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Ladies and gentlemen. Harlem USA. Welcome everybody to Harlem USA a program with a name brought to you every Monday night at nine thirty by the community of Harlem Civic Association the organization that's dedicated to improving the plight of the residents of Harlem the largest community of negroes in the world job in a top anytime you have a problem you'll find his office is located at sixty one West one hundred twenty fifth Street in Harlem telephone Riverside two zero. Now from the community of Harlem Civic Association here's your host for tonight Fred we thank you John as well and tonight we have with us in the studio three people who will discuss the housing situation in Harlem what the problems are what is being done about them and what should be done we'll present them to you in a few minutes for the musical portion of the program you will hear recorded music by more than one hundred pieces going off with them so how about opening with Martin goes off the playing of hooligan number called Body and Soul. Or or who. Or what the of. The or are. More or. Less who are the war or. The OR or what you're. More lose. Our way. You. You. Or the you in the the. The. Poor. Poor. Poor. The or or. The poor. Or are. You one of the songs but what's the talent that is known is a composition of a tune called God It's who we hear a recording of it played now by Martin and it's being awkward. Or one. Or or. Pour or or or. You. Know the OR or. The OR or the poor. Poor the OR or poor. Or lose. What. What forward. And now is there as well that what they worried about the community of Harlem Civic Association folks the discussion you're about to hear that I have is brought to you by the community of Harlem Civic Association it's in line with the policy of the Civic Association to give their airing to the problems which these at Harlem the Civic Association organized in one hundred forty eight has been very active in bringing favorable results to the Uptown community of Harlem. More and brighter lights have been added to the community new schools have been opened and others have been planted the health facilities of improvement all in all conditions generally are better today than they were in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight but there is still great room for improvement and they said because I was Asian is working day and night to bring about greater improvement that's why it needs your support and your help it needs more members it's driving one hundred forty nine was for two hundred thousand members and the Dr fell very short of its goal and it's expecting by the end of one nine hundred fifty that its goal will have been reached and its hand will thereby have been strengthened so all join the Civic Association tomorrow won't do its offices are located at two sixty one West one hundred twenty fifth straight Room three o three or you may telephone Riverside nine two zero two four you'll find someone there ready and willing to take your application and membership fees are only one dollar I know you'll join me now back again to Fred Weaver and Harlem USA Thank you Joe It's one of the chief topics of current concern to the residents of Harlem and indeed of the entire city is that of housing we all know that housing shortage is not limited to any one community but I think we can agree that the record will support the statement that the Red problem is one which is particularly a hollow problem it seems that every time the city announces a campaign against rats the number of complaints a rant by increases rather than decreases. For example in one thousand nine hundred seven there were four hundred twenty three reported ratbite in one thousand and forty eight when the city launched a campaign against threat the number of complaints increased to more than five hundred in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine when one hundred thousand dollars was appropriated to initiate a road control campaign the number of reported ratbite cases had increased to six hundred and twenty so naturally Harlem is alarmed last year we brought five victims are read by to our Harlem USA program to describe to our radio audience in Perth them how it felt to be bitten by a rat that night theirs was a pathetic story and today it could be told by more than one thousand people who have felt an already upon their bodies to the road of control campaign has been initiated tonight we have invited three people who have shown a tremendous interest in this problem and the problem of housing generally to discuss it for us and we are glad to have them here first we have Charles Abrams a lawyer and housing expert who has just reported in the post the results of its survey he completed on a city wide places I'm sure we will have some interesting information for and then we have James Lee follow up chairman of the sixteenth A.D. Liberal Party and the Record newspaper man who has conducted for many months a campaign to be for the stir the city into doing something about rodent control and the housing problem generally in Harlem joining with them will be reveling Donald Benedict passthrough of the East Harlem product of parish Reverend Benedict coming from the side as long been active in seeking to improve housing standards for the people of his community here count that Mr Abrams on his recent tour of Harlem for the Post series and I'm certainly qualified to much to the discussion for this evening Mr Abrams How about starting off by telling us some of the things you saw on your tour and give us a general picture of housing conditions in Harlem as you saw them. Well I've seen many slums not only in the United States but abroad and I will say that the conditions in Harlem since the shortage are the worst I've ever seen and it's affecting the whole city I mean it's not merely indigenous only to Harlem the statistics show just what effect it's having not only on the Holland residents but on the whole city for instance the wreck by two talked about the Mr We've reported ratbite that means that the way you have five hundred reported rats bites there are about two thousand rats bites altogether because there are only about one in four that are actually reported those are the more serious ratbite in other ways we have somewhere between two thousand and twenty five hundred rat bites in this city every year and you know what that means when I. Just comes in at night gets into the crypt and reaches for the baby's mouth where the milk is left and that's where the rat starts