The Fiasco of Urban Renewal; M. Anderson

the Fiasco of Urban Renewal MARTIN ANDERSON 46 BUSINESS LEADERS have heard many times .in recent years that our housing and our cities are de caying, that private enterprise cannot save them, that the gov ernment must step in and "help" private enterprise with urban re newal, and that they - as respon sible citizens and businessmen should collaborate with the gov ernment in this effort.! In my judgment, none of these state ments is true. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the federal urban renewal program - its goals, its methods, its accomplishments - and to compare them with those of the free marketplace. A comparison of the results that these two forces - the federal urban renew al program and private enterprise - have produced since 1949 brings out some fundamental issues and questions that have been obscured in a fog of good intentions and platitudes. The basic question is this: Should the federal urban re newal program be continued and expanded, or should it be stopped?

I shall argue that it should be stopped. 1 See, for example, Leland Hazard, "Are We Committing Urban Suicide?" Thinking Ahead, Harvard Business Re view, July-August 1964, p. 152. Dr. Martin Anderson is Associate Professor of Economics and Finance, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, and author of The Federal Bulldozer. This article is reprinted by permission from the January-February 1965 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 47 Goals of Renewal In response to continual exhor tation and pressure to do some thing to "save" the cities and im prove housing, Congress enacted the federal urban renewal pro gram in 1949, proceeding on the conviction that a program of this type would help to· .. eliminate substandard and other inadequate housing through clear ance of slums and blighted areas; · .. stimulate sufficient housing pro duction and community development to remedy the housing shortage; · .. realize the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family. I doubt that anyone can argue with these goals. Better· homes, improved neighborhoods, and the elimination of slums - all are desirable. The difficulty is not with the goals, but with the means of accomplishing them and with the consequences that result. What the Program Is And How It Works In essence the federal urban re newal program attempts to re build rundown areas of cities by feeding large amounts of public money and government power into the normal operations of the pri vate marketplace. It does not com plement the private market; it short-circuits it.

This is how the program works. First, a section of a city is desig nated as an urban renewal area, and plans are drawn up and ap proved by the local renewal agen cy, the local governing body, and the federal authorities in Wash ington.A public hearing is then held at which local renewal officials document their case for urban renewal. At this time other per sons interested in the project have the opportunity to speak for or against it. Once the planning is complete, execution starts. Though some ex ecution activities may be carried on simultaneously, there are six basic steps: (1) Land acquisition. The land and the buildings are usually ac quired by negotiation with the own ers, but if this fails, the renewal authorities will use the power of eminent domain to force the recalci trant owners to sell; in cases like this, the purchase price is deter mined by independent appraisers.

(2) Displacement and relocation. Individuals, families, and businesses located in the area are forced to move and find homes or establish businesses elsewhere. The law pro vides for some compensation and re quires renewal authorities to relo cate them satisfactorily, although in practice this does not always happen. (3) Site clearance. The wrecking cranes and the bulldozers demolish 48 THE FREEMAN March any buildings not considered useful by the renewal authorities. (4) Site improvements and sup porting facilities. The cleared land is usually improved by the construc tion of streets, sewers, water mains, lighting systems, schools, libraries, and parks. (5) Disposition of impt'oved land. The cleared and improved land can be sold, leased, donated, or retained by the renewal agency. Usually the land is sold to private persons either by competitive bidding or by negoti ation between renewal officials and the private buyer.

(6) New construction. The new construction may be residential, in dustrial, commercial, or public; so far it has been predominantly pri vate residential. The private devel oper is usually obliged to build ac cording to a general plan approved by the renewal authorities. This, then, is urban renewal damned by some, praised by many, and understood by very few. At first glance, urban renewal would seem to be a most desirable pro gram, both plausible and appeal ing. The picture is often painted like this: before - dirty, dark, ugly slums; after - clean, bright, beautiful buildings. The contrast is clear, the appeal seductive, but this picture shows only the hopes and wishes of urban renewal. The realities of its costs and conse quences are drastically different. Everybody Pays Urban renewal is, of course, ex pensive. The gross project cost of urban renewal includes all ex penses incurred by a local renewal authority - planning costs, land, buildings, overhead, interest, relo cation, site improvements, and supporting facilities.

