And we want you to go through it It's going to be a serious worship service.

It's not going to be a thing.

Just, just a thing to use.

It's a serious worship service.

And, we feel as though its not at all- It's not a Christian service.

It's just a service for people, mercy and justice.

These Pittsburgh citizen want better housing for the poor On Palm Sunday they demonstrated their dissatisfaction with a realto who owns property in some areas.

The march has becom a symbol of protest in our time.

But this is not simply the story of those who march.

It is the story of people who care enough to take action on the streets, in the courts and in the legislative chambers.

Holy, holy Lord God Almighty.

Oh, I worship, praise thy name in earth and sky and sea.

Holy, holy, holy.

Merciful and mighty God in three persons Blessed Trinity We have assembled here today on this beautiful afternoon, because we have a cause to which we are committed and the cause to which we are committed is that related to justice in our national life, to equity in our civic life, to fair dealing between a man and his neighbor.

We come then, out of this deep concern for justice and compassion for our neighbor and for those who would wrong us The man against whom we are demonstrating may or may not be an evil man, but he certainly is part of an evil system which allows profit to be made out of human degradation.

I usually think of protecting the people if a car- We just wanted to lead these people to benefactor.

You think it's safe for someone to stand on the street?

Im going to have to tell the sheriff this, people are standing in the middle of the street.

You will?

If you know that you have the right to- to let these people picket, for a while, to keep moving, But theyre not allowed to stand in the street.

What does it say, sir, about a worship service?

There's no worship service in the middle of the street.

So you can have a worship service in the middle of the street as soon as tomorrow morning.

No, sir, not to my knowledge.

Theres nothing that I can do if you obstruct other peoples rights even with a darn worship service It's just.

I think we are here for the word You wouldnt stop any cause that has a prayer service?

You're not allowed to stand in the middle of the street.

Let's put it that way.

Okay.

Can we have half the street?

You cant have any of the street!

Why not?

The street is for vehicle traffic!

If you want to stand here and and hold your service, if you want to hold it in a church- We dont want to block the sidewalk.

Oh by God.

Let's go.

Let's get them off the street!

Im just asking you- You want to make an issue?

Im not trying to make an issue, I'm asking here- Will you please ask the people to get off the street?

Will you please?

Ask them yourself!

Get off the street?

What for?

Will you ask the people to get off the street?

Theres a load to do.

Let us continue with the service Where was the crowd?

Get better people than the Alabama State Police.

Is the problem of slum housing so bad that concerned citizens will risk arrest and a possible jail sentence?

Some people believe that it is, yet in the center city, it seems the slums have always been there.

After a time, no one really sees the peeling paint, the crumbling brick, the broken windows.

Pittsburgh is famous for the postwar face lifting job she did on the Golden Triangle.

Listen to an expert on cities Professor Daniel Moynihan, director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard and MIT.

As he observes our city.

Well, I think it's clear that Pittsburgh has a strong reputation and a strong sort of visual imag around the country, around the world.

As an ugly American city that decided to save itself as a place that had grown hideous and, inhuman, but but somehow still had a leadership in the political parties and in business and in the community that said, “Look, this doesn't have to happen.

We can we can save what we have.

We love this city.

We can do something for it.” But part of our trouble is that we have been willing to let our cities turn out to look the way anybody wants them to look, which is not a principle we apply to who flies our airplanes, or, for that matter, who governs- who's the mayor?

But look at this part of the city.

There is not a city in Europe which allows itself to look like this anymore.

And this is no differen for American cities everywhere.

There's not a city in America that doesn't have a place like this.

It maybe doesn't do you any good to just complain that we're not like Parisians, you know?

Because we arent, I say, were Americans.

But on the other hand, anybody who stands up here on the hill and says this is the way Americans ought to live is a damned fool.

There are people in Pittsburgh who don't believe this is how Americans should live.

And they decided to act.

CASH - Citizens Against Slum Housing was formed to demand stronger health and building codes and enforcement of present codes.

The Citizen Clergy Coordinating Committee, the CCCC, was formed to focu public attention on slum housing problems.

