Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
7346354
label
Summary of the Interim Report of the President's Committee on Urban Development and Neighborhood Revitalization
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
7346354
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Summary of the Interim Report of the President's Committee on Urban Development and Neighborhood Revitalization
citationUrl
collections
White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
7346354
levelOfDescription
item
productionDates
day
21
logicalDate
1976-10-21
month
10
year
1976
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
868e592baf0c84ad
ocrText
Digitized from Box 33 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
[10-21-76]
SUMMARY OF THE
INTERIM REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE
ON
URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION
President Ford created the Committee on Urban Development and Neighborhood
Revitalization on June 30, 1976, stating a concern that " the cities of
this nation and the neighborhoods which are their backbone today face
increasingly difficult problems of decay and decline." In the intervening
months, members of the Committee have visited large and small cities in
different parts of the country. We have talked with city officials, civic
leaders, businessmen, neighborhood group leaders and individual citizens
about their neighborhoods and their cities.
The Committee found that many urban areas have had difficulty in dealing
with losses of jobs and industry, problems of racial tension, issues of
crime and educational policy. But we also found many hopeful signs for
the Nation's cities. With greater flexibility in the use of Federal
assistance, many cities have taken innovative and effective steps to deal
with their problems.
This interim report is a statement of the Committee's progress to date.
It is not intended to provide a total strategy to solve the very complex
problems of our urban areas. Rather, the report sums up the Committee's
initial observations, assesses some of the Federal policies and programs
which most directly affect the cities, states a set of principles for
future Federal urban policy and sets forth preliminary recommendations.
Finally, this interim report sets out an agenda for moving towards national
urban policy reform.
The Committee does not recommend massive new Federal assistance to the
cities. The Committee believes that if spending programs are properly
coordinated and targeted to real needs, the billions of Federal dollars now
being spent on domestic programs will more effectively help the cities. In
contrast, new outlays, which mean either higher taxes on wage earners
or a new inflationary spiral, could exacerbate the urban crisis.
The Committee's interim report articulates the following set of principles
to guide Federal urban policy:
- The preservation of the Nation's housing stock, the restoration of
the vitality of its urban neighborhoods, and the promotion of healthy
economic development for its central cities must become a national
priority, to be met by a creative partnership between the public and
private sectors.
- 2 -
-- Federal resources must be targeted to the areas of greatest need,
recognizing the disproportionate social and economic burdens
borne by individual communities or classes of citizens.
- The delivery of Federal assistance to urban areas must be made more
efficient. The Committee recommends expansion of the use of block
grants in providing Federal assistance to urban areas, because
block grants are more efficient, more responsive to local needs, and
ultimately more democratic methods of aiding the cities than the
massive categorical programs of the 1950's and 1960's.
-- In moving towards block grants, electoral responsibility for the
use of Federal funds must be established, citizen participation
and a role for neighborhood groups must be assured, the rights of
minorities must be protected, and the capacity of local and state
governments to administer their block grants should be improved.
Finally, block grants should be structured to facilitate their
creative combination at the local level with other sources of
public and private funds.
On the basis of successful experiences with recent Federal block grant programs,
the report recommends the consolidation of other existing categorical programs
into block grants in several broad areas of federal assistance, including:
-- housing subsidies;
---- urban surface transportation;
-- health services;
- and education.
The Committee's other recommendations include:
-- A comprehensive review of present Federal aid formulas to determine
their impact on "declining" cities and the states in which they
are located.
- A review of Federal tax policies with a view to providing greater
incentives for the preservation and rehabilitation of urban homes
and buildings and for business investment in urban areas with
high unemployment.
- An aggressive search for new means of increasing private sector
employment opportunities for inner-city youths.
- A stand-by program of countercyclical block grant assistance to
areas with high unemployment.
- Legislation to allow nonjudicial foreclosure of Federally insured
properties to reduce the incidence of boarded-up housing.
- 3 -
--- Vigorous enforcement of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975
and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act amendments of 1976, with a
view to eliminating "redlining."
- Expansion of the Urban Homesteading program.
The future agenda for the Committee includes study of the public and private
roles in:
-- Improving the commercial and industrial bases of our cities,
particularly in the Northeast and North Central regions;
-- The complex inter-relationship between the center cities and the
larger metropolitan areas in which they are located;
----- Reversing neighborhood decline, with a particular emphasis on the
role of neighborhood organizations in preservation strategies;
-- Improving the linkages between Federal assistance programs which
provide funds to different recipients for similar purposes; and
-- Meeting the needs of fast-growing cities to anticipate and plan
for future growth patterns and public service needs.
The Committee members returned from visits to American cities with a much
stronger sense of the vitality of many cities and urban neighborhoods, and
with a greater awareness of both the strengths and limitations of Federal
policies and programs. We have agreed to an ambitious agenda for the
Committee's future work. We intend to continue our efforts to improve
Federal policies and programs for making our cities and their neighborhoods
prosperous and more exciting places to live.