ties more succinctly, to coordinate its work better 

 with the needs of others, and to attempt to develop 

 a consensus on priorities among the most urgent 

 community research problems. 



Often HUD's research office has been given 

 immediate, urgent problems for solution, for which 

 neithei basic data nor underlying hypotheses exist- 

 ed. In order to respond to such problems, work 

 first had to proceed on data gathering and develop- 

 ment of hypotheses. Thus, despite budget restric- 

 tions and time pressures, HUD's research team 

 found itself working at the more fundamental end 

 of the research continuum. 



An example of this was the phenomenon of 

 housing abandonment, which emerged in the late 

 sixties and early seventies. Despite a serious na- 

 tional housing shortage, particularly for lower in- 

 come families, otherwise sound or rehabilitatable 

 housing was being abandoned by its owners. In 

 many instances the abandoned units were then 

 vandalized or gutted by fire and permanently re- 

 moved from the Nation's housing stock. 



Before program interventions could be designed, 

 an understanding of the phenomenon had to be 

 obtained. What were its scope and prevalence? In 

 what circumstances? Was there any pattern to it? 

 What phenomena could be associated with it? Was 

 it a single problem, or were there several related 

 mechanisms at work? Could it be differentiated by 

 location? Form of tenure? Type of occupant? Type 

 or age of building? Could a plausible hypothesis, 

 or hypotheses, be developed to explain the pheno- 

 menon? If so, was there a preferred point of inter- 

 vention? 



Our understanding remains imperfect, but much 

 of the basic work has been done, and several 

 promising Federal and local interventions have 

 grown out of this work. Among these are: 



• The urban homesteading program, under 

 which HUD-mortgaged, abandoned proper- 

 ties, in selected neighborhoods, are sold for a 

 nominal sum to families promising to rehabili- 

 tate the homes to code standards and to live 

 in them for at least three years, while their 

 communities provide a parallel program of 

 improved neighborhood services. 



• The Urban Reinvestment Task Force, funded 

 by HUD and directed by the Federal Home 

 Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), under which a 

 tripartite group — local lenders, local govern- 

 ment, and a neighborhood leadership organi- 

 zation, guided by the FHLBB national Task 

 Force staff — develop a neighborhood fix-up, 

 self-help, and rehabilitation loan program, 

 intended to reverse a pattern of disinvest- 

 ment and neighborhood decline. 



• The distressed properties program, aimed at 

 HUD-insured and HUD-subsidized suburban 



housing projects in which initial defaults and 

 abandonments have begun a self-perpetuating 

 spiral of further defaults and abandonment; 

 the program intervention is the provision of 

 incentives for private or local government- 

 sponsored entities to step in, acquire, and 

 repair all abandoned units, get them occupied 

 on a rental basis, and provide homeownership 

 opportunities when the housing sales market 

 restabilizes. 

 HUD's Annual Housing Survey is a much 

 broader quest for basic data, arising out of more 

 immediate needs. Time and again, program ques- 

 tions and the design of options and alternatives 

 suffered from the lack of sufficient, timely, reliable 

 data on changes in the numbers, quality, and distri- 

 bution of our housing stock and the characteristics 

 of its occupants. 



The decennial census provides much useful in- 

 formation but is not adequate for these needs. 

 Fast-moving phenomena, such as the housing 

 abandonment described above, could not wait 10 

 years to be counted; nor could data for evaluations 

 of the impact of Federal housing and community 

 development programs. In addition, the census 

 must meet many needs. The number of questions 

 devoted to housing and community development 

 are, of necessity, limited. Thus the range and 

 scope of census information, as well as its timeli- 

 ness, have been inadequate for HUD's needs. 



As an example, there has been a serious problem 

 with data on substandard housing. An examination 

 of census data indicates that the Nation has made 

 very substantial progress in the years between the 

 1950, the 1960, and the 1970 censuses in the reduc- 

 tion of substandard housing. While there is no 

 doubt that the trend is a true one, the implication 

 that we have nearly overcome this problem is mis- 

 leading. The census definition of "substandard" 

 housing is inadequate to today's aspirations. (Sub- 

 standard housing is defined by the census — in sim- 

 plified terms — as not meeting certain health or 

 safety standards.) We believe there is some hous- 

 ing that could meet that test and still be unsatisfac- 

 tory. Suppose, for example, that it had no electri- 

 cal service, or that it had no heating or insulation 

 for a cold climate. The census definition also fails 

 to account for housing that is not substandard it- 

 self, but is in a neighborhood or environment that 

 is unsatisfactory (the last occupied house in an 

 otherwise abandoned slum area, for example). 



The first Annual Housing Survey (sample size 

 75,000 dwellings, approximately O.I percent of the 

 total) was conducted for HUD through an intera- 

 gency agreement with the U.S. Bureau of the 

 Census in 1973. It is now providing HUD, and all 

 other researchers and professionals in the urban 

 field, with a long-needed flow of data upon which 



HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 119 