They invited the press on a truth tour, encouraged them to talk with tenants about leaking roofs, drafty and broken windows.

Rats, roaches, all the accumulated problems of decades of neglect.

To call further attention to housing problems, Picket lines were formed around various realtors offices and homes.

Realtors protested that they should not be singled out as individuals, but picketers insisted that they were symbols of injustice.

Charges and counter charges continued, and someone was listening.

City Council scheduled a series of public hearings to deal with the complaints of both landlords and tenants in marginal housing areas.

All groups were given an opportunity to present their cases and question one another.

One of the first to speak was a realtor, Paul Riddle, then president of the Greater Pittsburgh Board of Realtors.

Here is part of what he said.

Does the answer not lie in applying the combined experience of industry.

government and planning experts?

In an intelligent progra of gradual housing relocation, upgrading and improvement?

Surely it does not lie in mass demonstrations on the part of people who have had little or no experience in this field, and who expect panaceas that the mere wave of a picket sign, a point which was brought home to Pittsburgh in a pronounced fashion quite recently.

Several realtors made detailed presentations, some with charts and slides to illustrate their point.

Then questions were asked of the realtors by some of the spectators.

Answer the question.

It is economically feasible to manage property for lower income people.

It will show the 15 to 20% desired return which you spoke of.

We can't make rules of thumb and project this just to everyone.

Now.

As I mentioned before, there are owners of property who do not have the money.

Now, it is possible.

Anything is possible with money.

It is just a fact of life.

But if there is not a sufficient cash flow from the property, if there is not sufficient money with the owner that he can maintain his property- his property properly.

Then he's going to- hes going to lose out.

It can't help it.

The Reverend John Long, active in the Citizen Clergy Coordinating Committee, suggested that if slum landlords were not making money, they might like to give away their property.

If you wish, or any of your clients, any realtors, any member of the board, realtor or any slumlord, anybody at all wants to give away property, We can call that bluff very nicely and we will accept it.

Anything in the north side- and I think pretty nearl anything elsewhere in the city.

That was the result of the hearings before City Council.

Primarily, they served to begin a dialogue between the community and the citizens groups concerned with upgrading our city's housing.

Listen to stat Representative Gerald Kaufman.

There's been a great awareness by all of us that housing in Pittsburgh is our number one problem.

I think it is in almost every city.

But I think it took CASH and the kind of hearings the city council had to really bring it to the fore and to create the kinds of pressures that would cause people to move and introduce legislation.

Well, generally, I would say that the say that the agitation.

The numerous groups that have sprung up overnight within the past couple of years have to some extent pointed out the problem.

But certainly have not cured or certainly have not led us to believe that they have done an acceptable job as far as they are concerned.

Well, I think citizens groups have been vital Well, I think citizens groups have been vital and a key element in getting legislation going.

I say that not only because I worked with such a citizen group, but because I think it's clear to anyone who looks at the record that until pressures began to be exerted by articulate citizens groups, it was much easier to ignore some of the problem that we had in the housing field But when this kind of pressure was brought, then, the responsible people in government, were forced to take a look at the problem and to begin thinking of solutions to the problems.

And what are some of the possible solutions?

The average American, when he talks of low cost housing, usually means public housing.

Listen to Pittsburgh Housing Authority director Albert Tromso.

In America, the public housing problem has been a dismal failure when we talk of numbers, because in almost 30 years of existence now, all that we have under management are a little over 650,000 units - the length and breadth of America.

And New York City alone can take that.

In Pittsburgh, we have close to 9200.

And after over 25 years of effort, that's not a large supply.

And I just imagine when I tell you that in spite of that, our program is one of the largest in America.

It seems that, the department not just the housing department, but all of them in Washington have become, lawyer oriented and arent motivated.

The lawyers have to prove everything.

Everything has to pass by their desk so they're backlogged.

They can never have enough.

And they're very cautious of making a mistake or making a decision.

Other cities have good housing projects.

And Pittsburgh, for example, with the war on poverty, was able to extract good sums of money by getting through the red tape.

