‘Activist’ Kemp Tours Atlanta to Examine Housing Problems Faced by Inner Cities

Calling himself an “activist” for change, Jack Kemp made his first foray out of Washington as secretary of housing and urban development on Tuesday to examine the problems besetting America’s central cities.

The former New York congressman, who was sworn into his new office just the day before, began a two-day visit to Atlanta with a tour of housing development projects designed to provide affordable shelter for families of low and moderate incomes.

“It’s not just symbolism that brings me to Atlanta--it’s substance,” Kemp said at a meeting before the tour with local officials, businessmen, housing developers and religious leaders. “I’m an activist. I believe very strongly that action is called for.”

Kemp’s appearance in Atlanta so soon after taking office was in marked contrast with the low profile maintained by his predecessor for the last eight years, Samuel R. Pierce Jr. Civic leaders greeted Kemp cordially and optimistically at a downtown meeting, but tenant groups indicated that they intend to scorch him with the Republican record on housing when they meet with him today.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), whose congressional district includes most of Atlanta, described Kemp’s visit to this Democratic-controlled, predominantly black city as a “coming of age.”

“It’s a good sign,” Lewis said. “Certain issues transcend party lines. Affordable housing is not a Democratic dream or a Republican dream, it’s an American dream.”

Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who once served with Kemp in Congress, added: “We’re all very excited and optimistic about this Administration.”

But Jacquelyn Weeks, president of the Gilbert Gardens tenant association, said that she and others at today’s meeting intend to give the new housing secretary an earful.

“Under the Reagan Administration, we’ve caught solid hell,” she said in an interview. “We’ve had to live under terrible conditions, and the more we preached and raised hell, the more they turned a deaf ear.”

A leading proponent of “supply-side” economics and free-market enterprise, Kemp has pushed for tax incentives rather than government spending as the way to improve housing and stimulate job creation in depressed urban neighborhoods.

At the same time, he indicated a willingness Tuesday to consider other ideas. “I am here to listen,” he said. “You have my eyes, ears and attention. You also have my heart.”

Downtown Development

Sam Williams, executive vice president of the Portman Companies, one of Atlanta’s largest architectural and development firms, urged Kemp not to neglect the issue of federal programs to boost downtown economic development.

“Housing is certainly a critical need, but a similar need is keeping jobs in downtown America,” he said. He added that, with the phasing out of the Urban Development Action Grant Program, “there is no major program to help cities develop blighted downtown areas for jobs.”

But Kemp, in response, indicated that he was more favorable to programs that would aid small businessmen rather than big developers and investors.

Kemp toured the predominantly white Cabbagetown neighborhood, where 40 deteriorating homes are being renovated through a joint public-private effort, and a predominantly black east-side community, where 20 single-family homes were built in one week with volunteer labor under a nonprofit program known as Habitat for Humanity.

Kemp also visited Techwood Homes, built in 1936 as the nation’s first public housing project. But he was not taken to Bankhead Courts, a public housing project that has received widespread publicity for its problems with drugs and crime.

Today, Kemp will meet public housing tenants, tenant union leaders and representatives of low-income housing advocacy groups at Pascal’s Motor Hotel, a landmark business on Atlanta’s traditional black west side where Kemp also was lodged Tuesday night.

Weeks said she knows that the Bush Administration seeks housing solutions that require little or no additional federal expenditures. But, she said: “If they don’t do something, they’re just going to increase the homeless list. They ought to support a bill that’s in Congress already to lower rents back to 25% of your income and to put a ceiling on rents.”

As part of his schedule Tuesday, Kemp also toured the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and was a dinner guest of Coretta Scott King, widow of the martyred civil rights leader.

Atlanta is the first of a series of major cities that Kemp said he intends to visit “to help find answers to the problems of homelessness, housing and urban economic development.”