In white, middle-income Forest Hills, N.Y., last week angry crowds booed the bulldozers that were breaking ground for a proposed low-income housing project that would bring numbers of blacks into the area (TIME, Nov. 29). One resident, Mrs. Ann Schachter, mother of two small schoolchildren, admits that she is embarrassed by the pickets. Still, she adds, typically enough: "I like to think of myself as a liberal, but the term doesn't seem to apply to me any more. I'm frightened." Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, who favors the project, says of the protesters: "They are afraid of what they see as these hostile forces breaking into their island."
Mayor John Lindsay's associates proclaimed that the project would proceed, but there were signs of queasiness at City Hall; last week the Board of Estimate turned down a similar proposal for Lindenwood, another section of Queens. Also last week, despite a personal appeal from New York's Republican-Conservative Senator James Buckley, Housing and Urban Development Secretary George Romney gave the
Forest Hills plans his final imprimatur.
Romney is the pivotal figure in any serious nationwide attempt to break down the ghetto and establish low-income housing in communities like Forest Hills. With 650,000 units of low-and moderate-income housing scheduled for construction in the next year, he faces the intricate task of translating fair-housing legislation into hard reality. Romney is in a precarious position, working within an Administration that has shown, at best, limited enthusiasm for racial integration. Last week, at his home in the plush, predominantly white Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Romney talked to TIME Correspondent Jess Cook.
"The Forest Hills project is one that increases opportunity for low-and moderate-income families," he said. "I'm wholeheartedly in favor of making that possible. It was a product of local responsibility and planning, that means the New York City administration. It doesn't seem to me that the Federal Government can shape its programs on the basis of what individuals or groups have to say. That would mean substituting the views of citizens in a neighborhood, any neighborhood, for policies laid down by Congress and responsible state and local officials."
Mobility and Diversity. Continued Romney: "A successful program must avoid causing the majority of Americans to dig in their heels. If that happens, if they insist on the status quo, then believe you me we're through. On the other hand, there must be sufficient tangible progress so that minority Americans, at least most of them, will decide that the problem is going to be solved within our present structure."
As a Mormon and a politician, Romney has the approach of a pragmatic evangelist. "There's nothing wrong with enclaves," he concludes, "as long as they don't prevent the opportunity to locate where the jobs are. I don't think anyone knows what patterns are going to develop when American citizens all enjoy mobility and diversity of choice. But I'm convinced we can't restrict black Americans, or brown, or yellow or any other kind for that matter, to the central cities and not permit them that fundamental opportunity."