Color Zoning White

Whatever difficulties remain in making school desegregation work, most legal obstacles have been flattened by a combination of legislation and court rulings. Already the civil rights movement is confronting its next frontier: segregated housing. Reformers are finding the challenge there even tougher than the educational color bar has been.

There is law aplenty on the books, including court decisions, federal and state fair-housing regulations and numerous local codes. Yet millions remain confined in ghettos. As the Kerner Commission pointed out, the suburbs often form a white noose around the black inner city. The fact that industrial and service jobs are increasing in the suburbs, not the cities, worsens the ghetto prisoners' plight.

Courts in Front. Ending overt discriminatory practices in existing and planned accommodations--the goal of most open-housing statutes--is primarily an enforcement problem. Another, more subtle obstacle is the exclusionary suburban zoning ordinance. It often has the effect of blocking construction of low-and moderate-cost housing. Unlike blatant Jim Crow barriers, zoning makes a difficult legal target. Its legitimate purpose--to allow a community to plan its land use rationally--has been upheld as proper and constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Nixon Administration is reluctant to intervene vigorously in local housing disputes, even where federal subsidies are involved. George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told a congressional committee last week that Washington would not cut off such funds as a means of compelling local action to facilitate residential integration. A presidential advisory panel had urged the White House to use the withholding of subsidies as a weapon, a measure favored by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. As in the school desegregation area, the federal judiciary is ahead of the executive. Items:

> A federal court in Buffalo ruled three weeks ago that the city of Lackawanna, N.Y., had practiced discrimination in refusing to allow 138 low-cost housing units to be built in a nearly all-white neighborhood. Blacks were expected to occupy most of the homes. Lackawanna officials withheld the approval that would have permitted construction and rezoned the area for park and recreational purposes. Attorneys for the city contended that the project would have overlooked Lackawanna's sewer system. "Mere rationalization," said U.S. District Judge John T. Curtin.

> A zoning ordinance that would have permitted a low-cost housing project in Union City, Calif., was rejected in a referendum last year. The Southern Alameda Spanish Speaking Organization filed suit, contending that the referendum deprived those who would live in the project of their rights under the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found no constitutional violation, but said that city officials may have a duty to meet the needs of low-income families. As a result of the appellate opinion, a U.S. district judge directed Union City to assure housing for low-income residents within ten months.

> The U.S. Supreme Court this fall will review a significant California case. The decision at issue came from a three-judge federal court. It struck down a state constitutional provision requiring referendum approval for low-rent public housing. Though the case deals with the referendum rather than the whole zoning issue, housing experts believe that the court eventually will rule that all communities must provide living space for the poor.

Cursed and Hissed. Even if that happens, enforcement will doubtless be a struggle. When George Romney visited Warren, Mich., in July, he learned how sensitive community feelings are. Romney was cursed and hissed, as he explained HUD's aspirations to let more of the blacks who work in Warren's auto plants live in the town.

Earlier, Warren officials had balked at HUD's insistence that the city promote open housing before federal urban renewal funds would be released. In the end, Warren got its subsidy with a minimum of concessions to HUD. Last week Romney said in an interview that the Warren incident had cost his wife Lenore 10% to 20% of the vote in the Republican Senate primary. Though he has been the strongest civil rights advocate in the Cabinet, Romney said: "I don't think you're going to bring integration to the suburban areas by federal laws that supersede all local authority." The history of the civil rights movement, however, shows that in the absence of federal pressure, change comes with painful slowness.

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