at the mouth or at the thing where ever there was food left that is in all the art to break the loss' rate of children between five and nine years old in East Harlem is four times as high there as it is in the rest of the city now that's an incredible rate considering the fact that it's very close race has been going down throughout the city we found that despite all of the optimistic talk of the Health Department that the rates have now increased by twenty percent they had been going down now they've increased by twenty percent there are so many other things for example half the cases of hookworm which is a disease largely due to bad plumbing originated in Harlem in the month of February. And that's the same situation with disease after disease but it isn't only that it's the it's the mental haven't because particularly because of overcrowding you know I was going to say that I think that that's one of the worst problems for instance well for council months long ago reported that if all of the people in the United States lived as closely together as we do in East Harlem that the entire population of the United States could be placed in one half of the area of New York City you know on one block there or one of the blocks you reported the other day in the Post articles there were four thousand people that we know are living on one block that means two sides of one street between two avenues a reverend Benedict what does that mean in terms of. Of a particular family while it one can never overestimate the damage it's done in terms of lack of privacy I know there are there are a good many of our families I believe that children all the way through adolescence are sleeping three in a bed. It's hard to estimate the psychological scars that are incurred in this kind of overcrowding I know our health officer up there not long ago found seventeen people living in three rooms Dr Benedict when I wrote that story I had calls from some of my friends who said that it was just impossible that seventeen children were living in this vault and in the coal bins that we mentioned and were paying fifty dollars a month he went with me on that tour was I exaggerating that story not a bit you know I read all of those articles and when I got through I told a number of my friends that actually I had never seen a reporter be quite so specific about what he said because you really didn't exaggerate one bit in fact I was afraid you didn't exaggerate enough because what we saw was every bit that you that you portrayed as same as the way that Lenin had done Benedict and I were on this we're on this trip we came across this situation on a hundred. Wait where twenty five people were living in this COLA cellar two families living in each of two cold in these under the city sidewalk and they were paying fifty dollars a month for rent for this and there were seventeen children in this cold cell at seventeen children one of them born eight days before all of them had colds one of them a just been taken to the hospital and they were paying fifty dollars a month for that and I'm not surprised at that misstatement because the Civic Association has similar cases the deal with almost daily. Full of what has been your experience you've been interested in this problem though you have been at it particularly in the go to control program what would you have to say about that or I've lived in Harlem for eleven years and as hard as I have become I'm even more appalled these days by what is happening I'm mainly interested in the rat control program I've tried repeatedly during the past few months to get some sort of a report from the Department of Housing a rodent control program was begun on March fifteenth one thousand nine hundred eighty nine and J. RAYMOND JONES The deputy commissioner of housing was made the head of it I can get no answer except evasion. And nothing seems to smoke any of the city officials on the road in control program I myself have watched the. Seemed a victim of the right by. Time for the young mother who was eight months old from almost had been severed by the sharp teeth of a huge threat a young college graduate told me that his fraternity the headquarters visited her economy by these rare display all the baldness the size of a cat what you think of a J. RAYMOND JONES As a dip in commission of housing I thought that the larger through his efforts he had been given a hundred thousand dollars on his the property has been given one hundred thousand dollars to. Do something about the extermination of rats and that is correct twenty two rat inspectors well pointed their salaries took up most of the money about seventy two thousand dollars clerical help and it's about all the rest I haven't met one right Inspector but F.J. Raymond Jones wants to know where the rats are I personally will take him on a tour to show him where these rats are let me let me give you an instance of this Mr Fuller about these rat bites and the right. Is this we didn't report in The New York Post we couldn't because the editor thought it was too horrible and that the people couldn't take it. Personally I disagree I think that people can take these things but I called up an exterminator and asked him what the situation was as far as rats were concerned and he said that well only the other day he had taken three barrels fall out of one building so I said well the next time you get a catch like that if you can get it in the next two or three days let me know and he called me up about two days later and he said he was terribly disappointed he only had one barrel full and so I sent up the photographer and the photographer took the pictures of the rats all dumped out of the barrel lying on the sidewalk and we got back this picture and we wouldn't print it because it was just too horrible but that is an instance of what happens every day when a rat bites a baby it's no longer news about one hundred twenty fifth straight into full life nor below one hundred twenty fifth Street I might add along with this line of rodent control thing we began a campaign and he's taught them bought a year ago under this rodent control program and we through the East Harlem district health council handed in twelve hundred violations on a little over ten blocks in an area of our section of the city now of those twelve hundred violations. We sent cards back later on asking the people if inspectors had come in less than thirty percent inspectors had been there and unless a nineteen percent and anything had been done about their apartment I think this indicates