Votes Against the Poor

THE SUPREME COURT Votes Against the Poor

In its latest strict construction of the Constitution, the Supreme Court last week went a long way toward hindering the movement of blacks into white suburbs. It ruled that residents of a community may block public housing projects by voting them down. Although a disproportionate share of the poor are black, and public housing is often the only kind of decent suburban housing blacks can afford, the court saw nothing wrong with antihousing referendums. Mere economic discrimination, the court ruled in effect, is not unconstitutional.

The 5-to-3 decision was the second in two weeks that gave Southerners reason to charge that the Supreme Court is helping to perpetuate a dual standard of public policy on racial matters by pressing for integration in the South and not in the North. The first was a ruling that busing can be used to integrate schools if school officials have created segregated systems--as they have in much of the South. Northern schools, which are often segregated because many are in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, are another matter, said the court. Last week's decision will make it more difficult to break up those neighborhood patterns and thus achieve a better racial balance in Northern schools.

Devotion to Democracy. At issue in the second case was the constitutionality of a California law requiring a referendum on all low-rent public housing projects before any land for the housing is acquired or construction started. In 1968, San Jose voters vetoed a city council decision to build 1,000 public housing units in predominantly white areas, and 41 welfare families claimed that this violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A federal district court agreed. But Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Supreme Court majority, held that "referendums demonstrate devotion to democracy, not to bias, discrimination or prejudice." The California law, he added, does not rest on "distinctions based on race."

Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented. The law, he said, imposes "a substantial burden solely on the poor" in violation of the amendment. The Justice Department, which had argued with Southern lawyers against unlimited busing in the school case, lost again. This time its attorneys argued in behalf of the complaining welfare families.

The decision dismayed most proponents of public housing--to say nothing of construction-industry executives and labor-union officials. For public housing has become a large and profitable business. Housing authorities are now operating in 4,000 U.S. communities, supervising 865,000 low-income dwelling units for 2,800,000 residents. But eight states have referendum laws similar to California's. There is no longer any legal doubt that these laws may now be used to prevent new public projects. More such laws are expected to be passed.

Sewers and Schools. Even without a referendum, most low-rent projects incite angry debates as soon as a site is selected. Too many people, observes San Francisco Planning Consultant Larry Livingston, put public housing in the same category as "sewers and noisy schools--everybody recognizes that you have to have them, but nobody wants to be next to them." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley contends that many of his city's large housing projects would not have been built if they had required voter approval. "We don't need referendums," he says. "We need understanding." Coincidentally, the decision was announced just as California was ending a "Fair Housing Week," which included a Los Angeles exhibit of art work expressing the attitudes of teen-aged students toward housing problems.

The court decision means that housing authority officials and the poor must now wage political campaigns to get each project approved. The trouble is, says M. Justin Herman, head of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, "they are not equipped to do it."

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