Assume that all this costs $9 million for a good-sized project. Where does the money come from '! Some of it comes from private developers who buy the cleared and improved land. On the aver age, private developers have been buying urban renewal land for about 30 per cent of the gross cost of the project - say, $3 mil lion for our $9 million project. This leaves the city with a net cost of $6 million. The federal government will pay two-thirds of this net cost, or, in this case, $4 million. Thus, for our $9 million proj ect, we get $3 million from the private developer who becomes the new owner, $4 million from taxpayers all over the United States, and $2 million from tax payers living in the community with the urban renewal project. Additional features, called non cash grants-in-aid, can reduce the net cost to the city still further. Because the federal govern ment subsidizes two-thirds of the net cost to the city, some people 1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 49 feel that urban renewal is a bon anza that cannot be passed up.

This might be true if .only one city were engaged in urban re newal; but there are over 1,500 projects in about 750 cities throughout the country. Through federal taxes, the residents of any one of these cities are helping to pay for all the other projects. As more and more cities attempt to "get their share" and the overall cost of the program rises, the cost to all necessarily increases. Better Housing? One of the most serious conse quences of the federal urban re newal program is the effect that it has had on the supply of housing, especially low-rent housing. This is ironic because one of the goals of the program is to improve liv ing conditions. Why has this goal not been realized? The typical urban renewal proj ect destroys a great many homes. Between 1950 and 1960, the pro gram was responsible for the de struction of approximately 126,000 housing units. Of these homes, 101,000 had been classified as sub standard by the local renewal au thorities, while 25,000 were in good condition. The good ones \vere destroyed because they were judged to be incompatible with the proposed plan for the area.

I have estimated that in this same decade approximately 28,000 new housing units were completed within urban renewal areas. 2 About 25,000 of these were pri vately owned homes; 3,000 or so were public housing units. Score: 126,000 down, about 28,000 up. This means that almost four times as many homes were destroyed as were built. The total effect on housing con ditions was even worse. All the 126,000 homes that were destroyed were located in older sections of cities, and almost all were low rent units. It is doubtful whether the average rent paid exceeded $50 or $60 a month. On the other hand, the rents of the new pri vately owned homes were very high. For example, those homes built in 1962 in urban renewal areas had rents averaging $195 a month. (A small percentage rented for over $360 a month!) Hence it was virtually impossible for any person displaced from an urban renewal area to move back in; he could afford it only if he moved into public housing. And only 3,000 units of public housing were built - an insignificant number in comparison to the number of units destroyed.

Thus the net effect of the fed eral urban renewal program in ~ The Federal Bulldozer (Cambridge: The Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology Press, 1964), pp. 65-67.

50 THE FREEMAN March the field of housing for the period I have studied can be summed up in this way: • More homes were destroyed than were built. • Those destroyed were predomi nantly low-rent homes. • Those built were predominantly high-rent homes. • Housing conditions were made worse for those whose housing con ditions were least good. • Housing conditions were im proved for those whose housing con ditions were best. Improved Living Conditions? Private studies indicate that the people displaced by urban re newal usually move into housing of approximately the same quality as the housing they were forced out of - but they often pay more for it. Their predicament is com pounded, not alleviated, by urban renewal. Government studies, on the other hand, indicate that about 80 per cent of the displaced people move into standard housing. Ob viously, both the private studies and the government studies can not be correct.

I suspect the reason for the dis crepancy between them is that lo cal government officials decide whether or not a dwelling unit in an urban renewal area is standard or substandard, and their esti mates are therefore subject to bias. An official interested in speeding up the process of an urban renewal project may be tempted to apply high housing standards to justify the taking of the property, and then, when it comes to relocating the people dis placed, he may be tempted to use qui te low housing standards to justify the quick relocation of these people. The notion that over 80 per cent of the displaced people move into good housing is difficult to reconcile with other relevant facts. The people living in these areas are relatively poor. A great many of them come from minori ty groups; approximately two-thirds of all those forced to move are Negroes and Puerto Ricans. Good quality, conveniently located hous ing costs so much more than poor housing that it is difficult to con ceive of hundreds of thousands of low-income people, many of them subject to racial discrimination, suddenly moving from low-quality housing into higher-quality hous ing at rents they can afford.

