A camera pans between aerial shots of New York City, the suburbs of Northern New Jersey, and Westchester County as a narrator says: “In housing, this is one region, and our region faces a severe housing shortage… But we also know there is resistance… Many who now live in spaciously zoned towns do not want to see large numbers of people move in, especially people whose income and background may be different from their own.”
This scene could come from last night’s news programming, but it’s actually from a documentary that’s nearly 50 years old: “Housing: A Place to Live,” one of the films from CHOICES for ’76, an Emmy award-winning series of televised town hall meetings produced by Regional Plan Association (RPA) in 1973. These one-hour documentaries asked viewers to weigh in on planning decisions about housing, transportation, the environment, poverty, and cities and suburbs.
In preparation for our Centennial celebration in 2022, our team digitized “Housing: A Place to Live.” This is likely the first time a mass audience has seen the film in many years.
CHOICES for ’76 - Housing: A Place to Live
A televised town hall produced by Regional Plan Association and originally aired in 1973
“Housing: A Place to Live” features interviews with advocates, landlords, and residents from across the region, as well as government officials such as New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Chair Simeon Golar, the first leader of NYCHA to have actually lived in public housing. The film addresses several housing issues that are just as pervasive today as they were 50 years ago. Topics include:
the region-wide housing shortage
exclusionary zoning and racial discrimination
home rule/local control
inequities in tax payments and disparities between school districts
lack of investment by absentee landlords in older cities
public housing and “the building of two separate societies”
The documentary also highlights the work of tenant advocates, cooperatives, and community groups to create healthier, safer, and more affordable housing. This film was one of two CHOICES for ‘76 films particularly supported by COMA, the Committee on Minority Affairs, a committee created for the CHOICES project to better engage with Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities in the region. COMA was chaired by H. Carl McCall, President, Inner City Broadcasting Corp and chairman of the editorial board of the Amsterdam News. Junius Williams, a Newark attorney who served as COMA Executive Director, is interviewed in the film.
The film focuses on the relationship between housing, zoning, and economic development in New York City, Westchester County, and Northern New Jersey towns and cities like Mahwah, Newark, and Waldwick. For example, the film highlights the Ford Motor Company plant in Mahwah, a major employer of many BIPOC individuals at the time. But during the film, an attorney for the Suburban Action Institute as well as an employee of the plant point out that the 40% of the 5,000 employees at the plant who are Black or Hispanic cannot live in Mahwah because of its exclusionary zoning.
The discussions around zoning and housing captured in CHOICES in the 1970s echo debates taking place today and underscore how difficult it has been to achieve equity in housing. As many have argued, the region and the country must “move beyond symbolic displays of solidarity” and actually take material steps to desegregate housing, as New Jersey started to do with the Mt. Laurel decision and as Connecticut has begun to do with the passing of legislation HB 6107. Nationally, several cities are striving to become more inclusive by repealing single-family zoning.
While we have made progress on several fronts, it is important to note that most of the large metropolitan areas across the United States are more segregated now than they were 30 years ago. Much work remains to be done to address the issues highlighted by the CHOICES documentary.
Every major news network in the region featured the CHOICES for ‘76 televised town halls, and each program averaged 600,000 viewers. In advance of the documentaries, RPA distributed paper questionnaires to more than 700 banks, public libraries, and newspapers, and within our book, How to Save Urban America. The CHOICES town halls listed questions on planning decisions on television screens and prompted viewers to fill their ballots. Each film averaged 25,000 questionnaire responses. CHOICES inspired televised town halls in other U.S. metropolitan areas.
As we prepare for our Centennial in 2022, RPA will continue to digitize archival material that tells the history of our organization and the region. More archival material can be found on our Timeline and within our Report Library. Those who would like to support this effort can do so by donating to RPA, and those who would like to receive updates and get involved should contact us at [email protected].
We hope you enjoy watching the documentary. Please note that this film reel is incomplete and was significantly damaged in storage. The reel did not have the original leader so the film starts abruptly after a few seconds. Some audio is not perfectly synced to video. The film reel was also heavily tinted towards a red hue because of chemical discoloration. RPA would like to thank Archival NYC for doing its best to color correct during the digitization process.
