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By Root 1126 0

federal budget and eradicate the spreading blight of the South Bronx. Spending money for urban ills—like spending money for defense—does not guarantee success. Ten years ago, the Mott Haven Development Fund Project was formed to rehabilitate twenty decayed buildings on East 139th and 140th streets in the South Bronx. The federal government guaranteed $4 million of bank loans, community-based organizations pitched in. Five- and six-story brick buildings rose from ashes, creating two gleaming new blocks. Today, six years after the rehabilitation was completed, half the twenty buildings are totally abandoned and the rest are slipping fast. The Mott Haven Development Fund Project was not the answer, as earlier high-rise public housing or the Cross Bronx Expressway which tore up neighborhoods was not the answer. Sometimes we just don’t have answers. Or, as the city’s original South Bronx plan admits, “We cannot say with any confidence that practical solutions exist.”

In the early seventies, it was thought that the new Yankee Stadium would transform the surrounding Bronx neighborhood. It hasn’t—though it cost four times the original projections. The New Orleans Superdome cost nine times what it was supposed to, and in 1977 lost $13 million. In 1975, Renzo Zingone, a Milanese builder, was to lead a flock of Italian manufacturers to construct a vast industrial park in the South Bronx. It was, then city EDA Administrator Alfred Eisenpreis announced at the time, “a vote of confidence in New York.” Mr. Zingone has not been heard from since.

There is reason to worry that the South Bronx plan will become another false promise. A gap exists between the almost infinitely difficult task and the finite resources Carter will make available; between abstract plans and real people and problems. Beyond this is the inevitable clash between the desirable and do-able—the same clash witnessed throughout the city’s last twenty or so years. Wishing to do good for people, New York often tried to do too much. Enthusiasm, or desperation, overcame our sense of limits. We forgot there were limits to what a city could spend, tax or borrow. Just as the city, and Jimmy Carter, may be ignoring a sense of limits in the South Bronx—trying to do too much with too little on the wrong battlefield.

New York’s demands for massive national assistance may also be ignoring federal budget and political limits. Washington should further tilt toward its declining cities. It should target jobs, low-interest loans, incentives for business expansion, relief for high welfare and energy costs; further help stretch the city’s enormous debt to permit the easing of choking debt service payments; offer incentives to state and local governments to improve their productivity. New York, like other older cities, is afflicted with too many poor people and too few resources. Alone, sometimes all New York can do is imitate, in Brian Berry’s words, “the man with the garbage can following the elephant into the ring, just cleaning up the awful mess that’s there.”

But after saying this, honesty compels recognition that most federal aid programs already tilt toward New York. President Carter’s proposed urban policy would tilt even more toward older cities. Yet his proposed tilt aroused potent political opposition. The Sunbelt is angry, as are the suburbs. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and everyone doesn’t have the same generosity of spirit exhibited by liberal New Yorkers in the thirties. In addition, the President is committed to balancing the federal budget and has already announced his intention to reduce the percentage of the GNP spent by the federal government. Many in Congress and the nation already blame government spending and the huge federal deficit for raging inflation. As of June 1978, twenty-three state legislatures—two-thirds the required number—had approved an amendment to the Constitution banning federal deficits.

In short, there is not likely to be a federal Santa Claus. That is why Senator Moynihan’s putative $7.4 billion “gap” is so harmful. It is a narcotic.