And then one might ask the fol lowing question. If it is true that all this good-quality, conveniently located, low-rent housing is avail able, why then is it necessary to force these people out of their homes with a bulldozer? Would it not be far simpler, more just, and much cheaper just to tell them 1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 51 about the better homes available elsewhere? One Million Evictions The numher of people affected by the program was small during its first few years of operation. But I have estimated that as of Decemher 31, 1962, approximately 1,665,000 persons were living or had lived in urban renewal areas. This is about the same number of people that live in Detroit, Michi gan - the fifth largest city in the United States. Some of these peo ple have already heen forced out; the rest will be on their way even tually. The number of people actually evicted so far is very large. By March 31, 1963, about 609,000 per sons had been forced to move, and the number has, of course, con tinued to go up. I estimate that at least 1,000,000 people will be evicted by the end of 1965. And this is by no means the end; in fact, it is probably just a small start. In 1962, William Slayton, the Commissioner of the Urban Renewal Administration, stated that approximately 1,00(},000 fam ilies would be displaced during the next decade. This means that somewhere around 4,000,000 per sons will be actually displaced by 1972 - or about one person out of every 50 Iiving in the .United States.

Good for Business? Although most urban renewal areas are predominantly residen tial, they often contain a number of businesses. These businesses range from one-man offices to in dustrial concerns with several hun dred employees. According to a 1960 report financed by the Small Business Administration: It is estimated that there are over 100,000 business firms in all 650 project areas .... The approximately 100,000 firms scheduled for disloca tion from proj ect areas on December 31, 1959, represent a beginning only . . . . New projects have been started at an increasing rate. Although no precise forecasts have been made, it is expected that the volume of business dislocations from renewal areas over the 1960-1970 decade will be at least twice the 100,000 already underway or planned. 3 What happens to a business when it is forced to move? Does it stay in business? Where does it move to?

According to the study quoted above, many firms never relocate at all. This study covered 14 cities with 21 urban renewal projects containing a total of 2,946 dis3 William N. Kinnard, Jr. and Zenon S. Malinowski, The Impact of Dislocation from Urban Renewal Areas on Small Business, prepared by the University of Connecticut under a grant from the Small Business Administration, July 1960, pp. 2-3.

52 THE FREEMAN March placed firms. The finding: 756 of them either went out of business or disappeared. Similar findings have been made by others: • A study conducted by Brown University in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, found that 40 per cent of the businesses displaced went out of business. 4 • A study prepared by the Library of Congress concluded that urban renewal proj ects "are destroying small businesses and jobs and con tributing to the unemployment prob lem."5 What about rents for firms forced to relocate? In the study prepared for the Small Business Administration, a sample was tak en of four cities that contained 1,142 displaced firms. Only 41, or 3.1 per cent, actually moved back into the urban renewal area. The researchers observed: ... Approximately 75 per cent of those who do relocate find quarters within one mile of their former lo cation; and nearly 40 per cent within one-quarter mile. They generally occupy about the same floor area they did before (which is less than they claimed to want or need), at a square foot rental at least double what they were paying (which is much more than they claimed to be 4 Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Washington Report, December 20, 1963.

5 Ibid. able to afford or to be willing to pay) .6 The Tax Myth One of the most valued argu ments presented by those who favor expansion of the urban re newal program is that it will strengthen and increase the tax base and thus increase tax reve nues to the city. Unfortunately, this has not happened, and the chances of urban renewal produc ing a significant tax revenue in crease in the future are small. The latest data I have on ne,,, construction actually started in urban renewal areas goes through March 31, 1961. It shows that the urban renewal programs actually decreased the tax revenues flowing into the cities' tax coffers. By the end of 1960, approximately $735 million of real estate had been destroyed in urban renewal proj ect areas. About $824 million of real estate construction had been started, $577 million of which was privately owned and thus taxable. If we optimistically assume that 70 per cent of this total amount privately started was ever fin ished, the net result is about $400 million worth of taxable property - $335 million less than we had before urban renewal!

Is this a temporary situation, 6 W. N. Kinnard, Jr. and Z. S. Malin owski, Ope cit., p. 75.

1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 53 or is an adverse tax effect a fun damental quality of urban renew al? Several factors militate against net tax increases: (1) Interim tax losses from real estate destroyed are often overlooked. Once buildings are down, no taxes are paid on them. Nor are any taxes paid until new buildings have been put up. The new buildings will prob ably be worth much more than the old ones. But the length of time be tween the destruction of the old buildings and the construction of the new ones can easily be five years or more. During this time the city is losing tax revenue. (2) Tax revenue increases that would have occurred in the absence of urban renewal must be considered. In most cases, a certain amount of new construction and rehabilitation would probably have been accom plished with private funds, thereby increasing the tax base with no cost to the city. (3) Much of the new construction in the urban renewal area would have been built elsewhere in the city anyway. Some experts in the field estimate that from 50 per cent to 75 per cent of this construction would have been accomplished by private enterprise. 7 ( 4) Many of the new tenants in an urban renewal area will come from"other parts of the city. What happens to the value of the buildings they vacate?

