This editorial is a glimpse at the views of the 1950’s. You can see where some conservative values have not changed a bit in 65+ years. In 2015/16 many counties in Northern California are desperate for “affordable housing.” The free market system does not provide for affordable housing and we are back to discussing rent control and other “bureaucratic” methods to fix this big problem in Sonoma County, the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Madera Tribune, 2 December 1950
NEWS-TRIBUNE EDITORIALS
Strikes Home Nationwide
It isn’t often that the notion of a single State on a ballot issue strikes home nationwide.
Usually, a local issue, say in Iowa, may create a storm of feeling there — but be wholly uninteresting, if not wholly unknown, to the people of California, or vice versa. Absolutely unique in this light, is Proposition 10, enacted into law by California at the recent election.
Proposition 10 represents a major counterattack on the part of free enterprise against the smothering encroachment of bureaucracy. As such, it cannot help but point the way to other areas of the country long weary of bureaucratic and political excesses—but always on the defensive. By giving the people the right to decide whether or not they need or can afford socialized housing. Proposition 10 in effect is a rooting out of bureaucracy already established in California. For the housing bureaucracy was and is established and firmly entrenched. Its burning desire was and is to extend its power and influence by building more and more public, or socialized housing.
Under Proposition 10, the bureaucrats’ power in California properly has been curbed . . they have been made subservient to the electorate.
Already the importance that can be attached to passage of Proposition 10 has been felt and commented on outside California’s borders. Editorializing, the Chicago Tribune makes the point: “When Californians got around to counting votes on the numerous Propositions which their initiative and referendum system produces at every election, it was discovered that the Golden State, too. is against Public Housing. Initiative number 10,” the Tribune explained to Chicagoans, “required that before publicly financed low-rent housing can be constructed in any community, it must be approved by a referendum.”
The Tribune continued: “Both Governor Warren and Jimmy Roosevelt, rivals for Governor, opposed the proposal, but the voters were for it. They evidently realize that the ‘free federal money offered for public housing is a fraud. Not only does it come from their income taxes, but its expenditure puts further local tax burdens on them to support the public housing tenants.”
Concluding its observations, the Tribune stated: “Chicago voters should be given a chance to express themselves on the racket. Voters should sign the petitions for the referendum on the subject at the spring Municipal Elections.”. California, a notably liberal State, obviously has demonstrated that its liberalism is not pie-in-the-sky. The State’s voters have indicated to the Nation that an ambitious bureaucracy can be stopped and made accountable to the people. In so doing, observers conclude, California has shown the Nation also that free enterprise can take the initiative against bureaucracy and its sympathizers and win.
Sausalito News, 31 August 1950
League Of Women Voters To Support Proposition 10
Board members of the League of Women Voters of Sausalito will meet at the home of Mrs. Carl Spring, of Prospect avenue, tomorrow (Friday). Twelve members of the league met last Wednesday to discuss the ballot issue proposition 10, the measure which will, if passed, require an election on public housling projects. The discussion resuited in an affirmative stand on this measure.
Madera Tribune, 5 September 1950
Warren is Capable Strategist
…
Last week, in a move obviously calculated to curry left wing support, Governor Warren condemned Proposition 10, the Housing Initiative, on the November ballot. Proposition 10, the Governor saidwould he a “roadblock” to civilian defense . .it would prohibit the construction of “emergency housing.” Actually Proposition 10, attorneys point out, has nothing tft do with ‘‘emergency housing.” Proposition 10 simply requires that before the State or any State body constructs “low rent” public housing a vote of the people in the area involved be taken to approve or disapprove. The measure has to do with permanent public housing . . . not emergency housing. It has to do with “low rent” housing . . . not with emergency housing that is open to all income groups. Proposition 10 gives the people the right to vote on permanent public housing which they must pay for just as they have the right to vote on school bonds, subway bonds, sewage bonds, and all other municipal improvement measures. Quite possibly Governor Warren was sold a bill of goods before he condemned Proposition 10. (.Maybe it ‘s only coincidence one of his staff is a former attorney for the Los Angeles Housing Authority and that Housing Authorities depend for their existence on public housing. Perhaps the Governor never read the bill. Politically, however, the Governor blundered in a manner that surprised observers accustomed to his usual political sagacity.
