The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 121

Sunday, March 3, 1974 Philadelphia Inquirer 3-1 The Return of the Neighborhood Crime, Energy Shortage Spur Community Renaissance ASSO i SFS jm Ill! i mmm i in WITT I iri 1 i -''12' lMiiillltelfiil ImP25 tf Hf fi; ys i 2 zff i i w--n lite -v i Six S1 iliri-y Ilk :waiSiHw.ffiii mf Grand Prize CRESS UP YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEST 1972 Fixing-up earns a prize from the block asso-ciationjn Laurelton, N. neighborhood. bucking the rising crime statistics in other parts of Chicago and in the suburbs. The area has stabilized racially. Families have been pooling their talents to help each other.

A baby-sitting pool has been set up. A fix-it crew a black plumber, a white carpenter, a black painter, a white electrician, and other volunteers have helped several widows in the neighborhood by repairing electrical wiring, correcting unsafe porches, and painting the exteriors of their homes. The BAPA now plans a community-wide volunteer service program, with a 24-hour switchboard. The program will match citizen volunteers with people in the neighborhood that need help or assistance. ONE OF THE BIGGEST problems confronting neighborhoods today is the exploding mobility of the population.

Twenty percent of American households move each year studies show which neighborhood populations turn over on the average of once every five years (every seven years in home-owning areas). Brian J. L. Berry, urban geographer at the University of Chicago, argues that the American auto culture and the maze of metropolitan highways have created a pattern of "selective neighboring." Instead of socializing with the people next door or down the block, Americans are more likely to "neighbor" with people in the next community or across the city. And many older neighborhoods have other problems.

"Public policy is really encouraging deterioration and destruction of communities," says Darel Grothaus of the Center for Urban Affairs at Northwestern University. "There is an unwillingness of conventional lenders to make mortgages or home-improvement loans to people in older neighborhoods." Red-lining the practice of financial institutions and insurance companies not making loans or policies in certain "high-risk" areas continues on a widespread basis even today, Grothaus maintains. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) abandoned such practices only as recently as 1968, he says. "It's all part of the 'cowboy econ- i omy' of America, that what is old is bad, and what is new is good. But to the contrary, it is the older neighor-hoods that generally have better-quality housing, more spacious rooms, MONTY HO YT Chrittiam Soienc Monitor Servict CHICAGO ARTHUR SPRAGGS and other blacks who live in a once rundown 15-bIock area of North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side are sandblasting and cleaning the stone face of the neighborhood, painting porches and window trim, planting new sod and new hopes.

Dr. Martin Maclntyre and his I neighbors in the Richmond district of San Francisco are fighting local apa- thy, winning a zoning battle to exclude apartment buildings, securing new bike lanes and stop signs and trees, and having bumps installed on local roads to cut down auto speeds. Susan Heilbron found many problems in her 32-story high-rise apartment in New York when she i moved in, from faulty elevators to in-', adequate security. She put notices under everyone's door announcing a tenants' meeting, and 100 showed up. Now, three months later, 97 percent of the problems have been solved, she says.

"It was mainly a lack of communication," says the young New York City government worker. Individuals, she says, need to band together to survive: "It's really surprising what you can do." People in these reviving areas and many others like them have discovered that you can only get out of a neighborhood what you put into it. Rather than pounding in a "for sale" sign in the front yard and moving out, or rolling up the welcome mat and barricading themselves in their private castles, residents have started at the grass-roots level to tackle the problems besetting urban neighborhoods in the U. decay, abandonment, shifting populations, crime, pollution, overcrowding, encroaching highways, inadequate local schools, poor city service. "People are beginning to rediscover the values of community," says St.

Louis urbanologist Dr. Norton E. Long. "Neighborhoods in which people care about their kids, their houses, and each other, make the difference between delinquency, blight, and decay, and the vitality 6f processes of renewal that make an aging city a still attractive place to live." FROM THE SURGE of grass-roots activity across America, observers agree there seems little doubt that a renaissance in neighborhoods is taking place even though precise statistics are virtually nonexistent. The revival, experts say, is likely spurred by: Energy shortages which are re- Skyscrapers can be neighborhoods too.

At Co-op City in the Bronx, N. many of the 50,000 resident belong to associations that act to solve neighborhood problems. know one another, they're less likely to panic, less likely to' run." In the last two years the BAPA mounted a multipronged attack. It started a rumor-control telephone line to squelch inflamed reports and to open communication between residents and local city, state, and federal officials presented a solid front tq the real-estate industry, saying, "Don't call us, we'll call you," thereby banning real-estate sale solicitation by mail, phone, or door-to-door organized a citizen blight-review committee to inspect housing and check spreading decay brought public and parochial school officials together on a monthly basis to discuss common problems and instituted a racial squad car manned by a black and white officer to answer calls of racial harassment. The BAPA organized and hosted ISO block parties last summer and is extending the program into the winter.