7 See The Federal Bulldozer, pp. 180, 181. (5) Some cities have had to give special tax abatements to induce private developers to come in. This, of course, will further reduce any net gain in tax revenues that might materialize. To be sure, some of the factors operating ma.y tend to increase the tax revenues. If an urban re newal project is successful, it is possible that the value of the sur rounding buildings may increase. But before this is translated into increased taxes, the assessment on the buildings must be raised. The whole issue of tax revenue changes is still a cloudy one and will probably remain so. It should be kept in mind that the net change will be the result of many complex factors. It is not enough just to compare the value of the old real estate with the proposed value of the new real estate. Tim ing of payments, effect on the rest of the city, what would have hap pened without urban renewal these must all be considered, along with the fact that the process of urban renewal itself costs the city a considerable amount of money.

Constitutional? Under the Constitution of the United States, it is understood that a man is free to use his prop erty as he desires as long as he does not interfere with the rights of others. Traditionally, public 54 THE FREEMAN March use is the only reason for which the government may seize private property. The Supreme Court changed this in 1954, and today, under the federal urban renewal program, it is possible for the gov ernment to seize the property of one man, destroy it, and then sell the cleared land to some other man at a negotiated price. The Constitution clearly states that the power of eminent domain may be used only to seize private property for public use. Approxi mately 70 per cent of the new con struction in urban renewal areas is privately owned. By no distor tion of the thinking process can this be construed to be a public use ; it is clearly a pri vate use. The Supreme Court essentially justified this procedure on the grounds that it was in the public interest. They neatly sidestepped the problem of clearly defining the public interest. The use of the public interest to justify a govern ment program often means that one group of people will gain at the expense of some other group.

Those who do not mind sacrificing the rights of a few persons in the narne of the public interest even tually may end up sacrificing the rights of the public in the name of the public interest. The equation of public interest with public use is a dangerous principle to accept. It means that the government theoretically could seize anyone's property for any reason that an official claimed was in the public interest if he could justify it to the satisfaction of the court. Every citizen has the re sponsibility of questioning the decisions of the Supreme Court. The Court is not infallible in its interpretation of the law; and its decisions can be reversed. Power of free Enterprise According to certain experts, things are getting worse in urban housing. In a report of the Presi dent's Commission on National Goals in 1960, Catherine Bauer Wurster stated: There is a great deal of seriously substandard housing in American comnlunities, and spreading "gray areas" in various stages of actual or potential decay, plus commercial and industrial blight. It is quite evident that economic progress alone does not cure these evils, and that local governments cannot do the necessary job alone .... 8 Others have made similar state ments. If they are correct, it seems that we are in for serious trouble.

Fortunately, the actual develop ments of recent years contradict these pessimistic opinions. 8 "Framework for an Urban Society," Goals for Americans - The Report of the President's Commission on National Goals (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1960), p. 229.

1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 55 Impressive progress has been made toward achieving the objec ti ves set forth by Congress in 1949. Overall housing conditions have improved dramatically, in cities and outside of cities, for the poor and for the rich, and for the nonwhites as well as the whites. This progress has been furthered by businessmen operating in the free marketplace. To summarize some of the more important as pects of the record: • Both the relative and absolute changes in housing quality between 1940 and 1960 were striking. In 1940, 51 per cent of all housing in the United States was considered stand ard or sound; in 1950 the propor tion had moved up to 63 per cent; and in 1960, fully 81 per cent was classified as standard. If this trend continues, it is likely that the Census of 1970 will reveal that 90. per cent to 95 per cent of all ·our housing is standard. • From 1950 to .1960 alone the total number of standard homes in creased from 29.1 million to 47.4 million, a 63 per cent increase in just ten years. This increase of over 18 million standard homes was the result of both new construction and rehabilitation. Over 12 million new units were built, and the number of substandard units declined from 17 million to under 11 million. Virtually all of this was accomplished by pri vate construction, rehabilitation, and demolition efforts; massive amounts of private funds were invested in housing. These investments were in no way connected with the federal urban renewal program.

