[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 31, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9306-S9308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                            MORE THAN A ROOF

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, for many years I have had the 
privilege of knowing Ed Marciniak, now president of the Institute of 
Urban Life at Loyola University, who chairs the City Club of Chicago's 
committee on the future of public housing in Chicago.
  He had a commentary on public housing that was published in 
Commonwealth, which is really more of a commentary on poverty and urban 
life and what we ought to do. He says:

       The average income of families living in Chicago's public 
     housing is $2,500. Broadly speaking, a fatal flaw of these 
     projects is that they provide tenant families with little 
     else than space: little in the way of opportunity or 
     incentive to better themselves and their children. In most 
     cities the high-rise projects, often with as many inhabitants 
     as a small town, house not a single teacher, nurse, 
     firefighter, manager, technician, or civil servant and offer 
     few role models for the children, few standard-setters for 
     the adults, and scant motivation to become self-sufficient.

  Recently Congress has approved a pilot project called Moving to 
Opportunity. Marciniak points out that it was based on a model in 
Chicago. He writes:

       Moving to Opportunity was modeled on a successful program 
     sponsored by Chicago's Leadership Council for Metropolitan 
     Open Communities. Since 1976, the Council has used federal 
     funds to screen and then relocate more than 6,000 public 
     housing families, most of them female-headed, into privately 
     owned apartments, half of them in suburbs. By bidding good-by 
     to public housing, most of the families not only bettered 
     their living conditions but also greatly improved their 
     children's opportunities. Among the suburban children only 5 
     percent dropped out of school, 54 percent attended college, 
     and 27 percent found jobs. When people's expectations were 
     raised and standards established, many started living up to 
     them. Residential mobility made a difference.

  I have had a chance to observe this program and it is a great step 
forward.
  With a little creativity and sensitivity we can do much better in 
this country.
  What is required is that we recognize that we have to do something to 
address the problems of those who are the least successful now in our 
society. They lack success not because of lack of ability in most 
cases, but because they find themselves trapped.

[[Page S9307]]

  We have to open that trap.
  Mr. President, I ask that the article from Commonweal be printed in 
the Record.
  The article follows:

          More Than a Roof--Promising Moves in Public Housing

                           (By Ed Marciniak)

