Recent reports indicate that St. Louis will be obtaining special federal funds because it is a city whose residents have fled the central city with unusual speed.
To harp and harp again on the same subject, when will officialdom acknowledge the fact that citizens did not flee the central city: they were steered out by real estate agents and lending institutions, forced out by city zoning and service agencies, discouraged by everlasting stalling of the Board of Education, and irritated into moving by the FHA and its policies,
The savings and loan companies have been running large advertisements patting themselves on the back for helping more than 400,000 people buy homes. What they don’t itemize is how many of their clients tried to buy a house within the city limits and were refused financing. Unquestionably many homebuyers looked first in the county, as is their privilege, but we’ll never know how many buyers wanted to settle in the city and were politely, and sometimes not politely, steered across the county line.
It is time officialdom stopped blaming citizens for its mistakes.
Originally published in The Paper, February 1972.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1972_02.pdf, printed page 2.
