish in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities. Federal low-income housing tax credits have the potential to generate 100,000 housing units with a guarantee of low rents.

As the eighth housing secretary, Kemp can travel the nation, using close ties with the White House to help bring the problems of housing and the cities out of the shadows. But the best thing that he could do would be to challenge Americans from the new President down to think deeply and to care passionately about decent housing for everyone in the nation who needs it.