       Not long ago, I attended a national housing conference 
     where a featured panelist was a woman introduced as a 
     longtime resident of public housing. She herself then noted, 
     matter-of-factly, that she had lived in public housing for 
     forty-five years. For me, that admission was mind-blowing. 
     Even more startling, however, was the realization that her 
     remark had not caused even a ripple of surprise among the 
     subsidized-housing professionals in the audience. 
     Nonchalantly, they had come to accept public housing's way of 
     life as a given for which they felt no personal 
     responsibility.
       It's unlikely that informed members of the general public 
     are so complacent, whether as taxpayers concerned with the 
     costs or as citizens aware of the pathologies associated with 
     much public housing. People in the know are beginning to 
     insist that government subsidies must not only meet their 
     recipients' immediate needs but must be oriented toward 
     helping them become self-supporting. Recent developments in 
     and around Chicago, the area I know best, confirm that most 
     public housing clients, the poorest of the urban poor, have 
     not given up. Many have already helped themselves escape the 
     trap that public housing has become. We now know that there 
     are ways of giving them a chance to do so that have been 
     tested, at least on a small scale, and found workable. These 
     approaches deserve to be better known and more broadly 
     applied. But, as will be seen, many questions need to be 
     asked and answered.
       In a bipartisan effort, Congress is currently overhauling 
     the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. Despite its noble purpose and 
     promising beginnings with scattered, low-rise public housing, 
     that legislation has produced something of a monster. Today 
     the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD  
     finances some 1.4 million apartments owned and managed by 
     local hosing authorities. Another 1. 5 million privately 
     owned units are federally subsidized through rent vouchers of 
     one kind or another. Taking into account these programs and a 
     host of others sponsored by HUD, the department has become 
     the nation's largest slumlord.
       But the problem is not primarily the numbers or costs. Our 
     giant high-rise public housing projects have become ghettos 
     for the urban poor: conglomerations riddled with drugs, 
     gangs, crime, and poverty, peopled by far too high 
     a proportion of single-family households, some now in 
     their third and fourth generation. The average income of 
     families living in Chicago's public housing is $2,500. 
     Broadly speaking, a fatal flaw of these projects is that 
     they provide tenant families with little else than space: 
     little in the way of opportunity or incentive to better 
     themselves and their children. In most cities the high-
     rise projects, often with as many inhabitants as a small 
     town, house not a single teacher, nurse, firefighter, 
     manager, technician, or civil servant and offer few role 
     models for the children, few standard-setters for the 
     adults, and scant motivation to become self-sufficient.
       In recognition of these realities, Congress has persuaded 
     HUD to begin dismantling these housing projects by giving 
     residents, through rent vouchers, the option of living in 
     privately owned housing in mixed-income neighborhoods; by 
     scattering low-rise public housing throughout the city and 
     its suburbs; by tearing down vacant high rises instead of 
     rebuilding them; by using HUD dollars to attract other 
     investment in additional housing for families of low and 
     moderate income; and by stricter screening of a applicants 
     and the prompt eviction of lawbreakers who are drug dealers 
     or gang leaders. In April, HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros 
     released a report on ``The Transformation of America's Public 
     Housing,'' reporting these and other steps HUD is taking to 
     ensure ``long-term recovery.''
       Congress has approved, though as a pilot project, a 
     ``Moving to Opportunity'' initiative, which offers public 
     housing families a chance to move to scattered-site public 
     housing in the city or the suburbs. This modestly funded 
     program, already in operation in Baltimore, Boston, Los 
     Angeles, New York, and elsewhere, is being evaluated by its 
     success or failure in escorting families into the urban 
     mainstream. Important data will be collected about families 
     who become home owners or leaseholders paying conventional 
     rents. What were the bridges or escalators they used to leave 
     public housing? Who provided the ladders of opportunity? Are 
     the relocated families now in better housing? How many stayed 
     in the suburbs, how many moved back to the city?
       ``Moving to Opportunity'' was modeled on a successful 
     program sponsored by Chicago's Leadership Council for 
     Metropolitan Open Communities. Since 1976, the Council has 
     used federal funds to screen and then relocate more than 
     6,000 public housing families, most of them female-headed, 
     into privately owned apartments, half of them in suburbs. By 
     bidding good-by to public housing, most of the families not 
     only bettered their living conditions but also greatly 
     improved their children's opportunities. Among the suburban 
     children, only 5 percent dropped out of school, 54 percent 
     attended college, and 27 percent were enrolled in a four-year 
     college. As for the parents, 75 percent found jobs. When 
     people's expectations were raised and standards established, 
     many started living up to them. Residential mobility made a 
     difference.
       This good news is part of a larger movement toward 
     depopulation of Chicago's family projects; occupancy has 
     decreased from 137,000 in 1980 to 80,000 in 1995. More 
     importantly, the council's work reflects a growing awareness 
     among government and private funders of antipoverty programs 
     of the need to find answers for certain key, long-neglected 
