Statement on Urban Affairs Issued During a Visit to Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York

I come from a different part of the country, but I feel very much at home here.

A healthy city neighborhood, like the one that means so much to you, is not so very different from the small town in Georgia where I grew up.

People know each other. They look after each other's children. The local policeman is somebody's cousin, and he has a name. You recognize your neighbors and you know the butcher where you shop. There's a place of worship on one comer and perhaps a club or restaurant on the next.

Both a neighborhood and a small town have their own special character, their own distinctive life. I don't come from Americus, or Vienna, or Cordele. I come from Plains. You come from Flatbush—and not Sunnyside or Bay Ridge or Brooklyn Heights.

We feel most at home where our roots run deep.

That describes my home town of Plains. It also describes your neighborhood, and the many other diverse neighborhoods of the older cities of America.

It is time for us to recognize that neighborhoods are more than sections of the city, bricks and mortar, plots of land. They are people, and families, and homes.

Neighborhoods and families are the living fiber that holds our society together. Until we place them at the very top of our national policy, our hopes for the nation, and our goals for our private lives, will not be attained.

But for too many years, urban policy has been an enemy of the neighborhoods—and of the families, too.

We have sent in bulldozers and called it urban renewal. I have never seen a freeway going through a golf course, but I have seen too many freeways out through the heart of a living neighborhood.

For too many years, the government has not given neighborhoods the only thing they need—a chance to make it on their own.

No government that cared about our neighborhoods would stack die tax deck against them. A landlord can let a building run down and make a good living on the tax breaks. But when a homeowner spends a little hard earned money fixing up his house, the assessor raises his taxes.

No government that cared about neighborhoods would make it impossible for you to own your own home. For seventy years, beginning at the turn of the century, more and more families bought homes of their own. By 1969, we had accomplished what no other society had ever achieved. More than half the families in this country could afford their own homes.

But what took seventy years to accomplish has been undone in only eight Between 1969 and 1976, Republican tight money and the Republican recession reduced the percentage of families who can afford their own homes from more than 50 to only 32.

No government that cared about neighborhoods would let their lifeblood drain away through red-lining. Red-lining is discrimination on geographical grounds. The banks draw a line around a neighborhood and say it has to die. Red-lining means that your children can't get mortgages. It means your brothers and sisters can't find jobs. It means that the government does not care what happens to you or your children.

No government that cared about the neighborhoods would become a major slumlord. In many neighborhoods, you look down the street, past rows of family houses. When you see a vacant lot or a boarded-up house, chances are the government is the owner. The federal government is now the largest homeowner in the country. But almost no one lives in its houses.

If we are to save our cities, we must revitalize our neighborhoods first If we are to save our country, we must give our families and neighborhoods a chance.

If I am elected, that is what we will do.

For eight long years, it is what the Republicans have failed to do.

Just one year ago, the Republicans gave us their philosophy of city life. They essentially told the largest, the greatest city in our country—your city— to drop dead.

They had been telling us that by their actions all along.

I remember when the FHA was a wonderful thing. It made an enormous difference to the families of this country—especially the young families buying their first home. For a small down payment, a family could get a mortgage which the government would insure. It was efficient and compassionate at the same time. The fund even turned a small profit.

Under the Republicans, FHA has become a monster.

Just yesterday, the General Accounting Office released its latest investigation of the FHA. It showed that the FHA doesn't care any more about getting families started in their homes. It doesn't care about revitalizing neighborhoods. It doesn't even care about efficiency. Under the Republicans, its administration has become so sloppy and corrupt that last year alone it lost six hundred million dollars.

And the FHA is only a symbol of the scandalous failures of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; More than five hundred HUD officials have been indicted, and more than two hundred convicted so far, on charges of corruption and bribery in administering the Department's programs.

Under the Republicans, the FHA and HUD have actually become threats to the health of our neighborhoods.

Another threat is crime. We have heard a lot from the Republicans in the last eight years about crime in the streets.

From my experience, there is nothing that stops crime as effectively as a healthy neighborhood or town. The people know each other, the police are local residents, and there is cooperation between community and police.

The Republican record is remarkable. On programs like the FHA and LEAA, their mismanagement has wasted millions of our dollars. Never has an administration wasted so much money to do so little good.

But when it comes to the small, practical steps that could make an enormous difference, the Republicans have cut back.

The Neighborhood Housing Services, for example, are an efficient, proven way to stabilize neighborhoods, through a partnership between families, banks, and the government

But the Republicans invest only three percent as much in NHS as they waste through mismanagement in the FHA.

And now—after the record of the last eight years—the Republicans have suddenly rediscovered the neighborhoods. You will not hear about cities dropping dead between now and November. This summer, the Republicans appointed a special Task Force on Neighborhood Policy. They think three months' devotion will make us forget the years that went before.

They may fool the bears of Yellowstone Park that way. But they cannot fool the people of our neighborhoods.

We need more than election year enthusiasm. We need a new neighborhood policy which strengthens the many strands that hold our people together.

There are two Latin words that help explain what we need. The Romans used the word "urbs" to describe the actual place where people lived. The urbs were the city. But they also used the word "civitas". That meant the whole network of voluntary, informal bonds—family, organization, religion, affection—which held the city together and made society truly human.

We have to restore both the suburbs and the cities in this country, instead of attacking them both. We must have a partnership—between a government which knows its limits, a private sector which is encouraged to do the right things, and the people, in their families, and neighborhoods, and voluntary organizations.

If we can have a partnership, we can correct the worst lesson of the Republican years—the idea that whenever we want to help people, we can only succeed in wasting money. Our neighborhoods and families can succeed in solving problems where government will always fail. Strong neighborhoods and families can help the government use its money efficiently, for a. change

Let me give you an example. Here in New York, there are many thousands of homeless children. It costs $25,000 each year to keep one of them in a public institution. But when a child is in a foster home, it costs the public only $5,000 a year. And there is no doubt about which is better few the child, and the community, and the family.

The only way we will ever put the government back in its place is to restore the family and the neighborhood to their proper places.

There are other elements of our neighborhood policy. We need to reclaim the thousands of abandoned houses the FHA has left throughout our cities. And we need to clean up the FHA and HUD.

The Neighborhood Housing Services program should be made available to neighborhoods where it can make a difference.

New highways should not destroy stable neighborhoods, and the people of each locality should have a much greater voice in determining where a highway will be placed.

Urban homesteading is an efficient, sensible way to encourage people to restore their own neighborhoods.

We need a national law against red-lining, and federal regulatory officials who understand that banks are chartered to serve their communities.

We need honest officials in HUD.

We must make homes available to our people again—in our urban neighborhoods as well as in the suburbs. Tight money, shrinking paychecks, and a stagnant housing industry are some of the saddest products of the Republicans' disastrous economic record.

Some of these steps must be taken in Washington.

But the most important thing Washington can do is to enable families and neighborhoods to take steps of their own.

I have said before that, in every policy I support, in every decision I would make as President, I would carefully consider the impact on the American family. Our neighborhoods are extensions of our families, and policies that strengthen one will strengthen the other.

We need a government that thinks about the family and the neighborhood, and cares about the family and the neighborhood, and makes its every decision with the intent of strengthening the family and the neighborhood.

With your help, we can rebuild our neighborhoods and our families, and give ourselves a country, and a government, we can be proud of once again.