The Federal Bulldozer; M. Anderson

SINCE The Federal Bulldozer was published by the M.1.T. Press I have traveled throughout the country, speaking at universities, public gatherings, conventions of professional groups, and public policy forums. I have appeared on a number of television and radio shows, testified at Congressional hearings, received hundreds of letters and phone calls, and an swered thousands of questions. One question I have often been asked is this: Now that you have had a chance to re-evaluate your 614 study and conclusions, are you still satisfied with them? The answer is yes. To my knowl edge, the extensi vesearching cri tiques of my study have not turned up a single significant error in the analysis, and the experience of the last two years has strength ened' not attenuated, the conclu sions I drew from my original findings. At this moment, thou sands and thousands of people are being forced to leave their homes, the private property of some peo ple is being seized with the inten1967 THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER 615 tion of turning it over to other people for their personal use and private gain, thousands of homes -most of them low-rent units and businesses are being destroyed by the wrecker's ball and the bull dozer, and billions of dollars of your money and mine are paying for it.

Is It Right? The question that we should have asked in 1949, when the Fed eral urban renewal program start ed, is long overdue now: Is it right to deliberately hurt .peo ple, to .. push around· those who are least able to defend. them selves, to spend billions of .dollars of .the taxpayers' money, so that some people might be able to enjoy a prettier city? That .answer is your own, and for those whose morals permit them to .answer yes, there is another question:· Has any city been "renewed"? Here the answer is no. The Fed eral urban renewal program has been, and continues to be, a thun dering failure -withoneimpor tant exception: it has exhibited an amazing talent for continued growth. The reaction to failure has been a policy of escalation whose most recent manifestation is the so-called "Demonstration Cities" program. But while urban renewal has increased in size and scope, its basic nature has not changed. The urban renewal pro gram is essentially the same as it was when this book was first published.

In the book I offer the economic system of free enterprise as a viable alternative to the govern ment program,. and point out that it would not force people from their homes, that it would not take homes, ·land, and buildings from people without their consent, nor WQuld· it cost a dime of the tax payers' money. I have since dis covered that this alternative is un known and unthinkable to many people, either because they know so little about modern economic theory or because they have a deep-seated antagonism toward the economics of laissez-faire capital ism. I am insistently pressed for a "positive" alternative, which, to the questioner, invariably means an alternative government pro gram. freedom Is an· Alternative One does not have to offer any alternative government program for two reasons. First, .to presume that any valid alternative must be a government program is·. to take a blatantly unintellectual po sition. Second, and more impor tantly, the Federal· urban renewal program, by itself, is a bad pro gram.· It is causing harm, and its 616 THE FREEMAN October very elimination would therefore be an improvement. To suggest that one should not "stop harmful government .action ... until one has thought of new government action is absurd. In fact, one·of the most efficacious ways to improve the present and future living condi tions of all people in the United States would be to repeal the urban renewal program as soon as prac ticable.

Of course, local, state, and Fed eral governments could· do many things to further increase the quality of housing after the urban renewal program was repealed. The basic thrust of this govern ment action should be in the di rection of eliminating the laws and regulations that are, to a signifi cant degree, throttling the housing market today. But the main factors that will improve living conditions are (1) increased personal' incomes and (2) improved· housing technology that· will lower housing costs. The greater the degree to which our economy is free of government intervention, the faster this will occur . The details of how this would be accomplished are far too involved·' to attempt to discuss here; I hope to say considerably more about it in the future. liThe Public Interes'" One of the minimal things that any intellectual should be able to do is to define the meaning of the key terms which he uses, and· a favorite term used by many of today's intellectuals is that fa miliar phrase, "the public inter est" - alias the public good, the common interest, the consensus, the national interest, the common welfare, etc.

The urban renewal program is often justified as being in the "public interest." As with other things that are justified in the name of the public interest, it is revealing to inquire into the exact sense in which the term, the public interest, is used. "Public" refers to those people (all of them) con stituting a community, state,or nation; "interest" refers to some thing which is of benefit or ad vantage to someone. Literally, then, the public interest would have to be something that is of benefit to all the people. This is patently untrue with re1967 THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER 617 gard to urban renewal; here the benefit of some is always obtained at the expense of others. In to day's context, the public interest has become a synonym for. declar ing that, in the speaker's or writ er's opinion, the deliberate, inten tional sacrifice· of the interests of one group of people is justified hy .the. benefit that accrues to another group of people.