Obviously, my feeling is tha this is only an excuse and the and the problem is to get a man in there that can cut through red tape.

You get frustrated.

I fight discouragement because, I feel that, where there's a will and there is a will here.

We have a very dedicated staff.

We're going to have to find a way, and we're going to have to do it very simply.

Housing authority is still tied up, in its plans.

Tromsos blaming Washington for its cost limitations.

Washingtons blaming Tromso for not being too resourceful.

Resourcefulness extends beyond building new housing projects.

If Pittsburgh is to keep pace wi housing needs, there are some 40,000 dwellings which must undergo major rehabilitation.

Well I came in from church, it was all down and the impact had scared it was all room after room, didnt even have to wait to get into the bedroom before Ive seen that the plaster was down, and, I come in here and I said all my stuffs messed up everything on the dresser was broken.

My radio was broken.

The bed was down, the plaster, everything.

In recent months, the city and county have cooperated in matters of building and health inspection to enforce their codes relating to the health and safety of the occupants.

Tenants believe code should be enforced with some quality: true rehabilitation rather than mere patchwork.

City and county officials argue they operate within the law, and both groups actively work for new legislation.

The 1966 rent escrow law, for instance, provided that if a landlord's premises were cited for serious health and safety hazards, the tenant could pay his rent into a special escrow account into a local bank rather than to a landlord.

There were loopholes in the law, however, and efforts to strengthen it continued along with arguments over delays.

We've had complaint in the building inspections that that go back go back months that haven't been answered, haven't been attended to, nothing's been done about them.

We have an arrangement with the building inspection that we send in two copies of form, specifies the locatio and the nature of the complaint.

They're supposed to take whatever action they take and send one copy back.

I would guess, fully a third of these that we've sent in over the past year or so have never come back.

With the city, we normally send out a letter, which is a 30 day notification letter.

During this period, We would hope, of course, that, when the letter is received, that the people come to our offices to find out the best way of abating what we feel is either a violation or a dangerous condition.

If we get no answer during this 30 day period, we follow this up by a re-inspection of the property.

If the condition has not been abated, we send an additional ten day certified letter.

After this ten day period, and by the way, I should say that this ten day certified letter goes into a tickler file now.

At the end of the ten days, a re-inspection again to ensur that it has not been taken care of.

If it has not, then we automatically file information.

We take legal action.

I think that we have very adequate housing codes.

I think that, over the past year the city is to be commended for the sincerity and dedication with which they have taken up their role as as building inspectors.

It's been stepped up tremendously.

And they're doing a good job.

The windows need fixing the red holes needed fixing.

And the third floor also.

The roof, is falling into the third floor.

He put a new light fixture in there, but he didn't fix the roof.

And it also rains on the second floor in the front bedroom.

And, the third floor, the floor is cut the bolts in the floor is all cut up.

He just nails some of them down.

If a man doesn't make a profi on a business then I don't think he should be is a very good businessman and a slumlords dicey, are pretty sharp operators and this fallacy that they don't any money is a real joke.

I'd like to classify the properties in what we would consider a gray area or marginal.

And I could say from my own experience with properties under our management in such gray areas.

That under no circumstance are the owners making any money, nor are they even receiving a fair return on their investment.

They just can't make it.

Vandalism is doing a real deep and serious problem.

It's amazing how many housing units, acceptable housing units are removed from the marke simply because the owner cannot keep the plumbing in the house.

In a matter of hours, it's removed when a tenant vacates a building.

An owner becomes frustrated, disgusted, and in many instances they just close them down.

And again, this takes housing off the market that otherwise would be decent and acceptable housing.

There is a certain amount of deliberate vandalism, but when this happens, this turns out to be most of the time, a rather inarticulate form of protest against the landlord A tenant who comes into a place, who feels that it isn't fit to live in to start with but he's got to live there because he's trapped.

Among housing groups, Chorus Street is becoming one of the most famous or some would say infamous streets in Pittsburgh designed for moderate income families.

Chorus Street houses wer rehabilitated by Action Housing, a unique nonprofit corporation which has been praised by many and criticized by some for not concentrating on lower income families.

