This slim study, which might appropriately have been condensed into article or monograph form, deals with the relocation of tenants from slums to housing projects in Puerto Rico. Its central concern is with attitudes and decisions of the tenants themselves rather than, as is customary, with decisions and actions of the administrators.
The Introduction raises intellectual hopes by promising that the five dramatic categories from Kenneth Burke’s A Grammar of Motives will be utilized. Our expectations dwindle, however, as we plunge into tabulated responses elicited from 405 persons in 242 slum and project households. The study suffers the usual inadequacies of the sociological survey that relies upon interview schedules to the virtual exclusion of direct reporting by the researcher. Fatally, the data yield such mealy generalizations as: “In slum households as well as in projects, crowding relates to an increased number of bedrooms wanted, if the people are asked about their ideal number.” Or: “People in households with poor physical or financial conditions are primarily interested in definite physical improvements, such as fixing walls and providing more space.” Or: “It can be seen that while there is a definite trend connecting changeability in general with housing experiences, this trend is complicated by the fact that the conditions of the households may interact with these personality traits.”
The main purpose of the study is the admirable one of identifying factors which work toward and against the slum dweller’s acceptance of relocation in a project. Implied, of course, are lessons for designers and administrators of projects. It is by now a commonplace that Latin American slum dwellers often prefer their shanty-towns to new housing developments, even when they possess adequate information regarding the latter. Preference for the single-family dwelling, community ties, freedom from bureaucratic molestation, and rent-free use of squatter’s land are some of the considerations. One suspects that resistances to and disappointments with relocation in Puerto Rico have been much more sharply experienced than even this study suggests. Its interpretations of the data are deficient in significant fresh insights, whether for the practical planner or for the theoretician of social change.
Here is the parting salvo on the two social functions of housing projects: “Depressed sections of the population can be protected, and some people can be provided with a base from which they can seek a better life for themselves.” One wishes that, instead of firing off this cap pistol, the author might have seriously explored his hunch that there may be “too much change at once in the system of building housing projects. Other systems for improvement of living conditions may fit better for many people.”
