thumbnail of 703: Hispanics and Housing [Pt. 1]; Images/Imagenes
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You know you never know me yet oh oh he'll yeah. It's.
Borrowing of money. Brought. Into production on borrowed money therefore we could have a crisis. Sounds as if nothing extra would have a reduction in housing starts at 30 percent. Last year we had two thousand or two million housing starts that would mean a reduction to 1 million that would be about Sastre in every way and we have a vacancy rates. When we look at the employment that depends upon housing there's no question that this country today is in the
middle of a major housing crisis and it is likely to get worse simply because of the very high cost of money the fact that there are communities throughout the country that are have growth limits in terms of how many new houses they will allow which ends up driving up the price of existing housing. The major problem the real estate industry is facing is the tight money situation that exists in New Jersey and across the nation. Today's real estate economy the larger family is probably suffering perhaps even more than the lower income because we're just not building you when it's big enough for large families. The trend today is toward smaller families and if you happen to be. I'm lucky enough to have a large family. Your choice of housing has reduced considerably if you look at his bank. When you are a very young people the average age of our people is
about 18 years old. If you look at the average age of the Anglo populations around 27 for Jewish population is 47. So you're talking about enormous spread and so when our population reaches the 23 24 year age where you're talking about family formation and you're talking about a group of people who have a low educational attainment driven high dropout rates and so forth who don't have equity in terms of a large amount of money for a down payment the homeownership picture is very bleak. Martin Luther King understood that when you talk to one nation you talk about all the people that I ultimately talk to the Puerto Rican elite because without without question without reference to any index whether we're talking about how you see as we are whether we're talking about employment whether we're talking about education whatever index we'll learn which two
million Puerto Ricans who are on the mainland half million of them in the state are suffering grievously enough that none of the people. Suffering and that is not Mr court that's Gosain not you that is the National Civil Rights Commission and a publication that appeared just two years ago when October of 1977 and what I see on an almost continuous basis and not just saying this to remind us let it fall fellow citizens. Haha what do I get a 5 m in terms if you will of ethnic. And racial constituencies that the World nation isn't. This is my your. Kindness.
Your. Response. Means that I've lost most. Times but I mean I just went on yesterday. You got problems here. New Jersey has a number of issues regarding housing which everyone in the state government is concerned with primarily. We have a shortage in the overall supply of housing. Back in 1970 the
state Division of planning did a projection for the total demand for housing through the 70s. Now we're 10 day 10 years later. We have an opportunity to look back and see how the state has has managed to produce housing in which in respond to the need and unfortunately the statistics are very encouraging. They estimated that the state needed to produce on the order of 65000 units of housing each year during that decade. We averaged about 40000 units of housing production a year. But the trend is really what's most concerning. The only year in which we met the 65000 unit production level was in one thousand seventy two. After that production started falling off in response to the national recession and in fact in 1974 and 75 combined. We didn't even meet the average level of 40000 housing units.
There has been somewhat of a resurgence since then. That is up until late 1979 when we've seen another downturn in respond to them money market conditions and a lack of available mortgage money. I think jersey is unique in the fact that we are the most urbanized state in the nation with what I would go being second. And as a result of this urbanization we have problems that really don't exist anywhere else in this country. And as a result we feel the solutions that should be offered should be unique and not stereotype that would fit the entire United States. We're just not the same. New Jersey has a very old housing stock especially in its central cities. One of the measures that we use to gauge the the shape and the condition of housing over time is that after about 40 years you can expect a housing unit whether it's a single family unit on a multifamily
property to require some measure of rehabilitation at some of the cities across the country where they have so-called slum areas in New Jersey they really wouldn't be classified as slum areas because they're not old enough yet. But actually in northern New Jersey much of the housing stock is over 40 years old in Essex County about 63 percent of all housing units are over 40 and in Hudson County it's as high as 77 percent. Now those are county wide figures in the urban centers of those of those counties which is where the Hispanic population is largely concentrated. The figures are much higher and then you know I see undock writing being aware of it and going to all right there are some New York PA so not a. There's a Cornell said Go home and let go of the house. Yes I say. So what that link that I got on these little snot all day or not they same day you'll be in there. They go in the water.
Right there they thought. We. Know. I know. In any rate I know they represent the spawn of Atlantic City and I love those. I mean. Really.
Working to alleviate this problem and this is Jersey City New York and throughout the whole state.
I mean. The government has a but nice. What our needs are. Therefore we have displacement. No one has looked at this place money and in terms of the Hispanics in the land which is probably one of the worst in the country. In Boston New York City. I mean you know thousands of these funds are going to these planes and nobody knows where they're going nobody knows what kind of housing displacement perpetuates a
person's poverty by undermining their stability within a neighborhood taking away whatever route they've been able to establish in a neighborhood so long. Read all the hills with it's unfair. We have to take it to
sleep in the day because it is wide open and it will be for the farrier of the city to properly give people the notices of their right to participate in the development of this program. And because of that we find that people now have to defend themselves by their wits in the best way we can and we're all for this project as a representative for the community and we're all for assisted housing. However the difficulty becomes what kind of planning has occurred what kind of human development can occur and we submit. That the only real human way to approach this is to have phased development that could have been put into the project in the beginning it was not budgeted for and planned for and now we're being told that it's unfeasible to do it and we're the people who might be holding up the project and it's simply a matter of designing it properly. And if the
citizens were involved in the front end of this it would have worked smoothly. But now we've got to try to put humanity into it from the back end it. They're becoming concerned that the project might fail. We're not for fair we're for total success. Well we go to where you go. The only thing you can do is remain. Will this housing you see that will be developed for low income people. It's all Section 8 assistance and to that extent that the goals of the CBG program and the Urban Development action grant program we feel are being met. However because there aren't other regulations being followed by hood under the program specifically the return of the neighborhood regulation. Some of the purposes of the program to assist low income people having just the opposite effect on the existing residents. Do you feel about the displacement of families from all these neighborhoods. Well I
think the political power of Hispanic groups directly it undermines them. It splits the vote. It separates it scatters people. Their last of the four corners of the city sometimes they move out of the city they lose touch there. They've always been disenfranchised from political participation. And this process of displacement in Urban Urban removal. And she was that perpetuates that does not make it conducive for any future voter education and participation. We're finally beginning to recognize the need for political power beginning to move. And we're here in the break once you break them up and they spread out. There won't be able to go and create another barrier. They're going to be scattered but the group is so small that will have political clout because and become a black vote.
