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housing in better neighborhoods are undermined by placing

subsidized tenants in their midst.

The fact is that by placing lower-income, usually

nonworking, tenants in middle-class communities, HUD's

efforts will likely inspire resentment regardless of the

color of the subsidized tenants.  Geographer Philip Rees,

author of Residential Patterns in American Cities, found

that people of similar incomes and educational backgrounds

choose overwhelmingly to live together.  Wrote Rees, "Socio-

economic status is a universal sorting principle in American

cities."40  The surest way for racial divisions to blur over

time is to achieve racial integration through the diffusion

of blacks into communities in which they can afford to live

while steadfastly enforcing nondiscrimination laws.41  And

one does not need a cabinet-level federal agency (in addi-

tion to the Department of Justice) to enforce such laws.

Apart from the racial and economic politics of such

uses of vouchers, there is also an unacknowledged arbitrary

quality to such assistance.  Only 28 percent of families

currently eligible for some sort of housing assistance--

whether public housing, rent-subsidized apartment, or porta-

ble rent subsidy (voucher)--receive such aid.  A wholesale

expansion of such assistance would imply a major new enti-

tlement program ("housing stamps").  Given current federal

budget constraints, such an expansion is unlikely and calls

into question the logic of a voucher program.

Far better than rent subsidies to disperse the poor

would be the construction of modest low-cost homes, built on

cheap urban land and marketed to the upwardly mobile poor.

It is certainly true that large groups of the poor will rely

on used housing, inherited from the middle class.  Histori-

cally, however, the working poor have also had access to

modest new structures as well.  Efforts such as the private-

ly financed Habitat for Humanity program, which uses volun-

teer labor and materials, in part, to offer two- to three-

bedroom homes for less than $50,000, point the way toward a

new generation of such modest structures, as does the poten-

tial for manufactured housing.

Furthermore, relaxing regulations such as zoning and

building codes can help clear the way for such structures,

which would stand in the tradition of row houses, bungalows,

and other privately built housing that was affordable for

those of low income by virtue of their low cost and rela-