national civic, religious, labor, and minority-group
organizations, received $243,000 to expand its information and
consultation services.
To continue a
technical advisory service for groups sponsoring nonprofit housing
for the poor, moderate-income families, and the elderly, Urban
America, Inc. received $600,000. The organization merged this year
with Action, Inc., to which the Foundation made a grant in 1964 to
establish the service. Several local non-profit housing
corporations and at least 2,000 dwelling units are reported to have
emanated from its advisory activities to date.
The
University of Michigan received a grant to survey the indirect
effects of private construction in satisfying housing needs of the
poor. Little is known about the chain of moves set in motion as new
housing is built and older units are vacated by owners or tenants
of new homes and reoccupied by lower-income families.
Effectiveness of Government
Pressure is
growing on government at all levels to modernize its machinery and
attract more talented men and women, and the Foundation gave
further support to private and public efforts to meet these
demands.
The Citizens'
Conference on State Legislatures, which was formed in 1964 by
leaders in business, labor, education, and other fields, received
$750,000. It will publish major research reports and otherwise
stimulate such reforms as better staff assistance, salaries, and
facilities for state lawmakers. Further aid to legislators was
provided through a grant to the American Political Science
Association (A.P.S.A.); specialists will conduct seminars for
freshman legislators in from twenty to thirty states and prepare
handbooks on legislative practices and traditions.
Since 1957
the Foundation has funded A.P.S.A. internships that afford
political scientists and journalists firsthand exposure to the
workings of Congress; a grant was made this year to continue the
program through 1971. The interns work on the staffs of Senators,
Representatives, and Congressional committees. (Other grants to
advance journalists' competence in public affairs are described on
pages 2 and 3.)
To encourage
universities to make governmental internships a permanent feature
of their graduate teaching of political science, the Foundation
made another grant to A.P.S.A., permitting young scholars to spend
up to a year working in state legislatures or with mayors,
governors, and other state and local officials.
The National
Institute of Public Affairs, which began a graduate-level education
program for mid-career government officials with a Foundation grant
in 1962, this year obtained approval and support to shift its
emphasis. The program has enabled some 200 rising young
administrators—mainly Federal—to take a year of
graduate work in universities. Increasingly, government itself has
assumed most of the costs. Since N.I.P.A. found that state and
local officials can seldom get long leaves, it is establishing an
Urban Study Center in Washington, at which local and state
officials will confer on critical urban problems for varying
periods with private and government experts.
A leading
center of research and advanced training in politics—the
Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University—received a $350,000
grant to expand fellowships and case studies of political affairs
and the electoral process.
Corrections and Police
Administration
Two grants
were made to help make prisons instruments for salvaging, instead
of merely housing, offenders. To design a model prison, the
Institute for the Study of Crime and Delinquency received $263,000.
The United States will spend an estimated $3 billion in the next
twenty-five years on new or reconditioned prisons for the growing
number of criminal offenders, and the institute, cooperating with
California correctional officials, will attempt to design a
physical plant with features best calculated to return prisoners to
useful lives. The University