• From 1945 to 1960, private mort gage debt outstanding increased by almost $170 billion. Although ap proximately 40 per cent of this total was insured by the federal govern ment through the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Ad ministration, this does not mean that the government was responsible for the increase in housing quality. The underlying demand for housing and the growing income of those who de sired better housing were clearly the predominating factors. The effect of government insurance programs was probably to produce a slight increase in the amount of housing starts; but it should be kept in mind that if these government insurance pro grams had not existed, private in surance companies, such as the Mort gage Guaranty Insurance Corpora tion, would have surely developed at a n1uch faster rate than they did. • The amount of really bad hous ing - that classified as dilapidated by the Bureau of the Census - de clined from 9.8 per cent in 1950 to 5.2 per cent· in 1960. The 1960 over all vacancy rate was slightly over 9 per cent. The number of dilapi dated homes was actually smaller than the number of vacant homes.

Vacancy rates were much higher for poor housing than for good hous ing. In 1960, 6.8 per cent of the standard housing was vacant, where56 THE FREEMAN March as the vacancy rate was 20 per cent for dilapidated housing. Then, as now, the fact seemed to be that there were a certain number of people who either could not or would not spend enough money to rent or to buy the available standard housing. Housing for Minorities It is sometimes charged that the free working of capitalism cannot produce gains for some groups of people, particularly the nonwhite population. Many are convinced that the only answer must lie in the direction of greater govern ment intervention and higher pub lic subsidies. In fact, the nonwhite population of the United States has enjoyed a very substantial increase in the quality of its housing. From 1950 to 1960 there was an overall net increase of 1,813,000 standard units and a decrease of 537,000 substandard units. Between 1950 and 1960, the per cent of standard housing occupied by nonwhites doubled - going from 28 per cent to 56 per cent. Most of the bad housing is now located in the South, where only 38 per cent is standard. In the Northeast, 77 per cent is standard; in the North Central, 73 per cent; in the West, 79 per cent. In comparisons like this it should be remembered that the rents paid by whites are about 29 per cent higher than those paid by nonwhites, and that the values of the homes owned by whites are over 82 per cent 'higher.

The housing conditions of non whites have improved substan tially, and although the quality of their housing does hot yet equal that of the whites, it is rapidly ap proaching it, particularly in areas outside the South. Compared to the federal urban renewal pro gram, the private marketplace is making swift, substantial prog ress. Marching Metropolises The same type of improvement in housing quality that has taken place throughout the country has taken place in our cities. In 1960, fully 88.6 per cent of the housing located in central cities of over 100,000 population was classified as standard. In these same 128 central cities, the dilapidated hous ing had declined to slightly over 3 per cent of the total. In our 13 largest cities, taken as a group, 90.1 per cent of all housing was standard in 1960; only 2.6 per cent was dilapidated. Housing quality in cities has been continually improving, and now, as in the past, housing in cities is substantially better than in the country taken as a whole.

Today the bulk of the relatively small amount of bad housing that still exists lies outside of our 1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 57 cities, particularly in the rural areas. Only 18 per cent of the substandard housing lies within cities having populations of more than 100,000. There appears to be a definite correlation between the degree of urbanization and the amount of good housing. Since the war, construction ac tivity has been booming all over the United States and its cities. From 1950 to 1960, approximately $52.6 billion of new building con struction went up in cities with populations over 100,000. Only a little over 1 per cent of this was urban renewal construction. If our cities are "declining," as is often claimed, how does one account for the steady increase in building ac tivity? What about the worrisome claim that the middle-income group is disappearing from the city? The city of the future is prophesied by some as the city of the very rich and the very poor. The facts indi cate that this has not happened and probably will not happen. If we define "middle-income" as $4,000 to $10,000 a year, we find that almost 57 per cent of all peo ple living in large cities fall with in this range. In fact, the income distribution in large cities is roughly the same as that for the country as a whole. Today's city is not the city of the very rich and the very poor; it is predominantly the city of the middle-in come group.