When you spread them out and they go to different parts of different sections of the county change so that they won't be able to. Come back and the numbers of Puerto Ricans raised over the years. Living here now them were. 10 years ago 12 years ago. How people are living conditions now. They've constructed a lot of reconstructed a lot of people to leave to better.
And then the place people are. Concerned they can't afford the rent. They're asking for. So they have to find the people. Twenty six months ago. Hoboken is going through a change. I mean the city wants to project a new image for
Hoboken and along with the federal government saying well we're going to have to offer to change people into Hoboken. One of things that they definitely have to offer. There's a lot of Puerto Ricans living here. That's not a plus to anybody to come to one of them. What they did have was the whiteness of the town. There's a small town square was a nice community take nice walks etc. By the time I was going into buildings etc. with the Puerto Ricans were living so to fix some of these buildings some of the areas you have to get rid of the people that are living there not just the poor the poor blacks the white working class people you have to get rid of them to be able to fix up and bring over different people from New York to create the sense of the suburbs. It's going to. Be a door.
There seems to be evidence that there is discrimination against Hispanics and housing. There have never been many studies of that. The department just completed the first one in the last year discrimination against your condos in the Dallas rental housing market. And we are doing other studies in other rental markets now including your rental market. The thing that's interesting is that people who are as panicked are discriminated against want because there has been in other words ethnically they're discriminated against. Secondly it tends to be related to skin color. The more the darker a person the more
discrimination there is. So that if you're if you're very dark and you're Hispanic you have a double discrimination to deal with them the rental housing market. This year chairmanship of our subcommittee on housing. Thank you. How's your peers Senate chairman of the committee that deals with housing legislation. What is your position regarding the first Sure housing bill to be passed by the legislation. Very sure this is new. The prohibition is under war it is discrimination in housing that's been in the war now 11 years 68 and it's just central to our prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex with all of these reasons we have that in housing in there. It hasn't been working as effectively as some of our anti
discrimination vision. Born into some other areas and this I deeply regret. But we're doing analysis of that. We're using our current powers of conciliation. But most importantly we've gone to the Congress the president has the major initiative under this administration. Fair Housing for very strong powers to allow the department to go to court to go get a cease and desist powers to stop the discrimination when it occurs at the present time. HYDE does not have the power to do that. We only have the power to conciliate among the parties while the conciliation process is a very long one and frequently the person again finds other housing and they don't get very good satisfaction from that. I think that Bill is extremely important. It's important because for the first time he's going to give some teeth. They'll be able to enforce the law that states that you can't discriminate
based on race religion ethnic background or sex or ages and I think now before that all that the agency could deal with if I thought that that you was a landlord had discriminated against being able to come in and try to do to you know settle the problem and not discriminate. I mean you can promise I'm sure I will do that anymore and you know he's not going to get There's nothing that will force him to do it. There is no before the Judiciary Committee and it is more actively discrimination making forcemeat of our people. More more stronger more effective and more partner government Urban Development demonstrates
more regulation necessary especially to the Congress. We want a government but. We have the discrimination and the reason we have. The resources. Final so governed by me the best part of the
thing. What the foreign minister brought them and. Like us you know sort of even a circus. Bus circus on moving up and down into calling into from my that on that get I'm a Canuck I am so over my fans I give them. So you and I there think of what they do if I get a Security benefit and then we're going to select from today and I'm on the way that you are going to do that but I have a comment and we beckon.
For gay and I'm going I have to add that up and I got to know that but I doubt I'm hearing it on Monday Don't send me that. You don't remember. That. It was a blessing that we got something and I wanted to listen to your. Face and I think one of the worst housing crisis that I have seen since I've been involved in the in the field of housing it impacts on those simply because as of now in the last few years the cost of housing has increased by a hundred and two percent. Which means that a family needs to make nice to have a medium income of $30000 to afford a home. Now how many Hispanics make that kind of income and by the interest rate in that school a lot someone so it does it cuts into what we can afford and the Hispanics can't afford the kind of. The housing costs.
Title
703: Hispanics and Housing [Pt. 1]
Title
Images/Imagenes
Contributing Organization
New Jersey Network (Trenton, New Jersey)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/259-c53f228h
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"Imagenes (also Images in English) is a Emmy award-winning show that features documentaries and in-depth conversations with panels of experts, focusing on the lives, history, and culture of Latino communities in New Jersey."
Description
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Topics
Race and Ethnicity
Spanish Language
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:30:24
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New Jersey Network
Identifier: 04-14668 (NJN ID)
Format: U-matic
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Duration: 00:20:00?
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Citations
Chicago: “703: Hispanics and Housing [Pt. 1]; Images/Imagenes,” New Jersey Network, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 11, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-259-c53f228h.
MLA: “703: Hispanics and Housing [Pt. 1]; Images/Imagenes.” New Jersey Network, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 11, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-259-c53f228h>.
APA: 703: Hispanics and Housing [Pt. 1]; Images/Imagenes. Boston, MA: New Jersey Network, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-259-c53f228h