AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 967

mayor's housing and urban renewal task force in New York City re-
ported last year that "during the past five years... slum housing has
increased more swiftly than it has been eliminated. " In East Los
Angeles we know that the percentage of housing classified as sub-
standard grew between 1960 and 1965 from 25 to 35 percent; in South
Los Angeles, from 18 to 34 percent.

The future is not promising for the slum dwellers. A study by the
Economic Development Administration two years ago, projecting in-
come, employment, and migration patterns through 1975, concluded
that the big cities of the nation will be short three million jobs eight
years from now.

These facts raise at least a strong presumption that we are losing
ground instead of making progress in meeting the problems of inner
cities, that time is not on our side, and that new approaches are
needed. To meet urban problems, we need action that is bold and
comprehensive instead of timid, fragmentary, and tentative.

A national strategy adequate to the needs of our cities should, I
submit, seek to achieve these results:

(1) Jobs for all who are able to work — jobs that will reward each
individual according to his talent and industry and offer ad-
vancement as far as his ability will take him;

(2) Safe and decent housing for all American families with emphasis
on broadened opportunity for home ownership;

(3) Better educational opportunity for all with emphasis on im-
proved facilities for the disadvantaged and on access to higher
education for all talented youth;

(4) A welfare system that provides decently for those who must
be supported by society but gives to others incentive and op-
portunity to become self-supporting.

A strategy to attain these results would include three objectives.

First, it should seek a halt to the pile-up of people in the inner city.
We must prevent the tragedy of 3 million unemployed in the cities
predicted for 1975. To deal effectively with urban problems, we must
seek ways of thinning out the population in those parts of the city
where economic opportunity is sparse and of reducing the inflow of
migrants to such areas.

I disagree sharply with those who believe that sprucing up the
ghettoes will solve our problems. Of course energetic action should be