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instead, the dubious reward of better accommodations that

had not been realized through the slow process of increasing

one's own income.

Gradualism is important, in part, because it is based

on the idea that it is best for an individual to earn his

way up the economic ladder.  It is also important because it

recognizes that the social structure of neighborhoods is

formed in effect when residents move, over time, from lower-

to higher-quality housing, individually and together, and

maintain their properties and effectively create neighbor-

hoods.  For instance, in their classic 1914 study of Boston

immigrant neighborhoods, pioneer sociologists Robert Woods

and Albert Kennedy observed that the ownership of modest

properties--properties that the middle classes of the day

looked down upon--is crucial to the development of "zones of

emergence," places where the immigrant poor join the econom-

ic mainstream.  They wrote,

Nearly 50 percent of the small dwellings and

three-family tenements are in the hands of one-

time immigrant families in relatively humble cir-

cumstances.  This real estate is mortgaged in a

large share of its value but it stands as a symbol

that the newcomers are "taking possession of the

land."  Ownership of property is one of the surest

indications that emergence is emergence, indeed.16

The housing situation of families is dynamic--simply

taking a snapshot and pronouncing a situation "substandard"

dismisses the prospect of incremental improvement.  Housing

and neighborhoods exist on a sort of ladder.  Different

housing types, from the single room to the mansion, by way

of the duplex, bungalow, row house, or three-level house,

constitute rungs on the ladder that families climb.  HUD's

failure to understand that is apparent in its apartment

renovation projects wherein tenant rents are subsidized, and

in its home ownership programs in which poor families are

encouraged (often with down payments as low as $200) to buy

older homes being sold by owners bound for the suburbs.

Because the new owners had not gone through the incremental

steps to prepare themselves for ownership, and because of

programmatic flaws, such as inspection and appraisal proce-

dures, the home ownership program led to massive foreclosure

and housing abandonment, not stable home ownership.17

Good neighborhoods cannot be created by fixing up