educational system, Harvard's president concluded that "most universities continue to do their least impressive work on the very subjects where society's need for greater knowledge and better education is most acute."[2] Bok's conclusion (reached near the end of his Harvard presidency) necessarily leads to the further conclusion that the American university has failed to do what it is supposed to do. In short, esoterica has triumphed over public philosophy, narrow scholasticism over humane scholarship. Urban universities are now compelled to work with their neighbors for their own immediate and long-term self-interest. There are four reasons why universities should be involved in urban revitalization efforts. The first reason is institutional self-interest, including the safety, cleanliness, and attractiveness of the physical setting. Each of these contributes to the campus ambiance and to the recruitment and retention of faculty, students, and staff. Needless to say, high walls and imposing gates cannot shield students, faculty members, or administrators from the disturbing reality that surrounds the urban campus.

The second reason involves a more indirect effect on institutional self-interest. It includes both the costs (financial, public relations, and political) to the institution that result from a retreat from the community, as well as the benefits that accrue from active, effective engagement. As Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy have noted:

As conditions in society continue to deteriorate, universities will face increased public
scrutiny (witness the Congressional hearings chaired by Representative John Dingell of
Michigan last year). The scrutiny is bound to intensify as America focuses on resolving its
deep and pervasive societal problems amid continuously expanding global competition.
Institutions of higher education will increasingly be held to new and demanding standards
that evaluate performance on the basis of direct and short-run societal benefit. In addition,
public, private, and foundation support will be more than ever based on that standard, and it
will become increasingly clear to colleges and universities that "altruism pays"--in fact, that
altruism is practically an imperative for institutional development and improvement.[3]

The third reason involves the advancement of knowledge, teaching, and human welfare through academically based community service focused on improving the quality of life in the local community. The benefits that can emerge from this approach are the integration of research, teaching, and service; the interaction of faculty members and graduate and undergraduate students from across the campus; the connection of projects involving participatory action research with student and staff volunteer activities; and the promotion of civic consciousness, value-oriented thinking, and a moral approach to issues of public concern among undergraduates. Historically, universities have missed an extraordinary opportunity to work with their communities and to engage in better research, teaching, and service. The separation of universities from society, their aloofness from real-world problems, has deprived universities of contact with a necessary source of genuine creativity and academic vitality.

Promoting civic consciousness, we believe, is the core component of the fourth reason for significant university involvement with the community. Sheldon Hackney has described this as the "institution's obligation to be a good citizen, and its pedagogic duty to provide models of responsible citizenship for its students."[4] In other words, universities and colleges have, along with schools and religious institutions, a special responsibility to be moral institutions, exemplifying the highest civic and character-building values of society. At the heart of civic responsibility is the concept of neighborliness--caring about and assisting those living in close proximity to us. As an institution, a university's actions and inactions express morality; a university's indifference or civic engagement teaches lessons to its students and to society. This citizenship and character-building role, of course, was at the very center of the American college. However, the didactic approach to citizenship education and morality employed by its predecessors would today be both off-putting and at odds with the openness of the modern university.

Collectively these arguments indicate that it is now both necessary and mutually beneficial for urban universities to work to revitalize their local communities. The complex problems of urban society necessitate a radical reorientation and reinvention of the urban American university to become, once again, a mission-oriented institution devoted to the use of reason to improve the human condition. That

mission was the driving force behind the organization of the modern research university in the late nineteenth century. University presidents of the Progressive Era worked to transform the American university into a major national institution capable of meeting the needs of a rapidly changing and increasingly complex society. Imbued with a boundless optimism and a belief that scientific and social-scientific knowledge could change the world for the better, they saw universities as leading the way toward an effective and humane reorganization of society. Progressive academics viewed the city as their arena for study and action. The city was the site of significant societal transformations; the center of political corruption, poverty, crime and cultural conflict; and a ready source of data and information. It was, according to Richmond Mayo-Smith of Columbia, "the national laboratory of social science, just as hospitals are of medical science." [5] As Jane Addams and her colleagues in Chicago illustrated, the city was also the place in which academics could combine social science and social reform.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT

HOWARD HUSOCK

Director, Case Program

Testimony of Howard Husock

Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity
February 25, 1997

79 JOHN F. KENNEDY STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02138
(617) 496-6252, FAX: (617) 495-8878
e-mail: howardh@ksg1.harvard.edu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For most of my professional life, over the past 25
years, I've been involved, in one way or another, with the issues of the
condition of our cities and the direction of our housing policy.--first, as a
newspaper reporter covering conditions in minority ghettoes; later as a public
television documentary filmmaker working particularly in city neighborhoods;
and, for the past ten years, as an academic studying the history of housing policy
and writing about what direction it might take next. My interest has always been
primarily with the lives and neighborhoods of those of modest means.

