Statement by the President on Announcing a Grant for a Youth Training Demonstration Project in New Haven.

NEW HAVEN is typical of many cities faced by complex, interwoven problems. Ours is an age of great mobility. Each year thousands of families move from rural areas to urban slums. They come seeking better lives, but often find only new, unexpected barriers.

These people find themselves in strange, alien surroundings. Many have the added problem of racial discrimination. Much of the housing available to them is substandard. Most of them come without skills, seeking jobs, at a time when modern technology is rapidly making skilled training essential to employment.

Their children enter already overcrowded schools, and often believe their studies bear little relation to the realities of their lives. Many of them drop out of school, only to become part of the growing army of unemployed youth. Health and recreational facilities for these young people are inadequate, and they are surrounded by crime, illiteracy, illegitimacy, and human despair.

Finding no work and little hope, too many of them turn to juvenile crime to obtain the material goods they think society has denied them. Others turn to drink and narcotics addiction. And soon the cycle repeats itself, as this dispossessed generation bears children little better equipped than their parents to cope with urban life.

Our cities must face these problems in the years ahead. The children born after World War II are coming of age. In 1965, 3.8 million youths will reach age 18, compared with 2.6 million in 1960. Presently, one-third of our young people are not graduating from high school, and these dropouts will total an estimated 7.5 million during this decade.

Unemployment rates among these dropouts are double those of graduates. lust last year 800,000 young people were out of school and out of work--as many as the entire populations of such cities as San Francisco, Boston, or St. Louis. If current rates of youth unemployment persist, the number of unemployed youth will number close to one and one-half million by 1970.

These problems are many and varied, yet they are all part of a whole. We will not reduce them by fragmented efforts. All persons concerned--in the Federal Government, local government, private agencies and church groups, business and labor--must pool their talents and resources for united action if we are to succeed.

We see in New Haven an example of this concerted action. In the 1950's, New Haven launched a $140 million program of urban renewal. Now community leaders have turned their energies to an equally ambitious effort for human renewal, knowing that without this effort new buildings are meaningless. This new effort is headed by Mayor Richard Lee, and distinguished leaders of business, labor, education, volunteer agencies, and religion--men who are vitally concerned about the future of their city. Each has a role to play. When Community Progress, Inc., of New Haven talks about training youths for jobs, they have assurances of business and labor leaders that there will in fact be jobs for the trainees.

The history of the New Haven effort proves that when a city has united, determined leadership, and ambitious goals, funds can be found to make those goals reality.

[At this point the White House release noted that the New Haven program is financed by: --Today's $800,000, one-year Delinquency Act grant, which follows a $156,000 grant last year to plan the youth demonstration project. Additional grants will be sought for the second and third years of the project. --A $2.5 million, three-year Ford Foundation grant.

--A $100,000, three-year grant from the New Haven Foundation. --More than $600,000 from the New Haven Board of Education for new school programs.

--More than $330,000 from the New Haven Redevelopment Agency for an experimental housing program for low-income families.

--A $300,000 one-year U.S. Department of Labor grant under the Manpower Development and Training Act for job training for unemployed youths.

--A grant of about $100,000 under the HEW-HHFA Joint Task Force program for services in public housing projects. Final details of the grant are now being settled.

--An HEW grant under the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962 to the Connecticut State Welfare Department which will be used for casework services in the New Haven program.]

This is a massive community effort, and it requires skillful direction if these funds are to be well spent and the varied programs are to fit together effectively. We are pleased that Federal programs are playing a major role in this effort.

Funds under the Juvenile Delinquency Act of 1961 helped plan, and are now helping implement, many school programs in remedial education, work-study efforts, and special education. Under the 1962 MDTA program, hundreds of youths are being trained for useful employment. The HHFA funds will support an experimental housing program for 40 families with seven or more children. The Joint HEW-HHFA program will offer services in health, education, welfare, and recreation to residents of public housing projects.

These are programs which were sponsored by this administration, and we are proud of their accomplishments. Each, of itself, is highly worthwhile. Yet they are infinitely more useful when carried out in coordination with one another. For substantial impact, we must follow this pattern increasingly in our work with local communities.

At the same time, we must realize that we have not done all we can. The Federal Government must assume increasing responsibility for assisting communities with these national problems. The Youth Employment Act, now before Congress, can be a major part of this national effort, as can our proposals for aid to schools, our new vocational education plans, the rehabilitation programs, and whole youth job training effort.

New Haven has made a sound beginning. Many other cities are developing similar programs. Federal agencies face a great challenge to work with one another, and with local and private agencies in an effective partnership against these urgent challenges.