Well, Action Housing was established in August 1957.

To help to provide and assist builders in providing another developer's housing for moderate income families getting down as low as we can on economic basis.

We have no subsidy.

We're not a public agency.

We're a nonprofit, private civic organization.

We need good low income housing, not the moderate income type housing.

that ACTION housing is building and its okay, but we need something like 20,000 units immediately in the city of Pittsburgh, all over the city, say, from the prices from $67 to $75 in this category.

Here again, never was it said that it was for the real low income people.

The lowest we could get an average at about $89 a month, which is only a few dollars more - four, five six dollars more than people were paying for pretty bad housing without any heat, inadequate in all respects.

Under a program called 221D3, a nonprofit developer such as a church or labor union can work with the Federal Housing Authority to plan and build housing units at low interest rates.

Groundbreaking ceremonies were held recently by East Liberty Housing Incorporated, a nonprofit development group of businessmen, ministers and others.

Financed by 221D3, the four and a half acre site will hold apartmen buildings, rowhouses and duplex units.

Another group, the Allegheny Union Baptist Association in Rancon, is completing a 90 unit apartment.

ACTION housing is sponsoring the Allegheny Housing Rehabilitation Corporation, involving more than 17 private companies helping to rebuild existing structures under 221D3.

Federal support is possible if you have the time, but the reluctance of private industry to involve itself in our urban housing dilemma has worried both city planners and government officials.

The recent decision of major insurance companies to invest in housing was an encouraging development.

But businessmen we talked with agreed unanimously that long delays were inevitable.

In Harrisburg, State Representative Daniel Baron of Jenkintown has sponsored new legislation.

What we're trying to d is to provide a tax incentive, a tax credit, to encourage the various forms of business and industry in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to get involved in assisting some of our problems.

And, some areas or rundown areas.

And what we're trying to d is to encourage as many business as possible to use their imagination and their ability to help solve some of our social ills.

In Philadelphia Spring Garden section, the drug firm of SmithKline and French, has has combined maximum imagination with minimum expenditure to invest in a neighborhood.

Sound structures have been remodeled.

A community center staffed and housed in a former church, and an entire neighborhood mobilized to work together toward a better life.

The unique thing would be the fact that we're working with the people rather than doing things for or to them.

This has been the traditional approach as far as fewer days, no explanation of why or how it came to be.

Whereas we do very little without, involving the people in the community individually or in larger groups such as the Association for Equality and groups such as this.

I guess we all would really need help.

In one way or another.

And sometimes we have to have a- sense of value, you know, something that we do that others would consider good and give us a little credit for it.

Like, some people around here sometimes assign I feel if you have never come around here, we would never know that we would be of some value to anything.

We feel important.

With the establishment of the rehabilitated houses in the area, The people sort of perked up.

So this is one of the one of the few times that something has been done in the community for them.

They were able to see progress in their community, a community that they had come to really to die So the pride was elevated.

They had something to be proud of.

This was happening in their community.

They weren't any longer being ignored.

You can pour money out the corporate door or as a friend of mine said, “You can shoot at the problems long distance with silver bullets.

But until the people within any corporation or company, some of them anyway, get really honestly concerned and have a social conscience.

I would say that, the chances of success can be greatly reduced if they don't have this.

One of the tools which the Pittsburgh Housing Authorit has is called turnkey housing.

Wherein a private contractor builds housing units after of course, cutting through what Mr.

Tromso called endless red tape for site and building approval.

Several turnkey projects are planned for Pittsburgh.

The progress is slow and building costs continue to climb What happens when a private individual decides to remodel houses?

We asked Bernard Goldma to tell us about his experience.

I've gone to half a dozen different savings loans, and, I had one man go to a commercial bank to talk to them about money to, rehabilitate the property in Homewood.

That I would like to take care of and have been turned down for a variety of reasons.

Generally the, nonprofit sponsor or the developer has to convince a lending institution that they're entitled to this credit, or the amount of money that's needed in order to get the project going.

With with excess funds where you might be, agreeable to have the funds used because, no other funds, because there are no other loans that are needed.

