has staffs of only three employees per location. We need at least six staff members in each regional location to provide the most basic outreach to the States served by these regional offices. We need another half million dollars to hire a strike force of researchers, investigators and attorneys, a group that could immediately be sent to a community in crisis. This investigative staff could enable the Commission to have first hand information on the causes of any disturbances, and could provide meaningful field investigative work which would result in the Commission's ability to hold public hearings at a much more rapid pace. This would translate into a speedier rate of publication of reports to the Congress and to the President on our findings and recommendations. The fact that this committee asked me to represent the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in testimony today is proof, I believe, of your commitment to finding solutions to the problems we face today all across America. And I believe this committee is willing to back the funding that is required to assist in the resolution of these problems. Therefore, I ask you to focus your attention to the support of a Supplemental Appropriation bill for the Commission on Civil Rights. We are asking for an additional $1.9 million in funding this fiscal year. With this additional funding, we will have the resources to establish the regional offices as I have outlined, to hire the strike force of staff just mentioned, and to conduct a public hearing in Los Angeles this fall. Without additional funding, we will not be able to fully establish regional staffs until FY 1994, we will not be able to hire the strike force of new staff, and the Los Angeles' hearing will not be held until early in calendar year 1993. The crisis in Los Angeles is too volatile to wait that long for our comprehensive review and investigation. I trust I can count on this committee to assist in the quick passage of a supplemental funding measure for the Commission so that we can move immediately in all these different directions to tackle what I believe is the greatest problem facing the country today-that of racial and ethnic divisiveness. Without a doubt, poverty is a chief reason that violence erupted in Los Angeles. And so it is appropriate, essential in fact, for us to seek ways of creating jobs, restoring quality housing, and improving the quality of education in the inner cities. However, we must avoid slapping a band-aid on the problems of the inner cities. Quick fix remedies may see us through the next few months, but they cannot hope to provide a lasting solution. If anything, America's responsibility to its disadvantaged must include at least the following four commitments: I. To provide education in a safe environment and with an adequate teaching staff. Education is the bedrock of any society. Poverty is as much the result of poor education as any other problem. We can no longer ignore the pallor of hopelessness in our urban schools. There is little question that the desire to attend school will be diminished by the inadequacy of the school systems or the fear of attending. The United States must also provide a full opportunity for higher education for all qualified candidates. II. To allow the dignity of a stake in one's housing. We must give people a stake in their future. For many of us, this has come through our ability to own a home. But the disadvantaged (or at least the lucky ones) have been shuffled into the failure of public housing. We recognize the failure of mass public housing programs. Riddled with crime, people suffocate in the size and impersonal nature of such housing. This housing offers little opportunity for the disadvantaged and may significantly contribute to the disillusionment of its tenants. What is needed are more housing programs that instill a sense of pride, a sense of ownership-a stake in the future. This committee is familiar with a number of such programs, both operating and proposed. One is called HOPE-the Home Ownership and Opportunity for People-which permits residents of public housing to have a stake in their homes. They become “homesteaders," eventually owning their homes. Limited equity co-ops, mutual housing programs, and tenant-ownership efforts have also proven successful in communities throughout the country and need to be replicated elsewhere. Decent housing and stable neighborhoods must once again become a national priority. And housing opportunities for low- to moderate-income families must not be limited to the ghetto. III. To provide economic opportunity. Infusing the disadvantaged with stability and independence is the cornerstone of any adequate poverty program. Too often our programs have failed primarily because they could not deliver these values. Creating job opportunities in the inner city is essential to any program that seeks to provide for the future of our cities. The creation of enterprise zones is one means toward this end. I note that there are both Republican and Democratic proposals for enterprise zones. Rather than favor one proposal over another, I am here to suggest that the principle is a sound and necessary one. Let me be clear that the successes of the 1960's have enabled our Nation to move forward as far as we have come. We can speak of minority business opportunities today because for 25 years we have improved minority employment opportunity. As a result, today there are many minority contractors prepared to perform if they can obtain work. Without the programs that enhanced opportunities in the past, the conditions of minorities would be far worse than they are now. We must continue to build on those successes, and we urge the Congress and the Executive to explore every means of doing so. I'll give you one example. Executive Order 11246 requires those who contract with the Government to assure equal opportunity for women and minorities in all work performed under those contracts. Why not require would-be Government contractors to demonstrate compliance with this standard in ALL their business activities, including their purchasing, as a precondition of doing business with the Federal Government? This is not a set-aside concept. And it would go a long way toward ensuring nondiscrimination. IV. To give immediate relief to the critically disadvantaged. For many, our present welfare system may have the unintended effect of perpetuating welfare. When a welfare recipient accepts a job, they find that welfare payment will be curtailed. Our welfare regulations, even though revised, still operate to discourage the ambition to work because they quickly penalize a person for working. A sensible system must allow individuals a sensible path out of poverty, instead of being trapped within the system. These recommendations are aimed at stimulating jobs and economic growth in the blighted areas of our cities, removing Government impediments to wealth formation by the poor, and giving the poor more control over their homes and their schools. These remedies provide a solid basis for a long-term program for eliminating poverty around the country. However, they do not address another cause of poverty: race prejudice and discrimination. Until we eliminate these barriers to economic, social and political opportunity, we cannot hope to eradicate the