More than a roof.

Not long ago, I attended a national housing conference where a featured panelist was a woman introduced as a longtime resident of public housing. She herself then noted, matter-of-factly, that she had lived in public housing for forty-five years. For me, that admission was mind-blowing. Even more startling, however, was the realization that her remark had not caused even a ripple of surprise among the subsidized-housing professionals in the audience. Nonchalantly, they had come to accept public housing's way of life as a given, for which they felt no personal responsibility.

It's unlikely that informed members of the general public are so complacent, whether as taxpayers concerned with the costs or as citizens aware of the pathologies associated with much public housing. People in the know are beginning to insist that government subsidies must not only meet their recipients' immediate needs but must be oriented toward helping them become self-supporting. Recent developments in and around Chicago, the area I know best, confirm that most public housing clients, the poorest of the urban poor, have not given up. Many have already helped themselves escape the trap that public housing has become. We now know that there are ways of giving them a chance to do so that have been tested, at least on a small scale, and found workable. These approaches deserve to be better known and more broadly applied. But, as will be seen, many questions need to be asked and answered.

In a bipartisan effort, Congress is currently overhauling the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. Despite its noble purpose and promising beginnings with scattered, low-rise public housing, that legislation has produced something of a monster. Today the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] finances some 1.4 million apartments owned and managed by local housing authorities. Another 1.5 million privately owned units are federally subsidized through rent vouchers of one kind or another. Taking into account these programs and a host of others sponsored by HUD, the department has become the nation's largest slumlord.

But the problem is not primarily the numbers or costs. Our giant high-rise public housing projects have become ghettos for the urban poor: debasing conglomerations riddled with drugs, gangs, crime, and poverty, peopled by far too high a proportion of single-family households, some now in their third and fourth generation. The average income of families living in Chicago's public housing is $2,500. Broadly speaking, a fatal flaw of these projects is that they provide tenant families with little else than space: little in the way of opportunity or incentive to better themselves and their children. In most cities the high-rise projects, often with as many inhabitants as a small town, house not a single teacher, nurse, firefighter, manager, technician, or civil servant and offer few role models for the children, few standard-setters for the adults, and scant motivation to become self-sufficient.

In recognition of these realities, Congress has persuaded HUD to begin dismantling these housing projects by giving residents, through rent vouchers, the option of living in privately owned housing in mixed-income neighborhoods; by scattering low-rise public housing throughout the city and its suburbs; by tearing down vacant high rises instead of rebuilding them; by using HUD dollars to attract other investment in additional housing for families of low and moderate income; and by stricter screening of applicants and the prompt eviction of lawbreakers who are drug dealers or gang leaders. In April, HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros released a report on "The Transformation of America's Public Housing," reporting these and other steps HUD is taking to ensure "long-term recovery."

Congress has approved, though as a pilot project, a "Moving to Opportunity" initiative, which offers public housing families a chance to move to scattered-site public housing in the city or the suburbs. This modestly funded program, already in operation in Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere, is being evaluated by its success or failure in escorting families into the urban mainstream.

Important data will be collected about families who become home owners or leaseholders paying conventional rents. What were the bridges or escalators they used to leave public housing? Who provided the ladders of opportunity? Are the relocated families now in better housing? How many stayed in the suburbs, how many moved back to the city?

"Moving to Opportunity" was modeled on a successful program sponsored by Chicago's Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. Since 1976, the Council has used federal funds to screen and then relocate more than 6,000 public housing families, most of them female-headed, into privately owned apartments, half of them in suburbs. By bidding good-by to public housing, most of the families not only bettered their living conditions but also greatly improved their children's opportunities. Among the suburban children, only 5 percent dropped out of school, 54 percent attended college, and 27 percent were enrolled in a four-year college. As for the parents, 75 percent found jobs. When people's expectations were raised and standards established, many started living up to them. Residential mobility made a difference.

This good news is part of a larger movement toward depopulation of Chicago's family projects; occupancy has decreased from 137,000 in 1980 to 80,000 in 1995. More importantly, the council's work reflects a growing awareness among government and private funders of antipoverty programs of the need to find answers for certain key, long-neglected questions. How do people shed chronic dependency to achieve self-sufficiency? How do we reverse the nation's poverty rate, which declined in the 1970s and early 1980s but has been inching up ever since? How is the underclass turned into a working class?