     questions. How do people shed chronic dependency to achieve 
     self-sufficiency? How do we reverse the nation's poverty 
     rate, which declined in the 1970s and early 1980s but has 
     been inching up ever since? How is the underclass turned into 
     a working class?
       Accordingly, the role of the private sector serving 
     poverty-engulfed neighborhoods is also under scrutiny. 
     Churches, social service agencies, youth clubs, and 
     counseling centers are being asked to link short-term aid to 
     more lasting improvement, to do more than collect the 
     statistics on Sunday attendance, on youngsters who use the 
     gym, on Christmas baskets, on kids in day care, on midnight 
     basketball, or on mothers in self-improvement classes. 
     Funders want to know whether and how their dollars made a 
     difference: How many of the families were no longer on public 
     aid? What percentage of the teen-agers finished high school? 
     How many adults found jobs?
       Similar questions can be and are now being asked about the 
     persistence of homelessness. How did it happen that the 
     homeless were made the immediate responsibility of local 
     housing officials? Many of the homeless are jobless or the 
     victims of a family break-up. Many were evicted from mental 
     health institutions and dumped mercilessly on city streets. 
     Some are vagabonds, down-and-outers addicted to drugs and/or 
     alcohol. All may qualify as homeless, but what they 
     desperately need encompasses a lot more than a space to live 
     in.
       Too often, of course, discussion of such problems devolves 
     into ideological debates, focused on ``Who is to blame?'' 
     rather than on ``What is to be done?'' On homelessness, 
     however, as with public housing, there are pragmatic 
     initiatives in play. An example is Deborah's Place in 
     Chicago, a shelter for homeless women but with a difference. 
     From day one, the purpose of Deborah's Place has been to help 
     the women return to a more normal lifestyle--a job, a family, 
     or, in case of need, to a caring institution that matches the 
     woman's special problem. At three different locations, each 
     with a staged program. Deborah's Place works to ``help women 
     leave the streets and shelters behind for new lives of 
     independence, productivity, and well-being.'' As clients move 
     up and out, they leave room and time for other women to be 
     assisted.
       On ending joblessness, strategy can also make a difference. 
     Suburban Job Link, with offices in Chicago's South Lawndale 
     community and suburban Bensenville, uses a unique method for 
     promoting upward mobility. On contract with relatively job-
     rich suburban employers, the organization buses workers to 
     temporary jobs that often lead to ``working interviews'' 
     for applicants who want to demonstrate their potential to 
     fill entry-level positions. Factory owners and other 
     employers are invited to hire any worker full-time without 
     a fee, thus supplying the missing rung on a stepladder to 
     year-round employment. Through its ``no-charge'' 
     arrangement, Job Link will place 1,000 ``temps'' into 
     regular jobs with benefits in the next twelve months. 
     Finally, it continues to bus the newly hired until they 
     arrange transportation on their own, through a car pool, 
     for example. As a not-for-profit, Job Link is funded by 
     government and foundation grants and by its own earned 
     income.
       Another strategic point of entry for encouraging upward 
     mobility has to do with school choice. Over the past decade 
     it has become evident that nonpublic schools, especially 
     those under religious sponsorship, have been remarkably 
     successful in easing not only children but also their low-
     income parents into the urban mainstream. Nearly one of every 
     four youngsters enrolled in an elementary or secondary school 
     in Chicago attends a nonpublic school. Now, hundreds of 
     scholarships to attend Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal 
     schools are given to youngsters who live in the Cabrini 
     Green, Henry Horner, Rockwell Gardens, and other public 
     housing projects. The aid covers only part of the tuition, 
     requiring parents or guardians to pay the balance and fees.
       Though statistics are not available, it is our experience 
     that the decision by a public housing family to enroll 
     children in a private school is often the first step that 
     eventually leads to an apartment in the private housing 
     market. The choice made by a deserted mother, taken at 
     personal sacrifice, is rewarded and reinforced when she sees 
     that her child is in fact making educational progress; she is 
     likely to strive even harder to climb out of poverty in order 
     to continue sending her child to the school of her choice.
       A final example--useful even though at present it is a 
     matter of aspiration rather than achievement--returns to a 
     housing program. It will be operative in 1997 when Chicago's 
     Lawson YMCA finishes rehabilitating its twenty-five-story 
     building to provide 583 single-occupancy rooms. The 
     difference here lies in the overall aim, which is not just to 
     provide livable space for otherwise homeless

[[Page S9308]]

     persons but also to help people who are homeless, jobless, 
     and difficult-to-employ get jobs, preferably within walking 
     distance, and become self-sufficient. The YMCA staff will 
     work, for example, with people who are recovering from 
     substance abuse by concentrating aggressively on job training 
     and job getting. Success will be measured not just by 
     occupancy rates but, more importantly, by the number who have 
     moved to independent living.
       As with the other examples, the virtue of the YMCA 
     initiative lies in its responding not just to today's need 
     but also to tomorrow's challenge. To paraphrase columnist 
     Robert J. Samuelson, the United States struggles through a 
     soul-searching transition from an era of entitlement to an 
     era of responsibility.

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