Opposition in Yonkers, N. Y. and Detroit, Mich. is developing into keen curiosity as the actual construction proceeds. Two hundred local housing authorities have been formed in less than two years. The high courts of sixteen states have already upheld the purposes of housing authorities and the legality of tax exemption on their projects. They have condemned slum conditions in opinions which, as human documents on the background and aims of public housing, can hardly be excelled. But it is not only emotional drive that is required.
Housing is no longer an emotional issue alone.
It has gone past that initial stage. Now, for its fullest measure of success, it requires public familiarity with techniques, procedures, alternatives, methods, norms and concepts. It requires a public able to distinguish substance from oratory, a public that must know not only why we need housing but what kind of housing, where, at what cost, for whom. It must learn to recognize what are details, and what are fundamentals. When, in 1938, a leading gubernatorial candidate in the East expressed great sympathy for the slum tenant but blasted the New Deal housing policy for invasion of states' rights, we must recognize that he meant an end to federal aid for housing, and that that in turn means the end of the whole housing program for the present.