• Special issue/April 24, 1970
Yale's growth, New Haven's loss. by Sam Millei
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For The New Journal to maintain its regular publishing format would not be in the best interests of the Yale University community at this time. Rather, we feel that we can best respond to the current crisis by presenting a series of in-depth reports on issues of great concern to Yale and New Haven. The first in this series, a report on Yale's physical growth, had originally been planned for our next regular issue. Following this article is a proposal for Yale housing policy by the Student Community Housing Corporation. Copyright 1970 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc.
The summer riots of 1967 shattered Dick Lee's liberal fantasy that redevelopment could transform New Haven from a tired old factory town into a model "slumless" city. True, during his sixteen years in office, the face of the Elm City was neatly uplifted. One hundred and forty acres of unsightly slum property were leveled. Famous architects were recruited to fill in the gaping holes. The present landscape of the Center City is the legacy of Lee's highly-praised achievement. In place of the embarrassing Oak Street slum which nestled uncomfortably close to Yale, we now have a clean, modern, and highly profitable downtown area. But in the process of Mayor Lee's urban renewal, which he rightfully claimed would "revitalize the dying and blighted Central Business District," over six thousand units of housing were demolished. Close to seven thousand households (which included an estimated forty percent of the entire Negro population of the city) were relocated. The ultimate result of Lee's program was a housing deficit so serious that the National Commission on Civil Disorders stated in its report on violence in New Haven that "it is hard to escape the question of the relation of these large deficits ...and the unrest that led to the rioting." There simply was not enough low income housing built. With the completion of Church Street South only three thousand units will have been built under a Federal program to replace the six thousand demolished units. Eight hundred of these new units in Crown , Madison and University Towers are for upper income people; fourteen hundred are moderate income cooperatives; the remainder were built for elderly and low income families. The fact is indisputable that Yale was linked intimately with the Mayor's renewal policies. The University quickly saw the potential advantage in supporting the Lee program. The demolition of the Oak Street area, the city's worst slum, permitted the expansion of the Medical
School facilities and rid Yale of a most discomforting neighbor. The University's fmt chance to help things along came in 1955 when Lee's program was in need of working capital. Yale, at that time, purchased the city high schools at Broadway and Tower Parkway for a price far over the market value. The two colleges built there, Morse and Stiles, were credited as part of the city's urban renewal program. Another example of Yale's involvement with the clean-up-your-neighborhood-tear-down-a-slum effort came in 1962. Mr. J. Richardson Dilworth, a member of the Yale Corporation and of Macy's board of directors, had a talk with Lee that led ultimately to Macy's decision to come to New Haven . Yale was also instrumental in flnding the $4.5 million that Roger Stevens, the developer of the Chapel Square Mall, needed to complete his project. So the city, with no small amount of help from its friend , was able to get some pretty new buildings and eliminate some embarrassing eyesores. Even today, as facts stare glaringly into its face, the city does not seem ready to admit that New Haven's housing situation is a significant factor in its overall problems. And Yale is even more reluctant to claim its share of the blame or its part in correcting the imbalances of the situation. Aside from the arguments that Yale, as the city's leading institution and hoarder of social knowledge, might have a social responsibility to act, there is the fact that the University has a negative effect on the housing shortage in general. Yale's own expansion policies and its increasing enrollment have taken housing off the market while flooding it with new buyers. And Yale's studied indifference to the problems it causes is beginning to take its toll in the University's relationship with the city. Lee, before leaving office, called upon Yale to contribute three million dollars annually for the next three years to the city's ailing treasury. Yale has refused to act on this suggestion. Political opposition to Yale's voracious appetite for land also found expression in the Guida amendment, which New Haven's present Mayor proposed and saw passed while he was