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AMERICA

Socialism Harlem Style

From MURRAY KEMPTON

NEW YORK

MIGHT we not think of the economic history of the United States over the past genera- tion as a slowly-appreciated but nevertheless ulti- mately-persuasive tutoring of American business- men in the knowledge that socialism can be fun?

The freshest instance of this continual educa- tion is an investigation by the authorities of New York State into the operations of the Mitchell- Lama Act, a programme through which the State serves as the gentlest of bankers for con- tractors who build housing for middle-class families. In the 'fifties, American builders had lost all hope for real profits in middle-income housing; the case cried out for government assistance; New York State responded with a law under which its treasury provides 95 per cent mortgages and New York City's treasury grants 50 per cent tax abatements to enterprisers ready to serve.

Mitchell-Lama is a non-profit programme : no private citizen can be landlord or banker; the completed dwellings belong to their occupants under mortgage to the State of New York. The appeal of the programme is to those enterprisers who earn their living from the process rather than from the sale. A builder approved for a Mitchell-Lama project earns a profit and fee of 7} per cent of his estimate of the project's cost.

A fairly baroque example of the rewards of non-profit housing is the case of Fred Trump, who constructed Trump Houses near Coney Island with Mitchell-Lama funds. Trump Houses were expected to cost 59 million dollars; Trump's fee was 4 million dollars and was increased by the exercise of hyperbole, because he overestimated his costs by 8 million dollars and thus made his fee 598,000 dollars larger than it would otherwise have been.

The Mitchell-Lama law was introduced into the legislature by State Senator McNeil Mitchell, an attorney, and state assemblyman Alfred Lama, an architect. Senator Mitchell's law firm was paid 128,000 dollars for its assistance in the planning of Trump Village; assemblyman Lama's firm of architects has earned fees for designing at least four Mitchell-Lama projects.

All New York public apartment projects are indistinguishably jail-like; but then one remem- bers Lord Melbourne's reminder that Raphael was employed to decorate the Vatican, not because he was a great painter but because his uncle was architect to the Pope. In the same spirit Alfred Lama became the Bramante of non-profit middle-income housing in New York, not because he was an architect, but because he was a poli- tician. The problem, of course, is that any con- struction firm anxious for a Mitchell-Lama sub- sidy must present persuasive proof of high social purpose. And although it is not terribly simple for public agencies to make acute distinctions among the moral qualities of various builders, they can recognise shining virtue at a glance when they see a politician.

Before Mitchell-Lama, to takto-a case, no builder had thought much of selling in Harlem, our great Negro enclave. It is still by no means certain that much middle-income housing can be sold in Harlem, since one reason for aspiring to middle-class status in Harlem is, after all, the desire to get out of there. Still, no builder would avoid an opportunity from which the state insured him against all risk; and, with Mitchell-Lama, Harlem became a target of opportunity.

Harlem is a closed and ancient community, to which access is controlled, for modest toll fees, by two great power figures, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and J. Raymond Jones, leader of its Democratic party. Almost at once, in Harlem, Mitchell-Lama showed its capacity not just for rapid housing but for the almost instant licensing of new professionals. In 1955, William J. Hamp- ton, one of Congressman Powell's secretaries, an- nounced his retirement and reappeared immedi- ately as a land-use consultant and development planner.' His function was to introduce builders to Mitchell-Lama sites in Harlem; his fee was to be 33 per cent of their total cost.

Hampton ran at once into one of those prob- lems which can afflict beginning professionals with no capital; he seems to have sold the rights to one site—which he did not, of course; own— to two different builders. After that, Edward Balaban, one of the victims, turned indignantly to J. Raymond Jones, who confessed himself shocked at Hampton's conduct and showed bow orderly things could be in Harlem under proper directions by persuading the city officials to ap- prove a 3-million-dollar housing project, with Balaban as builder and Jones and Congressman Powell as its sponsors. `I was told,' Balaban ex- plained later, 'that anything that might be success- ful in Harlem required identification with these two men.'

Poor Hampton was gone by then, and J. Ray- mond Jones had become the great patron of Mitchell-Lama in Harlem. He moved upward to the dream of Esplanade Gardens, a 40-million- dollar project to be built over the railroad yards at 147th Street.

Esplanade had been thought of first by a group of Harlem citizens headed by Jackie Robinson, a folk hero because he was the first American Negro to break into organised baseball. The other day, Robinson testified that, when he had begun to wonder what had happened to his appli- cation, he called the proper city authorities and an official explained: 'I'm sorry but that site is being reserved for Adam Powell and Ray Jones.' That explanation seems to have been quite enough for one of the proudest and most combative men who ever walked the American earth. 'I have the greatest respect for Mr. Jones,' Jackie Robin- son observed.

For J. Raymond Jones has been, for most of Harlem's sentient life, the proper party for in- vestors from downtown to meet when they want to go uptown. His fees have never been excessive; the state investigators made much of their sus- picion that he would be much less the poorer for the political prodigies that brought Mitchell- Lama to Harlem. But their evidence was small; as usual with Harlem, very little of the score would go even to the most majestic of its citizens.

The biggest apparent gainer would seem to be Robert W. Seavey, a white lawyer, who earned 95,000 dollars in fees from the planning of Esplanade and, if all goes well, will make 777,000 dollars as his share of the builder's fee. Robert Seavey has some claim as a pioneer in Harlem; in 1959, he became one of the few white persons ever to join J. Raymond Jones's Carver Demo- cratic Club, which had before been a repository almost exclusively for the political advancement of Negroes. 'I joined Tones's club because 1 be- lieved in integration,' Seavey said last week. 'I went where my heart is.' At this point he tapped that region of his chest where God put our hearts and we store our wallets. Integration can be fun too.