By any objective measure, the indications are clear that our cities - in overall terms - are contin u ally improving and that today they are better than they ever were before. Validity of Data. The foregoing facts were taken from the data on housing quality collected every ten years by the Bureau of the Cen sus. These Census data were the result of observations made by 150,000 enumerators, all of whom were given careful instructions on how to classify housing. The three categories used in 1960 were "sound," "deteriorat ing," and "dilapidated." Categories or definitions of categories vary slightly from decade to decade, but adjustments were made to make the data comparable in time, and the effect of the slightly changed definitions was negligible. Generally speaking, "sound" hous ing has no defects or has slight defects that would normally be corrected during regular mainte nance (lack of paint, for example).

"Deteriorating" housing needs more repair than that required by normal maintenance (a shaky porch or broken plaster, for ex ample) . "Dilapidated" housing does not provide safe and adequate shelter.

58 THE FREEMAN March Although the Bureau of the Census data can be criticized, they are by far the best available today - most accurate, broadest in scope, and most consistent over time. I emphasize this because a considerable number of self-styled experts consider their lone opin ions superior to those of 150,000 trained enumerators. They would justify their conclusion that the city or housing is deteriorating solely on the basis of their visual impressions. This is not a valid way to measure changes in hous ing quality. The amateur's experi ence is very limited, his standards cannot be identified, and there is no way of knowing whether his standards change from year to year. The next time you hear that the city is deteriorating, ask: "In what way? By whose standard?" Conclusion Since 1949 two different meth ods have been used to grapple with the "problems" of housing and cities. One of these is basically the system of free enterprise, guided by the complex interplay of the marketplace. The other force is the federal urban renewal program, guided by overall plans prepared by city planning experts and backed up with the taxpayers' money and the police power of the government.

The facts tell us that private enterprise has made enormous gains, while the federal program has not. Contrast, for example, the fantastic increase of 18 mil lion homes in areas outside urban renewal projects with the net de crease of homes within urban re newal projects. Consider also the decrease in low-rent flousing and the increase in high-rent housing in the urban renewal areas; urban renewal actually subsidizes high income groups and hurts low-in come groups. Add to this the de struction of businesses and the forcible displacement of people from their homes. The program endangers the right of private property - commercial and resi dential-in its equating of public interest with public use. The overall results of the gov ernment's program, when com pared to the results of private forces, are negligible. Its overall costs, when compared with its re sults, are high. On balance, the federal urban renewal program has accomplished little of benefit in the past, and it appears doubt ful that it will do better in the future.

However, there are times when participating in a federal urban renewal project - as a contractor, a banker, or a businessman - may be attractive if only short-run gains or profits are considered.

1966 THE FIASCO OF URBAN RENEWAL 59 Participation may make it possible for a businessman to get that 10 cation he wants from an owner who has been unwilling to sell; it may renovate an adjacent area and thus increase the value of his property; it may eliminate build ings that are visually offensive to him; and he may even make some money out of it. But in supporting the program for these or other reasons, the businessman should be aware that he is supporting a government pro gram that, in the long run, is det rimental to his own interests. It uses the concept of eminent do main in such a way that private property - business as well as residential - can be taken and re sold by the government to other private persons for their own use simply because it is supposed to be in the public interest. It im plies acceptance of the idea that private enterprise cannot work ef fectively in the field of housing and that government must inter vene, when, in fact, this is not true. It subsidizes some businesses and construction interests that are in direct competition with those of other private businessmen. During execution it lowers the tax base of the city - in some cases perhaps permanently-and thus increases the tax burden for the rest of the city.

And, finally, the businessman may be hurt directly when the lo cal renewal authorities decide that the area in which he is located is blighted! The irony of Washing ton's urban renewal program is that without the enthusiastic col laboration of many businessmen it would come to a grinding halt. In my judgment, the program should be repealed now. This could be accomplished simply by not authorizing any new projects. All projects currently under contract could be carried through to com pletion if the individual cities de sired to do so. As the Greek philosopher Aris totle stated more than 2,200 years ago: "Even when laws have been \vritten down, they ought not al \vays to remain unaltered." What would be the results of such clear-cut, positive action? Would slums proliferate? Would housing get worse? Would cities die? Clearly, no. The record of what has been achieved outside of the federal urban renewal pro gram by private forces is concrete evidence of what can be done by an essentially free-enterprise eco nomic system. If this is what can be accomplished by free enter prise, the rational course of action is to encourage it to function, not to attack it or to sabotage it. ~ A REVIEWER'S NOTEBO'OK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN WE LIVE in a mercantilist age.