something about our Department of Housing and buildings whether it's to be laid to any fish and see whether it's to be laid to just lack of personnel I don't know but the simple fact is that unless we get some kind of adequate housing inspection in the stall I'm in in Harlem proper The the the hardship that we're working on our people is going to grow by leaps and bounds. Reverend Benedict you know you speak of you know does a call to and saying these inspect of I have found that finding an inspector is about as rare as finding a three dollar bill but these vacant lots interest me also but you see so many of them in Harlem there he tile of all sales and refuse and their ideal surroundings for the nesting and feeding of red. I don't understand why as much as they are a menace to the health of the tenants of the adjoining buildings that the proper city authority couldn't order the removal of this dirt and their very from Mr Fuller right there last year when we had five of the actual victims on our radio program and they told some hard tales of how I felt being bitten by rap that night three of the five who appeared on our program were running from the city they were running from the city housing I thought in paying their rent to the housing authority in instances like that don't you think that the the city it is their job to clean up their own property and rid of its garbage and what not settling of course I'd like to ask this question of. The I saw the Department of Housing and buildings and ask them why they couldn't solve this problem and their answer was that they didn't have enough inspectors and I felt that that was one of the places where we could make a correction and get an appropriation for more inspectors of course undoubtedly efficiency has to be improved as well but certainly to take care of a million three hundred thousand apartments when a department has only one hundred fifty or one hundred seventy five field inspectors it's certainly not enough at a time like this when they also have to take care of complaints Isn't that right Mr Weaver I'm undone Well of course the other the other side of that is that after you get an inspector out and he makes an inspection and reports of violations the next problem is to get the landlord into court and we find that well we get inspections many times we can't get the landlord in court or if we do get the landlord in car to use that may be fined fifty dollars in a way to go and his house remains the same as before now it's the legal side of this thing too that must be increased it seems to me in the department and isn't it also true Reverend. That in addition to that if you could possibly get the city some of these landlords haven't just haven't got the money to fix the apartments if you could get the state legislated legislature to pass a bill authorizing the city to make the improvements at least to close up the holes where these rats migrate which isn't an expensive job and file it as a first clean record recovery from the it would be helpful to the owner as well as helpful to the tenants and I think such a lot probably drawn would be constitutional how all of those things would help don't you think so much to follow. But get back to turn around. I want to do something shocking for. The young females breed when I was three or four among the young female rats about. A pair of rats breeding and interrupted very and without. What at the end of three years be increased to three hundred fifty nine million seven hundred nine thousand four hundred eighty two Well I there have been various estimates made acting mayor in Pella Terry once made an estimate that there were eight million rats in New York City I think that's been exaggerated. I think actually I saw another estimate which ranges a little as two hundred fifty thousand but two hundred fifty thousand biting rats are a great number of rats considering that a rat takes more than one bite. But. There are other things done our bit about this overcrowding Have you seen any real experience that such as those we saw where there were twenty five human beings living in coal bins Well I don't think I was doing quite that bad we had no one we visited that same day you remember were something like thirty people were sharing one Tarlac together and one was ball and some of them were paying up to fifty two dollars a month for two rooms which were about. Ten and the two rooms were separate and that was a government employee who was working for the city but couldn't get an apartment and I remember as far as the stores in Harlem were concerned all of them have been opened up in as many as twenty families living in a store. That they put up these curtains without ventilation of any sort and. In there you have the children living in these windowless stores that are boarded up with all the political posters well they serve a purpose anyway in that they are political posters and they don't supply D.C. housing Well our people have to live somewhere I guess. They are well the other thing that I am seeing also at the statistics tuberculosis there are two thousand cases of tuberculosis today a lot of in originating there which indicate two thousand cases of open lesions that is causing actual infection to people throughout the city. Thank you very much Mr Abrams Robin Benedict I missed a follow for this in lightning discussion and I'm sure we will all benefit from what we have heard here tonight I wish we could hear some more of it but the time is running out so we return once again to the recorded music of one hundred C. string orchestra as they conclude our program with a song from the Cotton Club parade of one nine hundred thirty three and it's called Stormy weather. On. The the. Poor. Or are more or. Less. Or are the or are. The lower the the. The or are. The the. The the. Thank you. Yes we have. A program tonight. For leaving you with this thought tunnel vigilance is the price of liberty Good night. Listening to Harlem USA the program with. The community of Harlem Civic Association. Or to stop any day. We invite you to be with us next Monday at the same time. Programs record. Good night everybody the W.M.C. I. Showed you the New York state income tax report the answer is yes if you are single and had net income of one thousand dollars or more last year or if you are married together with your husband or wife net income of twenty five hundred dollars or more your taxes payable at ninety percent of the normal rates deadline for filing your nine hundred forty nine income tax report is Saturday April fifteenth.