That's one thing.

But in today's, money market, we don't have we have that.

A scarcity of funds available for this type of financing.

The the basic reason that they've used- And I feel that it's not an honest reason, is that there's a varied shortage of very tight shortage of money right at present.

And yet you can read in the paper where the influx of savings in the last seven months has been the greatest in the history of this country.

So I don't feel that this is the true reason.

I had one man tell me truthfully that, they were advised not to invest in the Homewood area or East Liberty or Oakland.

Despite the flow of words at conferences and meetings, the supply of housing was not noticeably increased in July, while other cities rioted, discontented Pittsburghers asked themselves “What happens when nothing happens?” One of the answers: a rent strike.

The immediate goal in the rent strike is to achieve an agreement with the realtors to join us in, backing, reforms that will go a long way towards ending slum housing and also to join us in taking punitive action against our own members who do not meet the principles of Realtors themselves set up about managing and handling decent housing.

What good is inspection of the building if the landlord can go on renting you a building and that the health authorities say is not fit for habitation?

But he can still rent you the building at an exorbitant rent, collect his rent, and nothing did about it.

And we have a rent withholding law with no teeth in it.

But you can put your rent in escrow and still be evicted.

That there is no law in favor of the tenant.

And so the only way we felt tha we could bring attention to this was to go on a rent strike.

Someone has got to act and then we will have to react.

And it is not technically legal at all.

But we believe the, evil and the immorality of slum housing fully justifies a temporary disobedience to a law.

Actually, we are not urging the tenants to steal anything from the landlord.

They're withholding their rent.

And when the strike is ended successfully, the rent will be returned to the landlord.

The Mayor's Commission on Human Relations responded to the announced rent strike by calling a meeting in the City Council chambers Reverend William Johnson, commission vice chairman, presided.

Representatives of citizens groups and the Pittsburg Board of Realtors were invited, but the latter were forced to decline because of an out of town emergency.

John Morrow, city planning director, and other officials did attend, however, and many grievances were aired sometimes with considerable heat City solicitor David Stall set the stage for the discussion with a report on pending legislation.

The state legislature adopted the rental holding law applicable only to three cities in Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton.

To my knowledge, the city of Pittsburgh was the first operation.

Allegheny county is the only municipality in Pennsylvania that has undertaken to carry out the rent withholding.

Program.

And I realize it's not panacea, it's not going to solve all of the problems that Mister Hayden mentioned and that many other people mentioned.

But since we're talking about legislation, the changes that we feel will be helpful were passed by the House of Representatives yesterday.

They should be passed by the Senate hopefully next week and within a week or ten days, the legislation should be in effect.

The amendments should be in effect, perhaps the most significant part of the, amendments were made have to do with the prohibition against the landlord evicting a tenant while the tenant is paying, his rent into the escrow And before the landlor has made the necessary repairs.

We're known as a Renaissance city all over the world.

People come here.

But behind this fiasco, you can walk any six blocks from downtown and run into a slum.

And in the last 20 years, there haven't been provisions at work if we build for the next 20 years, we're not going to be able to provide housing for poor people now.

And we're still continuing in this vein of tearing down houses without making provisions.

And it seems a though the direction here is all for the gateway classes and for the nice commercial buildings, but nothing for people in these areas, such as Mister Hayden is speaking up or anything else.

Now he's sending a little stronger language Im being real sophisticate and white collar at the bottom, But this is what he's saying.

We don't know what the city is going to do about all the houses they have torn dow and created a situation for the to charge us this, high rent for nothing.

Now, what is a citizen?

What?

What is the city's responsibility?

They are guilty as hell The city trying to encourage the construction of new housing.

We're trying to encourage the rehabilitation of existing housing.

Mr.

Morrow is going to talk about the present status of the housing program that the mayor announced over, about a year ago.

We have received complaints sporadically about vacant and vandalized structures.

We are becoming increasingly concerned about the relocation problems of a low income families.

The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs was asking us questions on our work on the program.

There has been a tremendous lag in interest on the part of developers, lenders and other institutions to build any kind of housin within the city of Pittsburgh.