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long term and causes political complications.  Low-cost

housing--modest structures built in low-cost neighbor-

hoods--is the way in which the market accommodates

those of modest means.  Government can clear the way

for additional low-cost housing by examining its zoning

and building regulations at the local level.  Among

other things, it should build housing codes on a more

minimalist approach.  What is so crucial to health and

safety that it must be in the code?  Limiting aesthetic

requirements and health-related mandates that may be

overkill would limit renovation costs.

There is good reason to question the need for HUD.

That is not to say that abolition would be simple.  HUD is

financially intertwined with local governments, with the

private mortgage market, and with numerous private property

owners.  The Federal Housing Administration, for instance,

which predates HUD, has guaranteed millions of private

mortgages as part of a national policy to direct capital

toward the home-buying market.  Finding the best way to sort

out such complications is a difficult but possible task.

That does not, however, diminish the fact that HUD is an

agency whose establishment was unnecessary, whose purview is

of questionable constitutionality, and whose goals can be

better met through the private housing industry.

Notes

1.  For a detailed history of the development of HUD and the

Model Cities program, see Bernard Frieden and Marshall

Kaplan, The Politics of Neglect (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press, 1975).

2.  Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives

on the Presidency 1963-1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart,

Winston, 1971).

3.  Jeanne R. Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time: Progress and

Poverty in America's Renewing Cities (New York: Vintage

Books, 1967).

4.  Wood was the head of the White House Task Force on Urban

Problems, charged with developing a program agenda for HUD.

Other members included presidential special assistant Joseph

Califano; Brookings Institution president Kermit Gordon;

Professor Charles Haar of Harvard Law School; Walter Reuth-

er, president of the United Auto Workers; and Edgar Kaiser,