.The issue that. users of euphe misticphrases like the public. in terest evade, consciously or un consciously; is the sacrifice of one man's·· interests to another's. And they evade for good cause: how far would the proponent of some new idea get if he' qirectly and clearly stated that citizen X should be injuredto benefit citizen Y be causethe proponent feels that the benefit citizen Y receives justifies the injury X suffers? Concerned with Power I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of community leaders in cities where urban re newal was being considered. Dur ing thes,e conversations I was par ticularly interested in finding out why certain people strongly ad vocated the program, and I was surprised to find a consistent theme running· through their off the-record statements. They were not seriously concerned .with the poor people living in the areas they had tentatively marked for renewal; they were not concerned with •any personal financial gain; they were not even very concerned with getting a substantial amount of cash from the rest of the tax payers via .Washington. But they were concerned with power.

Again and again -:- from bank ers, politicians, newspaper editors, businessmen,and even religious leaders - I heard statements like these : "Well, I've tried to buy property in that area of town, but the owner won'tseH at a reasQn able price. Somebody has to make him sell at a- 'fair'price. Who does· he think· he is, standing in the way of· the whole city?" Or, "We need at least a whole block to do anything worthwhile;. we can't fool around trying to buy-, a lot here and a lot there. Besides some ·old man may feel attached to property that's been in his family for years. We can't wait for him to die.' We need the tool of eminent domain." In essence these "community leaders" are saying that they have no compunction whatsoever about invoking the'police power of the state to accomplish by force what they cannot accomplish by persua sion. If they can't· persuade an old man to sell his property, then they will" make him sell, and use the strong arm ofa healthy police man to back up their demand. As 618 THE FREEMAN October one particularly obnoxious editor of a major newspaper put it, "We want to get this done,· and we don't care what we have to do to get it done."

The Power of Eminent Domain The keystone of urban renewal is the power of eminent domain; private property is taken by force, or by the threat of force, for the advantage of others. How many of those who· advocate, .support, and run the program could bring them selves to do personally what their actions will eventually imply? How many would personally seize an aged couple and bodily evict them, while listening to their cries of protest? We could ask other questions. What happens to a businessman's sense of justice when he is told that his business is to be destroyed to make way for someone else's business? What happens to the Negro's sense of justice when he discovers that twothirds of those displaced are Negroes? What hap pens to a slum-dweller's sense· of justice when he . is forced out of the home he does have and then is told that he must uphold the laws and not riot? Perhaps one small step we could take in easing the problems of slum dwellers is to stop taking away that little which they do have.

There are many important issues in the· urban renewal ques tion, but there is one which is both the most important and easi est· to understand. The local gov ernment must have the power to take by force the private property of .one man - his home,· his land, his.· business - with the intent of turning it over to some other man for his private use and personal gain. It is on the acceptance or rejection of this principle that the fate of urban renewal rests, for without the power of eminent do main local governments could not force people to surrender· their homes, their land, and their busi nesses. If local· citizens are not aware of the deliberate sacrifice·· of some individuals to the personal inter ests of· others - or· worse, if they approve of it....;.urban renewal will spread. If they are aware of what is going on, do not approve, and take actions that match their con victions,· then urban renewal will not continue.

If you have been forced out of your home, if your property has been seized, if your business has been destroyed....;.then you know more about the consequences of the Federal urban renewal pro gram than any book, article, or speech can tell you. You know that the program is outrageously un just, but for you,· and a million others in the same position, it is 1967 THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER 619 likely that nothing will be done to rectify this inj ustice. Prospects for Victory But if you are threatened with the prospect of being "renewed," there is an excellent .chance of de fending yourself -if you are will ing to spend some time learning the facts about the program, and if you have the courage to speak out in public for what. you think is right. Your ammunition. is knowledge of how the program works and what it does. Your weapons are any means by which you can communicate this knowl":' edge to others in your community.

From conversations I· have had with many people throughout the country, lam convinced that the vast majority of them are opposed to the means employed to. gain the ends of urban renewaI.But even today very few people know what is happening. A few articulate people - who somehow never· can bring themselves to mention any of the strong-arm tactics that are necessary - have .portrayed urban renewal as the· program that will "save" the cities. In view of the skillful,extensive propaganda for urban renewal, it is understandable how many busy, influential people who could have checked the program have ac cepted what has been said about the program at face value. Many have even committed themselves publicly on this issue, and now, even though they may have devel oped doubts about· the program, hesitate to recant for fear of ap pearing foolish. But men can make honest errors of judgment. It is no reflection on a man's character to acknowledge a previous error in the light of new information; it is a reflection ona man's char acter if· he persists in his error.