Coronado Eagle and Journal, 19 October 1950
Letters to the Editor
Editor, Journal-Compass; , Proposition No. 10 on the November 7 ballot is to give local voters an opportunity to vote on community public housing projects. It is intended to prevent public housing bureaucrats from contracting local debts for public housing projects without the approval of a majority of the votes at a regular election. Thus the American democratic process is served and the taxpayers protected from the bureaucrats.
It is surprising that anyone who believes in democracy would object to such a procedure. But the socializers, commies and public housing bureaucrats are against the people deciding whether or not they want public housing in their city.
These sinister elements are out to defeat Proposition 10 and the democratic process. At the same time the socialist schemers are plugging for unreasonable credit controls that will stop the building of low-cost private housing.
Their objective is to make the controls so severe that the veteran, and non-veteran, cannot undertake to build or buy a home. Now the president has clearly stated that the rearmament program is only to double our military strength. Certainly our economy can take this without undue strain, while leaving plenty of home building materials to construct new houses in defense areas having an expanding population.
Any other course will result in the unemployment of tens of thousands of building trades craftsmen and employees of firms that supply this trade and furnish these homes.
The socialist schemers hope by placing on these drastic controls to socialize all housing and because of the shortage created to have unrestricted mass public housing projects dotting every community. They are using the Korean war and the rearmament program to complete the destruction of the American democratic process that we all hold so dear to our hearts.
In this election we are given the choice as never before to save ourselves from the socialist schemers. We have out and out slate of candidates that stand for the socialization of our economy on the one hand, and on the other hand we have a complete slate of candidates opposing them that stand for the free enterprise system and that progress that Americans for many generations have hailed and glorified as the American way of life. The socializers ridicule that system which experience has proved to be well adapted to our people. LLOYD M. HARMON.
Madera Tribune, Number 180, 30 October 1950
NEWS TRIBUNE EDITORIALS Soaking the Little Man
The Fair Deal’s specious contention that it exists to champion and protect the “little man’’ has been blasted for all time, it would seem, by the Administration’s crushing crackdown on small-home credit. Millions of “little men” and their families, struggling to meet their tax bills and rising living costs and save—a few dollars at a time—enough to make a down payment on a home, have had the dream of home ownership shattered. The rich and well-to-do aren’t hampered by the new credit restrictions. They can make the larger down payments on a home readily enough. This thing just hits the little man—whose mass votes have kept the Fair Deal in office. What is the objective of all this? The Fair Deal says the credit crackdown on small homes is to conserve materials and curb inflation. However, as the Los Angeles Times shrewdly observes: “It is impossible to escape the suspicion that this move is somehow linked with the Administration’s passion for public housing . . . No restriction on building materials for this program (public housing) has been hinted in Washington.” Little wonder it is, in this overall picture, that public housing authorities in California are fighting tooth and nail to defeat Proposition 10, which will give the people the protective, democratic right to vote on proposed housing projects. It isn’t inflation, which it has lived on for 18 years, that the Fair Deal basically fears. Basically it fears curtailment of its self-seized bureaucratic powers to tax and squander and regulate—in public housing, in public anything. And the little man—the 62,000,000 of him on payrolls who pay withholding taxes, excise taxes and a myriad hidden taxes on everything earned, eaten, worn or used has been the real fall guy for Fair Deal exploitation throughout its history. Perhaps now, as he fingers his newly tax-thinned paycheck and sees the home of his dreams fade away, that bitter fact will become even more apparent to him.
San Bernardino Sun, Number 65, 15 November 1950
Delay Is Sought in Housing Construction OAKLAND, Nov. 14 (AP) Oakland councilmen were asked today to delay construction of 2,000 public housing units until after a municipal election next May.
The request came from Adrinn Thiel, chairman of Oakland’s Committee for Home Protection, who said that the passage of proposition 10 last Tuesday, calling for local elections on public housing developments, was a “mandate to the elected representatives of the people” to enforce elections, even after contracts had been signed