In one potentially explosive situation, 24 black familes moved into a five-block area; immediately every other remaining white-owned house went up for sale. Working through the local Roman Catholic parish, the community organization had the- pastor call each block in to discuss the problems and to search for solutions. One white resident recalls, "We entered the meeting as black and white homeowners, but we left as neighbors." Results: Property values, declining in the late '60's, have gone up an average of $2,500 in the last three years. The local crime rate has dropped, up a polluted river, or building a local health center. Sometimes neighborhoods can be revived by Federal programs such as urban renewal or model cities.

Offi-" cials at the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department in-: Washington point to New Haven, Fresno, and Pittsburgh-as examples of good urban renewal in inner-city areas. Citing a Federal flow of more than $1.4 billion a year into neighborhoods, HUD officials also say that the much-criticized "bulldozer" approach to slums is being phased out in favor of rehabilitating existing older communi-' ties. Instead of tearing down old build- ings, the officials say, policy now is to 1 provide inexpensive loans io property owners for refurbishing. In some-cases, grants up to $3,000 are made to those who can't afford a loan. -1 Future Federal aid would come in-, the form of revenue-sharing grants to cities and states, under legislation now -0 pending in Congress.

Nixon-Style Law and Order Is Thriving in Supreme Court quiring many people to live closer to public transportation and to stay at home more often. Rising crime rates and shoddy or reduced building construction in the outer suburbs. A growing recognition that the alternatives to "neighborhoods that work" are far from appealing. Neighborhoods are being revived in a number of ways. But they have one thing in common: At some point, one individual decided to do something.

Result: Either a new neighborhood group, centered on parents, or a local church or school or other civic unit or a community program launched by local business of a professional group, such as an architects' group, geared up to redesign whole areas or federal funds from model cities or urban-renewal programs, won by local officials. Whatever the catalysts, however, success depends upon local individual support and involvement. "The real crime in urban America is not muggings in the street but anonymity," says G. Phillip Dolan, who has been waging an energetic battle to stamp it out in Beverly Hills (Chicago), 111. THE PROBLEM, in Beverly Hills and its twin community, Morgan Park, was how to stop "white flight." "We were determined to stop block-by-block racial transition, although we made no effort to halt a salt-and-pep-per move in," says Mr.

Dolan, executive director of the Beverly Area Planning Association (BAPA). "We soon discovered that when people get to als," says Quinn Tamm, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. HE SUPREME COURT lives in a Washington world of its own, shielded from the outside by the thick walls of its marble palace and the lifetime tenure of its justices. It is not at all unusual in history for justices to continue doing their tiling years after a President who appointed them has changed his mind or left of-ice. The pre-Watergate Nixon, in an earlier "fight like hell" mood, put Burger and three more law-and-order justices on the court.

Burger has forged a majority that is doing what pre-Watergate Nixon expected it to do. Before Watergate, Nixon and We're Not WILLIAM RASPERRY Washington Post Columnist WASHINGTON THE OUTRAGE over the kidnap-, ing of Patricia Hearst is well, Everybody deplores it, all right, but few people seem truly upset. I try to imagine what the reaction would be if the young woman's captors had not been the so-called Sym- bionese Liberation Army but, say, the Black Panther Party at least the Black Panthers in their more militant phase. Wouldn't the public attitude be vastly different than it is now? And if so, why? Not RASPBERRY simply because the Symbionese group's proposition was ransom to feed the hungry; the Panthers couldn't have escaped an outraged reaction merely by announcing their intention to use the money for their free breakfast program. I don't know what the answer is.

Part of it may lie in the fact that the Jm A trees, diversity, public transportation, interesting shops and stores, and easy access to the city." DESPITE or because of the most major cities have seen an explosion of neighborhood groups. Chicago, for an example, has more than S00 community associations, home-i mprovement groups, block clubs, and single-purpose, citizen-action organizations. Some 42 of the neighborhood associations have an office and full-time staff personnel and many of their roots go back 10, 20, 40 years. New York City has more than 5,000 block associations. In San Prancisco, more than 75 neighborhood groups are saving Victorian houses, keeping pinball machines away, and fighting other battles.

Community groups tend to confront the needs for economic and social development within a neighborhood, or be geared to a single issue combating a proposed expressway, cleaning personal as well as ideological resemblance to Nixon, pre-Watergate. The Chief Justice is terribly interested in judicial efficiency, as opposed to constitutional philosophy. He is essentially a private, aristocratic man who distrusts outsiders and is afraid of being "mouse-trapped" by the press. He wears dark blue suits and dark blue socks with brown shoes. While Nixon has lost interest in law-and-order, Burger's interest grows, off the bench as well as on.

In the name of efficiency, Burger is bent on enlarging the powers of judges and narrowing the old adage about every individual's right to his day in court. The proposals for a mini-Supreme Court of course would narrow access to the real Supreme Court. Court in And what of the moral dilemma of the needy Californians who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the kidnapers' demands? Some poor people, to their credit, said from the beginning that they wanted no part of the scheme. It struck them as morally indefensible that they should benefit from another family's distress. Helen Little, president of the National Welfare Rights Organiaztion, denounced the whole episode as "blackmail," bui added that her group would administer the food distribution if that is what Hearst and the others wanted.