One .of the most .dangerous threats to urban renewal is. wide spread knowledge of its nature. As a director of one of the largest urban renewal operations in the country once remarked to me, "The only thing urban renewal can't stand is publicity." Today many people feel· that it is useless to try to fight "city hall" on something as big as this, and the proponents of urban renewal desperately hope they will continue to feel this way. The initiation of an urban renewal· program is es620 THE FREEMAN October sentially a function of the local government, and .until the opposi tion grows to the point where con'" gressmen will act, . the only prac tical way to stop it is on the local level. Many communities have re jectedurban renewal in the last four or five years, but it has never been rejected without at .least one person in the community taking a public stand· against it. The Fort Worth Case Let me give you a recent case example. On April 12, 1966 there was a referendum vote on urban renewal in Fort Worth, Texas.

Fort Worth is the thirty~fourth largest city in the country, and is perhaps the largest city to date that· has brought the matter di rectly to the voters. In Fort Worth there was widespread support for the program among the city's leaders. If there is such a thing ·as an "establishment," virtually the entire establishment came out strongly in favor of urban re newal. The Mayor was for it, all the city councilmen (except one) were for it, the Chamber of Com merce was for it. The newspapers editorialized for it, and large real estate developers flew in and threatened to ignore Fort Worth in the future if the citizens did not approve urban renewal. Spe cial committees were formed, and tens of thousands of dollars were spent promoting the program. To almost everyone it was a foregone conclusion that .urban renewal was .coming in. Neverthe less, a small group of people stub bornly decided to fight the pro gram on principle. Sparked by the local Buick dealer, they formed the Citizens Committee for the Protection of Property Rights.

They were convinced the program was wrong and set out to present their· case to the· public. First they learned·· as much as they could about the program what the law is, how it works, who would lose their homes and businesses,. how much· money it would cost, where the money would come from, and so on. Then they started an educational cam paign. They set up an informal speak ers' bureau and addressed local social gatherings, civic organiza tional functions, and business 1967 THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER 6·21 luncheons .. They presented the facts and answered questions. They compiled lists of voters, wrote and mimeographed letters, sent for reprints of articles on urban renewal, and then mailed the letters and articles to the voters. They tape-recorded short mes sages, bought radio time and broadcast the messages; they wrote short newspaper ads and ran them in the local papers. They attended urban renewal meetings, they asked questions; they contacted their local repre sentatives in person, they wrote to the Mayor, and they wrote let ters-to-the-edi tor.

They called their friends, and they got offers of volunteer help and donations of money. They vis ited nearby towns, talked to peo ple who had experience with ur ban renewal, and found out first hand what happened when the bulldozers moved in. And then they went back and did what they had done before all over again. The election took place on a Tuesday, and they engaged me' to fly down from New York to ad dress a public meeting thepreced ing· Friday night. Four hundred people attended .. Before I left I taped a half-hour television speech for them; by this time enough people had become concerned so that contributions to their campaign were sufficient to buy a half-hour of television time on both Sunday and Monday even ings. I left Fort Worth on Saturday, and the general consensus, with which I agreed, was that the prop aganda guns for urban. renewal were just too big, and that it was almost certain that· urban renewal would come to their city. These feelings were confirmed on Satur day when the Mayor announced the results of a poll made by a profes sional organization specializing in opinion research. The poll flatly predicted that urban renewal would be approved by a substantial margin - but only if there was a very heavy turnout.

Overwhelmingly Rejected On Tuesday evening, city elec tion officials commented that the turnout of voters was very heavy; the City Secretary predicted that approximately 24,000 people would vote. But something happened on that Tuesday in Forth Worth. On Wednesdaymorning the tally showed that 47,545 voters had gone to the polls and 38,397 (over 80 per cent) had voted against ur ban renewal. The number of peo ple voting was double what any one had expected, the urban re newalproposal was defeated by a resounding 4 to 1 margin, and de622 THE FREEMAN October feat was overwhelming in virtu ally every precinct. A handful of amateurs had taken on a group of highly organized professionals and won. I, and perhaps everyone else who had followed the campaign, was surprised, but perhaps we should not have been. The aver age American citizen is a very in telligent, thoughtful person - once he knows the facts.