In my view, many of the changes proposed in HR 2 are long over due. Let me
begin with the idea of repealing the National Housing Act of 1937, long the basis
of our subsidized housing programs. Just as the Congress last year recognized
that much has changed since the Social Security Act first authorized creation of
the Aid to Families with Dependent Children public assistnce program, so
should it now recognize that times have changed since passage of the National
Housing Act just two years later. At that time, when the nation was still in
Depression and long-term mortgage financing was in its infancy, proponents of
the legislation to launch the public housing program were convinced that the
private housing market could serve almost no one but the very wealthy. The
explosion of housing construction that began afterWorld War II and the growth
of American suburbs has belied that point of view. But those who first pushed
for public housing never appreciated the way in which our cities had offered
low-cost housing forms which had helped the poor make their way into the
middle class. Some of our most distinctive American housing forms--the row
houses of Philadelphia, the three-decker frame houses of Boston, the duplexes
and four-plexes of Chicago-not only provided shelter but formed the basis of
successful, tight-knit communities in which owners often lived in the same house
as tenants and single-people found shelter as boarders. Residents moved up

what I like to call the housing ladder-from tenements to homes of their own. Many of these neighborhoods were not fancy but they did offer inexpensive housing: a federal investigation in 1909 found that in poor neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., residents paid less than 20 percent of their income in rent. No one can deny that there were difficult conditions in our cities as they developed, but the fundamental premise of the National Housing of 1937--that government must step in to the housing market and replace private ownership-must now be seen as suspect.

But where does that leave us? We have more than a million families living in public housing today and several millionmore in various forms of subsidized housing. It's clear now that public housing, built to rid us of slums, has led to conditions every bit as dangerous if not more so. Our housing subsidy programs are a kind of lottery-less than a third of those eligible by income to receive such help, do so.

My own primary housing policy interest lies in using public policy to do what I call repair the housing ladder--to find ways to encourage the construction of lowcost housing which can form the basis of good, if modest, neighborhoods. We need to make sure that government is not so restrictive, in building codes and zoning laws, for instance, that, even in our cities-the traditional starting points for poor families-the poor are priced out of the market. The proposal in HR 2 to give city governments discretion in the way they allocate federal housing funds is a welcome change. Rather than subsidizing only housing authorities and those individuals lucky enough to get cheap, subsidized units, we need to give our local governments the chance to work creatively to help catalyze the construction of new neighborhoods of inexpensive housing within the reach of poor families. Such help might include clearance and preparation of construction sites, for instance, to lay the groundwork for new building. When families have an ownership stake, even in a modest home, they have the incentive to work with their neighbors to keep neighborhoods safe and well-maintained. It is this shared incentive which lies at the heart of community-building efforts.

At the same time, however, we must deal with the reality of our existing public housing and subsidy programs. I believe it is our task, and it is a complex and difficiult one, to think about how to integrate public housing with the larger,

private housing market-rather than letting it continue to exist as a world apart. This task involves both the rules governing who lives in public housing and the rules we set for how we manage it. In some ways, the management issue is the more straightforward. There is increasing recognition at all levels of government that public support for an activity does not mean that public employees are the best ones to perform that activity. The fact that eight of the 40 largest public housing authorities have been classified by HUD as troubled helps make the case for HR 2's provision for allowing cities to allow private bidders to manage public housing. As is happening with a wide range of other public activities, we can insist on performance requirements that help ensure that maintenance and capital monies are actually spent and spent effectively.

But we must also think about who public housing is for. Here we face two distinct choices. We can seek to upgrade public housing and attract better-off tenants. Or we can try to upgrade public housing notwithstanding the fact that it is home, currently, to many of the poorest of the poor. In keeping with my view that our neighborhoods are, as I said before, best thought of as part of a ladder, with different types of homes there to help families climb, I would not rule out the possibility that select public housing developments with commercial appeal might be sold to private owners, who could convert them to use for unsubsidized, working families. The proceeds of such sales could support the maintenance of a smaller base of public housing which offers shelter to those in greatest need for a period, as suggested in HR 2, which would be fixed at the outset of a new tenant's tenure. I'm suggesting then that we might have a smaller public housing system-one not necessarily managed by public authorities--which offers a first step up for the poorest families but does not promise a subsidized apartment in perpetuity. To the extent that we retain our housing voucher system--and I'm not convinced we should--time limits would make sense for it, as well.

In summary, there is much in this legislation which I believe merits the support of this committee: repeal of the National Housing Act of 1937, discretion for local governments in spending housing funds, time limits for public housing tenants and the possible sale of some public housing developments. The Congress has shown it is willing to think creatively about our social policy. The tinie has come