And if that fuzzes the morality a little, it is sure to get fuzzier with the passage of time. If the SLA held a referendum on the question of extorting food by threatening the lives of rich men's daughters, the vote would come back negative. But once the extortion is accomplished once there is free food and your children are hungry how can you not get in line for it? If you won't take it, someone else will. It is as transparent and as unanswerable as the rationale for buying "hot" merchandise. A lot of people who would never encourage anyone else to steal a suit of clothes or a color television would feel no Chief Justice Burger and Mr.

Nixon Burger appeared together preaching law-and-order themes at places' such as historic Williamsburg, Va. They Angry Enough About the Hearst Case siders disclose that Burger also has long-range plans to create an elite Supreme Court bar, and to abandon tradition under which any lawyer in: good standing can argue before the Supreme Court. Burger on several public platforms has declared that most lawyers ought to be thrown out of all federal courts because they are untrained in "elementary" courtroom skills and lack courtroom "manners." Only lawyers trained in trial skills and manners should be licensed to enter courtrooms, Burger claims. Most astonishingly, Burger has sent Congress a bill under which judges could request FBI investigation of lawyers, not for criminal actions but for unbecoming conduct in a courtroom. Patricia Hearst compulsion to pass up a good bargain' on a suit or a TV that was already stolen.

After all, if 'they refuse to buy it, the thief certainly is not going to take it back to the store. Morality becomes a perishable commodity when it is translated from theory to reality. Well, before all of us become too "realistic," we'd better remind ourselves just what kidnap-extortion is. Ransom demands would be empty words except for the extortioners' will-. ingness to commit murder.

What is involved is a particularly vicious form of terrorism, and it is no, less vicious because its perpetrators, want to accomplish tilings they con-, sider good. LOUIS M. KOHLMEIER Chicago Tribune Ssruica WASHINGTON MAYBE YOU THOUGHT law-and-order was dead, murdered by official lawlessness at Watergate. President Nixon made the political slogan famous. But Nixon hasn't spoken the code words for months and months.

Indeed, as his old cronies last week were splashing helplessly in the rising flood of Watergate indictments, guilty pleas and criminal trials, Nixon himself was off making a speech about the rights of individuals. Individual rights, you may remember, were precisely the opposite of government policing powers that Nixon used to talk aoour, pre-waieigaie. Well, you're dead wrong if you thought law-and-order is dead. Law-and-order is alive and well where it matters most, at the Supreme Court. In fact, law-and-order is thriving under Nixon's 'hand-picked Chief Justice, Warren Burger.

While. Nixon and the nation have been preoccupied with Watergate, the Burger court has unleashed its own flood. Its more recent law-and-order decisions say, for instance: That police who arrest you for even a minor traffic violation, such as driving without a license or running a red light, can search you and your car for anything they might find and without getting a search warrant. That prosecutors can use wiretap evidence even of telephone calls of individuals not named in court warrants obtained by police wiretappers. And that grand juries can question witnesses on the basis of evidence that police admittedly obtained by breaking the law.

Those and other Burger court decisions expanding the bugging and snooping powers of police play on the sordid themes of Watergate. The decisions presumably offend the new, Wa- tergate-chastised Nixon. They certainly are welcomed by police. "The court has gotten away from technical concern with the rights of individu have not shared a platform and months. But Burger still bears for months a striking AS I SEE IT A viewpoint column by various authors woman were the daughter of, say, Howard Hughes or J.

Paul Getty. Hearst's reputation is primarily that of a newspaperman rather than a rich man. There is a ready willingness to believe that anybody who is rich must have gotten that way by ripping somebody off. Only fair that he would have to give some of it back. BUT THE TEMPTATION to sympathize with both victim and beneficiary in this bizarre episode is not the end of the moral and ethical dilemmas.

The one thing that everybody thought of when the plot first became public was that it could lead to other kidnapings, perhaps for less noble causes as in the case of Atlanta editor Reg Murphy. Any response short of absolute outrage could be read as sanctioning of kidnaping as a legitimate political tool, and nobody wants to do that. American people already have formed judgments about the Panthers but know nothing about the Symbionese Liberation Army. Part of it may have to do with the fact that the SLA is perceived as a white group, even though some of its members are black. Whatever it is, I am fascinated by the relatively mild public reaction.

And just what would the proper reaction be? Well to begin with, you obviously sympathize with the distraught Ileal at family, and pdi'Lkuiarly Vtii.il the girl's father, newspaper editor Randolph Hearst, because he has been the family member most publicly associated with the drama. He has come off as a person who really tried not merely to secure his daughter's release but also to understand the objectives of her captors. Perhaps you also have a reservoir of sympathy for the hungry people who are supposed to 'be the beneficiaries of the SLA's ransom demands. You know there are people who are going hungry through no fault of their own: the jobless, the disabled, the old, the young, the blind. Somehow it doesn't seem too outlandish to ask people who have far more than they need to share with those who have far less.

It might seem still less outlandish if the young I.