If there is anything that would strike fear into the minds of ur ban renewal proponents, it would be an outbreak of locally orga nized, articulate opposition to local renewal programs. The local re ferendum vote has proven to· be the most successful way to fight urban renewal, .perhaps because it brings the major issues out in the open for public discussion. Un fortunately, in some localities re ferendum votes are not possible, and then the only recourse is to the elected officials. However, a bill is now pending in Congress that would make a referendum vote mandatory on any renewal project. Of cours.e, there is always the possibility that a majority of the voters will vote to gain at the expense of the minority, and their approval will not make the pro gram right. However, until the program is repealed at the na tional level, a local referendum vote is a· potent weapon. Resist on Principle One of the standard ploys of the proponents of urban renewal· is .to assert that the program is "here to stay," and that the only possi ble course of action is to figure out the·most a.dvantageous way·to collaborate with the program. This is doubly· unfortunate - first be cause the assertion is not true, and second, because the act of acqui escing in principle to the program is what makes it possible.

Urban renewal has been rejected by at least 70 towns and cities that I know of, and unquestionably many more will reject it in the future. What the advocates of ur ban renewal programs dread· the most is opposition to the program on principle. With the cunning of any seducer, they know· that ·if you will agree to just one instance of forcing a person from his home, to just· one instance of seizing 1967 THE FEDERAL·BULLDOZER 623 someone's home .and . land, to just one instance of closing down some one's business, they can then, at their leisure, use the principle you have implicitly adopted to force you into accepting its .wider and wider use. Once you have agreed in prin ciple that it is .all right to harm just one man in the name of help ing the "community," you have lost and you cannot effectively ob ject to anything done in the name of .urban renewal.. Inexorably the logic of your position will be ex tended to cover more people, more homes, and more businesses. And, once· committed, you can only change your position by admitting your earlier error. Unfortunately, most people, particularly those who have committed themselves in pub lic, are loathe to retract.

But to those that have not given in on principle, and to those who are willing to reconsider their po sition, the possibilities of success fully opposing any local project are surprisingly high. Virtually all urban renewal projects now in existence got there without the local· citizens knowing very much about it; .dimly aware that the proposed urban renewal program was somehow going to get. rid of ugly old buildings and create new ones·in their place, and being very busy with their own affairs, they casually condoned it. Motives Are Suspect Until now I have always given proponents of urban. renewal the "benefit of the doubt," and have rarely questioned their motives or their morals. I have accepted their assertions that they are sincerely concerned about people, that their intentions are to improve the liv ing conditions of the poor, and that the· tragedy and suffering caused in· the .process were not foreseen by them.

But. 17 .years have now passed since the program started and everyone conne~ted .with it knows exactly how it works. The excuses have worn thin; the earnest as sertions .have lost validity, and the credibility gap in urban re newal is very wide. Increasingly, I find that my criticisms of the program draw the whining reply, "But the program was never in tended to improve the housing conditions of the poor slum areas -the real· purpose of· urbanre newal is to rebuild the city. It's not fair to blame us for what's happening." When pressed on what is happening to the displaced people, they either evade or retort revealingly,"Look, some people are always going to be hurt, that's the way it is." The fact is that every intelli gent, knowledgeable. proponent of urban .renewal. is willing to delib erately hurt innocent people, most 624 , THE FREEMAN October of them Negro and. poor, for the sake of contemplating and enjoy ing a few new bricks, a little grass, and .some shiny glass. They will protest that they don't like to do it, that. they, are trying to ease the pain as much as possible, that they wish there was something else they could do-but they will do it.

Too much is now known about urban renewal to make allowances ; the proponents know .what they are doing, and we should take their actions at face "valtie.Per~ haps it would be wise to recall an old .legal .. maxim,. acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta (out ward acts show· the inward· ~in tent). Increasing Re,sistance More and .more: people are··be coming .·very concerned with the consequences of the. urban renewal program, and many of them are speaking out. On April 14, 1966 members of the', United' States Commission on Civil Rights in vestigated Cleveland, Ohio, and charged that urban ·,renewal. and other, Federal programs were rna'" jor causes of the despondency and decay that exist in one area there. The area, incidentally, was Hough, which later in 1966 was marked by brutal rioting. One well-known member of the Commission, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, the President of Notre Dame University, condemned the program as immoral. He was quoted in the New York Times 1 as saying, "In these Federal pro grams to rebuild the cities what has happened is that people in the worst condition find their houses bulldozed from under them. The total program:is immoral." [My italics] Urban renewal is a vast pro gram, and it is sometimes difficult to understand its impact on a sin,:; gle person's life. I' have, included below some·· exc'erpts .from one of the many hundreds of letters I received since the publication of the book. This particular letter was sent toPresidentJ ohnson, and I received 'a carbon: March 28,1965 My dear President Johnson: The Federal ,government seems to be taking a firm stand •in defending the human .. dignity and the human rights of American. citizens inmost areas of "the Great SoGiety," but I have .yet to hear any thing. about the dignity and rights of the small hO,me owner whose property lies in the way of urban renewal and whoconse quently is being victimized, 'destroyed even, by an immoral concept of' the law of eminent domain.

