Ghetto Homesteaders

The original Homestead Act, passed in 1862, offered free Western land to tens of thousands of people bottled up in the East and helped to change the face of America. Last month another Homestead Act was passed in Philadelphia--not so far-reaching as the first, perhaps, but dramatic in its implications. It urges people not to go West to open land but to stay East, as it were, in the troubled heart of the ghetto. The city is selling abandoned houses for $1 apiece to anybody of limited income who is willing to fix up one of them and live in it for five years.

The city has been deluged with more than 2,000 applications from hearty homesteaders who are anxious to make a new start in the least likely of places. There are far from enough houses to meet the demand. So far, the city has acquired only 1,031 lots with 562 available houses, but there are 36,000 abandoned homes in Philadelphia, at least half of which are in good enough condition to be rehabilitated. Given the hazards of slum life, loans to refurbish the houses will have to be made by public-spirited corporations. But then, the first homesteaders were never promised a rose garden. The new law is a bold response to the grim urban paradox of a shortage of adequate housing accompanied by the abandonment of structurally sound homes.

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