Accordingly, the role of the private sector serving poverty-engulfed neighborhoods is also under scrutiny. Churches, social service agencies, youth clubs, and counseling centers are being asked to link short-term aid to more lasting improvement, to do more than collect the statistics on Sunday attendance, on youngsters who use the gym, on Christmas baskets, on kids in day care, on midnight basketball, or on mothers in self-improvement classes. Funders want to know whether and how their dollars made a difference: How many of the families were no longer on public aid? What percentage of the teen-agers finished high school? How many adults found jobs?

Similar questions can be and are now being asked about the persistence of homelessness. How did it happen that the homeless were made the immediate responsibility of local housing officials? Many of the homeless are jobless or the victims of a family break-up. Many were evicted from mental health institutions and dumped mercilessly on city streets. Some are vagabonds, down-and-outers addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. All may qualify as homeless, but what they desperately need encompasses a lot more than a space to live in.

Too often, of course, discussion of such problems devolves into ideological debates, focused on "Who is to blame?" rather than on "What is to be done?" On homelessness, however, as with public housing, there are pragmatic initiatives in play. An example is Deborah's Place in Chicago, a shelter for homeless women but with a difference. From day one, the purpose of Deborah's Place has been to help the women return to a more normal lifestyle--a job, a family, or, in case of need, to a caring institution that matches the woman's special problem. At three different locations, each with a staged program, Deborah's Place works to "help women leave the streets and shelters behind for new lives of independence, productivity, and well-being." As clients move up and out, they leave room and time for other women to be assisted.

On ending joblessness, strategy can also make a difference. Suburban Job Link, with offices in Chicago's South Lawndale community and suburban Bensenville, uses a unique method for promoting upward mobility. On contract with relatively job-rich suburban employers, the organization buses workers to temporary jobs that often lead to "working interviews" for applicants who want to demonstrate their potential to fill entry-level positions. Factory owners and other employers are invited to hire any worker full-time without a fee, thus supplying the missing rung on a stepladder to year-round employment. Through its "no-charge" arrangement, Job Link will place 1,000 "temps" into regular jobs with benefits in the next twelve months. Finally, it continues to bus the newly hired until they arrange transportation on their own, through a car pool, for example. As a not-for-profit, Job Link is funded by government and foundation grants and by its own earned income.

Another strategic point of entry for encouraging upward mobility has to do with school choice. Over the past decade it has become evident that nonpublic schools, especially those under religious sponsorship, have been remarkably successful in easing not only children but also their low-income parents into the urban mainstream. Nearly one of every four youngsters enrolled in an elementary or secondary school in Chicago attends a nonpublic school. Now, hundreds of scholarships to attend Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal schools are given to youngsters who live in the Cabrini Green, Henry Homer, Rockwell Gardens, and other public housing projects. The aid covers only part of the tuition, requiring parents or guardians to pay the balance and fees.

Though statistics are not available, it is our experience that the decision by a public housing family to enroll children in a private school is often the first step that eventually leads to an apartment in the private housing market. The choice made by a deserted mother, taken at personal sacrifice, is rewarded and reinforced when she sees that her child is in fact making educational progress; she is likely to strive even harder to climb out of poverty in order to continue sending her child to the school of her choice.

A final example--useful even though at present it is a matter of aspiration rather than achievement--returns to a housing program. It will be operative in 1997 when Chicago's Lawson YMCA finishes rehabilitating its twenty-five-story building to provide 583 single-occupancy rooms. The difference here lies in the overall aim, which is not just to provide livable space for otherwise homeless persons but also to help people who are homeless, jobless, and difficult-toemploy get jobs, preferably within walking distance, and become self-sufficient. The YMCA staff will work, for example, with people who are recovering from substance abuse by concentrating aggressively on job training and job getting. Success will be measured not just by occupancy rates but, more importantly, by the number who have moved to independent living.

As with the other examples, the virtue of the YMCA initiative lies in its responding not just to today's need but also to tomorrow's challenge. To paraphrase columnist Robert J. Samuelson, the United States struggles through a soul-searching transition from an era of entitlement to an era of responsibility.

Ed Marciniak, president of the Institute of Urban Life at Loyola University Chicago, chairs the City Club of Chicago's committee on the future of public housing in Chicago.