I am a school teacher with a ninety two-year ...oldfather who is depen,,; dent on me. Dad was ninety-two last February 25. Since he'. is crippled, 1 N ew York Times, April 5, 1966.

1967 THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER 625 having sustained a broken hip just two years and nine months ago, and is blind of glaucoma ... he cannot be left alone while I am at work. The only reason I can afford to give him the nursing care he requires is that we own our home here ... free and clear. The city wants this house in which Dad has lived for forty years and more. Or rather the university wants it and, under the guise of the law of eminent domain, is demanding it. For nearly five years now since the whole idea of urban renewal was conceived, it has seemed to me that I have been living in the U.S.S.R. rather than in the U.S.A. I have been harassed and terrified both at home and at work by telephone calls and threats includ ing a court summons from City Hall because I refuse to admit anyone who threatens this home which my father has provided for himself through his own industry against the old age and infirmity of which he is now a victim.

At one time, my attorney, whose aid I had to enlist, had all he could do to prevent City Hall authorities from sending a police wagon to my school to haul me off to court .... In addition to all this harassment and persecution by City Hall in the last five years, we have been sub j ected to the noise and filth of the demolition of six to eight houses directly across the narrow street from our home, and we have been terrified and terrorized by all the vandalism and hoodlumism that ac company a demolition. Now a univer sity parking lot has been completed on the site of the demolished homes. We endured that, too.. Temporarily we are having a little respite from the noise and dirt and confusion of tearing down and rebuilding, but the harassment and persecution by City Hall have resumed. I am stalked peri odically in my own driveway when I get home from work by so-called "in spectors" who demand entrance into my house. So far I have been able to keep them out. Mimeographed notices from "your relocation counselors"

have been shoved under my front door, ordering me to call such and such a number or else. Now I ask you, Mr. President, what do I, a teacher of more years than I care to say, a ... University gradu ate, a Phi Beta Kappa (judging from some recent appointments of yours you seem to set great store by these 626 THE FREEMAN October letters) , with a year's graduate work at Yale University, need with a re location counselor? Just because I am poor by your standards does not mean that I am an idiot. Nor do I appreci ate it when your aforementioned City Hall officials add insult to injury by suggesting that for $12,500 they feel justified in uprooting an old man from his home and in destroying a way of life for his daughter. I just want my rights and my dig nity recognized. . . . Avoiding the Damage If we are concerned sincerely with the well-being of individuals, the main issue before us is not how to help a person who has been hurt by urban renewal, nor is it to figure out ways by which his pain can be alleviated - it is to determine how this pain can be avoided.

All other questions, such as How can home owners and small businessmen participate in so called renewed areas? Should dis placed people-get increased Fed eral aid? How can people be forc ibly displaced with the least suffering? - stem from ·the implicit ac ceptance of the idea that there is nothing wrong with forcibly push ing people around in the first place. Anyone who is for an urban re newal program must also be for, at the same time: • The forcible displacement of millions of citizens from their homes. • The seizure-of one man's pri vate property for some other man's private use. • The destruction of hundreds of thousands of low-rent homes. • The spending of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money. This kind _of a program is not logical, it is' not practical, and it is. not moral. For no government program should exist that threat ens the life, the liberty, or the property of any person. No per son, no matter who he is, should be sacrificed for the esthetic pleas ure or personal gain of anyone, no matter how educated, how rich, or how powerful. ~ Eke £iietfoi £iberalism Oft fkelamJlus JOHN A. HOWARD As the central government in creases the range of activi tie-s which it plans or regulates and conducts or subsidizes, .there is a corresponding decline in the in itiative in the decision-making and in the acceptance of responsibility by lower levels of government, by private industry, and by individ uals. This accelerating transfer of power and action is, in my opinion, grievously destructive of our form of government, our eco nomic system, and the character of our citizenry.