the other press page 4

 

‘

 

\

 

By Marc Levinson for
Pacific News Service.
, Mare Levinson is a
freelance writer based
in Atlanta and a fre-
quent contributor to
Pacific News Service.

 

State Sen. Ed Garrard expect-
ed only token opposition in his
bid for a fifth term in his district
Democratic primary here in
August. But Garrard ran into a
newly charged political buzz
saw: a candidate backed by
Atlanta’s burgeoning neighbor-
hood movement.

The victory by political new-
comer Todd Evans, young lawy-
er who went on to win the

general election Nov. 2, exem-
plifies growing political clout
of ‘‘neighborhood power’’
across the country.

After decades of physical
degeneration and declining poli-
tical power, urban neighbor-
hoods throughout the U.S. are
_| organizing and demanding a
| bigger say in public policy.

Mayors like Maynard Jackson
in Atlanta,
Birmingham, George Moscone
\in San Francisco and Harvey

elections to neighborhood sup-
port. fi ;

And Presdient-elect Jimmy
Carter actively courted the
neighborhood vote. ‘‘There’s a
trend of strong neighborhood
associations being developed
around local issues and taking
an activist stance,”’ says Tom
Tatum, a former Maynard Jack-
son aide who worked for the
Carter campaign in Georgia.
““We were careful to contact
them and explain our policies.
Once we did the members often
volunteered for the campaign.”’

The neighborhood power con-
cept first developed as part of
the 1960s War on Poverty, with
federal law requiring that local
anti-poverty programs be run by
community-based organizat-
ions. But most of today’s power-
ful neighborhood groups grew
up in response to burning
local issues.

Atlanta’s Citywide League of
neighborhoods began in 1970 as
a movement to fight two pro-
posed expressways that would
have cut through residential
neighborhoods. San Francisco’s
Citizens for Representative
Government was started in the
early ’70s to back elections for
the city’s Board of Supervisors
by neighborhood rather than
from the city at large. .

In Chicago, the Metrcpolitan
Area Housing Alliance was
formed to combat the neglect of
inner-city housing by govern-
ment and financial institutions.

 

David Vann in|

Sloane in Louisville owe their

Now, many of the nation’s
neighborhood groups are invol-
ved in'a broad range of issues
that reflect a variety of inter-
ests: from middle- and- upper
middle class homeowners fight-
ing property tax increases to
working-class residents battling
redevelopment programs and
seeking better city services like
police and child care.

National People’s Action
(NPA), a national network of
community groups in 104 cities,
has focused its attentions on
redlining--the practice by finan-
cial institutions of automatically
denying mortgage or home im-
provement loans to residents of
certain inner-city neighbor-
hoods

Charging that widespread
redlining severely restricts the
ability of city dwellers to borrow
money and improve their pro-
perty--espcially residents of
poor areas who need credit the
most--NPA spearheaded a two-
year campaign that resulted in
the Home Mortgage Disclosure
Act of 1975.

That law requires most banks
and savings and loan associat-
ions to reveal where they make
mortgage and home improve-
ment loans. The first such
reports appeared last Septem-
ber 30 and indicated in city after
city that more loans are made in
suburbs than in inner-city
neighborhoods--and that some
institutions made no loans at all
in older neighborhoods.

In the wake of these reports,
NPA is now calling for a federal
law prohibiting redlining and for
the development of a national
policy for neighborhood preser-
‘ation and reinvestment.

Meanwhile, neighborhood
groups have been placing simi-
lar pressure on local govern-
ments.

In Chicago, MAHA forced the
city to spend $8 million in
federal Community Develop-
ment ‘Block Grant money on
housing rehabilitation. The
Council for Community Advan-
cement has helped the city
design a program to partially
insure loans to city residents--
thus making banks more willing
to lend.

And in Atlanta, the Citywide
League of Neighborhoods was
instrumental in obtaining a
commitment from almost all the
local financial institutions to
make $62.5 million available for
mortgage loans in inner-city
neighborhoods.

The local business climate
also concerns neighborhood
groups. ‘City communities are
going to have to take more
interest in the business sector--
the types of stores in community

centers, the quality of merchan-
dise,’’ says Jerry Porter, presi-
dent of Atlanta’s coalition of
Southwest Community Groups.

“‘We’re going to have to deal
with funding for small business-
men, especially minority busi-
nessmen, with tax assessment
and other issues that affect b
business.”’

Simply attracting community-
oriented businesses isn’t always
enough however. Angry home-

owners in several Oakland, Ca.,
neighborhoods are battling to
segregate prostitution and sex-
oriented enterprises like mas-
sage parlors and ‘‘adult’’ book-
stores in areas far from their
schools, parks and shopping
areas.

areas.

Potentially the most far-rea-
ching aspect of the rebirth of
neighborhood power is neigh-
borhood planning.

New York City was the first in
the country to give a formal role
to neighborhood groups in plan-
ning the future of their neigh-
borhoods when it established
community planning districts in
the late 1960's.

Atlanta has now carried the
concept further. When the new
city charter was written here in
1973, it decreed that each year
the city council must approve
one, five, and 15 year compre-
hensive plans for city improve-

Neighborhoods shake up city politics

ments, based on plans submit-
ted by neighborhood planning
units throughout the city.

But there is potential as well
for conflict within the neighbor-
hood movement.

In San Francisco, a battle is
brewing between groups in
working-class neighborhoods

and more conservative groups in

upper-class sections of the city.

The catalyst has been rising
property tax assessments that
have led to homeowner rebel-
lions against city employee
wage hikes. The upper-class
neighborhood groups have
aligned with the Board of Su-
pervisors in passing several
anti-union ballot propositions
this year.

In the latest round of this
battle, a coalition primarily re-
presenting poor and working-
class neighborhoods and labor
unions helped steer to victory a
November 2 ballot proposition
that boots out the present Board
by providing for election of one
supervisor from each of 11

* districts. Until now all 11 super-

visors have been elected city-
wide.

The current supervisors---
many of whom live in the same
upper-class neighborhoods--
have declared they will put the

proposition to a recall in June.

whole pie.”’

But if the voters don’t waver,
some of the militant neighbor-
hood leaders who have emerged
over the past years are sure bets

to be elected. Then the fight
over who shoulders a heavier
load of the city’s skyrocketing
tax burden--moderate income

renters and homeowners or the
city’s more comfortable neigh-

borhoods and giant financial
corporations--will heat up.

But in other cities, such as
Chicago--where established
political machines make it very
difficult for neighborhood
groups to gain power--the em-
phasis is more on pressuring
city hall than electing new
representatives. _

“The first instinct of many
organizations is, ‘Our council-
man is not serving us so we’re
going to get him out of office’,’”’
says MAHA’s Gail Cincotta,
who helped establish the NPA
and may qualify as the national
leader of the neighborhood
movement. ‘‘So you trade twee-
dle-dum for tweedle-dee, in-
stead of showing that they’ ll
have to deal with you no matter
who they are.’’

Adds the NPA’s Tom Fox,
“‘Before, it’s only been,
‘There’s just so much pie to go
around and we need our little
piece.’ Now, we fight for the

 

 

GREAT
HOSPITALITY!

SURREY
INN