A recent poll revealed that 81% of Blacks wanted the same
level or more police protection; only 19% wanted less.
This is not surprising.
In 1971, The Department of Housing and Urban Development solicited proposals
from Local (Public) Housing Authorities (LHAs) for grants to improve their housing
management systems and cut costs. This
was part of HUD’s Management Improvement Program (MIP).
The MIP added special funding to the normal operating budget
of the LHA. But a condition of the grant
was that the management changes were to be planned and implemented with the
participation of public housing residents.
Thirteen large LHAs (1,250 or more units under management) were
selected from the 72 applicants. One was
the Wilmington Housing Authority (WHA) in Delaware, which had nearly 2,000
tenant families and elderly residents.
TransCentury Corporation, founded by the deputy director of
the Peace Corps Warren W. Wiggins, was selected to assist with the design of
the program and evaluate its success or failure. I was retained as a consultant.
In early 1973, we set out to interview the nearly 2,000 largely
Black residents about their problems, not to find out if they had problems. Our
task was to identify and count them in pursuit of a well-designed information
and referral program. To our surprise
the tenants would not own up to all the problems they were supposed to have
based on prior research of the “crisis” literature in public housing.
We had anticipation that tenants would cite problems with
obtaining much needed social services such as day care, urgent need for food,
jobs, and money, that they felt trapped in public housing, and that they were
contemptuous of the WHA’s management.
Because one study team member had interviewed in Watts, we rather
incidentally also asked about crime and the police.
Only a handful of the nearly 2,000 residents we interviewed cited
difficulties with obtaining social services.
Moreover, most liked their housing.
Most rated the management in positive terms. But
they wanted police protection. More than
anything else, they wanted security for themselves and their possessions.
In response, the WHA set up a housing security force, hiring
off-duty Wilmington police, largely White, to provide after-hours security for
the tenants. When a panel of the same
residents was interviewed a year after the initial set of baseline interviews, it
testified overwhelmingly in favor of the new security force. Though it had been in operation only a few
months, a majority of respondents knew of the force and wanted it continued or
expanded.
Because the survey showed that almost nobody had problems
obtaining needed social services, the management reduced by three-quarters the
resident social services staff during the same period. Tenants reported that satisfaction with
social services actually increased during the project period.
Interviews were conducted with a sample of tenants in each
of the three succeeding years. Tenants
continued to speak highly of the benefits of management decisions designed on
the basis of tenant preferences.
Tenants were disappointed that the security force was
disbanded after the money for the MIP was exhausted. As is all too common in government programs, policies
change with changes in administrations and political objectives. It was back to business as usual with social
welfare workers, not police, despite the reduction in crime and drug dealing in
the community.
The study is reported in detail in my coauthored (with
William G. Weissert) book, Caseworkers or Police (free download).
Please take some time to look at the data in this book,
rather than draw inferences of Black preferences from observing urban street
riots.