poverty of minorities living in our inner cities. Yet, I wonder how many of our fellow Americans understand the profound and insidious harm caused by the racial tensions which permeate all facets of our society. Americans must be made to realize that the same forces-prejudice, bigotry and discrimination— that caused racial hatred and violence to explode to the surface in Los Angeles are at work in communities all across the Nation, dividing and isolating racial and ethnic groups, and possibly creating conditions favorable to outbreaks of violence... The harm done by these forces is experienced by virtually every person in society. Discrimination not only hurts the intended victim of the act, but, by creating barriers to free exchange, whether of goods, services, or ideas, it hurts many others, nonminority as well as minority. It is, therefore, society as a whole that suffers from racial tensions, and the artificial divisions between racial and ethnic groups that these tensions cause. And in fact the very security of our Nation as a whole is dependent on the vigor with which we address these issues. Our immediate attention, and our immediate action, are essential at this time in our country's history. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I will be pleased to answer questions you might have concerning my personal remarks and the work of the Commission. On another note, I want to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge the wisdom of the Senate in creating the new Office of Fair Employment Practices and in the selection of a distinguished individual to direct this office-Dr. Harriet Jenkins. The opportunity for oversight of internal hiring and promotion decisions within Senate offices on matters of fairness will enhance the credibility of this congressional body in the eyes of the public. I commend the Senate for this decision. STATEMENT OF JAMES W. ROUSE, CHAIRMAN THE ENTERPRISE FOUNDATION MAY 14, 1992 Mr. Chairman, Senator Garn, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. My name is James W. Rouse. I am the chairman and founder of The Enterprise Foundation, which for 10 years has worked across the country to provide decent housing for very low-income people. We now work in 90 cities and with more than 200 nonprofit housing groups-developing more than 17,000 homes for low-income Americans. Our stated mission is "to see that all poor people in the United States have the opportunity for fit and affordable housing within a generation and to move up and out of poverty into the mainstream of American life." You have asked me to share with you my thoughts in the aftermath of the violence in Los Angeles and disruptions in other American cities. In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here?, Martin Luther King wrote, "A riot at bottom is the language of the unheard." For too long, too many have been unheard. Unheard because they eke out survival in the "other" America, the forgotten America of grinding poverty. Listen, as I try to share with you the conditions of poverty and hopelessness in hundreds of American cities, towns, and rural areas. Los Angeles is but one mirror image of conditions in all parts of our country: • More people in poverty-25 to 34 million from the mid1970's to today. The number of children in America living in poverty-one in five-is the highest child poverty rate of any industrialized nation. • Fewer dwellings for low-income families-dwellings at rents of $250 per month or less declined by 41 percent since the late 70's; millions more people needing housing at lower rents-less housing available increases in rents beyond ability to pay— eviction. • More homeless-mothers and children looking for places to sleep, living like stray animals; 100,000 children on the streets or in shelters, reports the National Academy of Sciences to Congress. Think of that-in America. • More school dropouts as high as 30 to 40 percent in city schools-nearly half of these young people reaching adulthood unqualified for work-tomorrow's jobless. • Lee Iacocca, in a speech in Los Angeles, said Chrysler built a $2 billion plant in Detroit-and looked to five high schools to supply new workers. They found a dropout rate of 55 percent. So many new employees were functionally illiterate that they were forced to scrap the English language for instructions on many of their machines and to substitute the international sign language. He ended his speech by saying, “And if we don't find the way to change these conditions, this country is going right down the chute." Twenty-five percent of babies born in city hospitals are reported to be drug-addicted at birth. • The Los Angeles Times reported, several years ago, 42,000 people living in cars or garages-no running water-no other homes. • The New York Times reports that the United States has more people in jail per 100,000 than any other country in the world: United States 455 of each 100,000 people in jail Japan 45 of each 100,000 people in jail • We have become the world's most violent Nation. • A White House report has estimated the cost of these conditions in our cities at over $750 billion a year. Think of that. This week, headline news in The Los Angeles Times is the widening rich-poor gulf in California, noting South Los Angeles' poverty rate was worse than during the Watts riots in 1965. The article goes on to note that in every category of achievement-income, employment, education-South Los Angeles was well below the city and county averages. More than half of those over age 16 are unemployed. Median household income in South Los Angeles is $19,382 per year versus a citywide median income of $30,925. Experts noted that the South Los Angeles income looked a little better, in part, "because of the number of Latino immigrants, about half the area's residents, who live two and three families in a home." And so it goes: challenging our competitive production capacity as a Nation; imposing a huge financial burden on Government at all levels; - demands for security creating a barricaded society of "us" versus "them"; alienation of millions of Americans living helpless, hopeless lives-feeling no stake in our country-tinder for a radical torch. This is America! Can you believe it? Can you believe that these are our people, our cities? Visitors from Europe and Asia are appalled when they are exposed to the way the poor live in our country. Comparable conditions do not exist in Western Europe, the United Kingdom, or Japan. The people of this country, for the most part-leaders in public life, in business, banking, government, the managers of our wealth and our institutions-do not know how millions and millions of people in our country live. We think we do. We read the dismal figures, see pictures of dilapidated housing in derelict neighborhoods; but most of us have walked those streets, stepped inside those houses; have not seen good people with clean not decent families huddled in miserable housing, paying outrageous rents; have not looked into the saddened sullen faces; felt the hopelessness, the distrust, suspicion, and separation that pervades their lives and all around them. The basic systems for supporting the lives of children, adults, and families upon which we all depend in our country have fallen apart in neighborhoods at the bottom of our society: schools don't |