Fran Spielman: Daley: High-rises were feds' idea, not my dad's
Spielman writing on Daley's recollections of Fed dictates on public housing. Note Daley took a shot at reporters saying his words here would never be printed. Probably the most damning indictment of Liberalism as practiced in the 50's and 60's as one can find.
On the other hand, you wonder if the Mayor and Sen Douglas could have protested a little louder about Federal dictates on these projects. They weren't crying out for more low rise attempts at integration like LeClaire Courts as I recall.
Here's the Spielman on the Mayor yesterday,
"They [the elder Daley and Douglas] objected because people were coming from a rural way of life. They never lived in high-rises," the mayor said.
Two federal guidelines made the problem even worse, Daley said. One required that CHA high-rises take "the poorest of the poor" and that those who landed even minimum-wage jobs had to move out. The second edict denied benefits to those who got married, Daley said.
"They destroyed the work ethic of people and they destroyed the family relationship of marriage and everything else going with it," the mayor said.
Reminded that his dad has been saddled with the blame for CHA high-rises all these years, Daley said, "Who else are you gonna blame?"
4 comments:
And of course the federal officials from that era are just as dead now as Daley's father, so it is just the word of Mayor "DINO" Daley versus.....
The contracts, the graft, the ability to "get the riff raff out of the neighborhoods.
What self serving nonsense. Daley the 1st rigged an election to put Kennedy in the WH. He could have stopped and started anything he wanted to.
I've read that had Robert Taft not died when he did (in 1953 after Ike was elected), there would not have been high rises.
Taft was apparently on the right committee and favored low rises distributed throughout cities.
Daley Sr. wielded enormous influence over national politics. If he truly wanted low rises he could have had them.
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