Title: Establishing the New Department of Housing and Urban Development
Abstract: T HE AMERICAN city today is in ferment. Ethnic and social changes, dynamic shifts in transportation, new housing and employment patterns, and-most of allthe tremendous surge of people toward the city have produced convulsions of seismic proportions in many an urban community. Today 70 per cent of all Americans live in urban areas. By the year 2000 some 85 per cent of the 300 million people in the nation will be living in metropolitan areas, spread over 30,000 square miles of new subdivisions and requiring a host of added community services, including sewer and water connections, roads and transit lines, and public and private buildings. To cope with these dramatic changes, President Johnson has said we may have to do as much rebuilding in the next 40 years as was accomplished over the entire period of our growth as a nation. The rebuilding process cannot wait. Congestion in the cities has already brought us face to face with a long list of critical urban ills-substandard housing for several million families, inadequate schools, overcrowded hospitals, welfare loads, malnutrition, unemployment, growing pollution of air and water, insufficient recreation facilities, and the tremendous human costs of crime and delinquency in the streets. We must contend with the special problems of the poor-the Negro, the disadvantaged of all races and origin-who are struggling for the bare necessities of life. We must think of the Watts, the Houghs, the Harlems, the Newarks, and the terrible potential for violence that can be generated if cities are allowed to turn into huge minority ghettos, )The author describes the organization of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Five semiautonomous units are contained within a single cohesive department, and departmental activities have been regrouped on a problem-solving basis. Field activities have been consolidated under seven regional administrators in order to strengthen the field structure and allow appropriate decsions to be made in the field. The unique role of the Department in creative federalism and in the synthesis of social, human, and economic factors and development is assessed.
Publication Year: 1967
Publication Date: 1967-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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