Feb. 2, 1965 - A massive project to rehabilitate people and property on both side of Harlem’s W. 114th St., between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, as a showcase of the Johnson Administration’s anti-poverty drive, was approved in Washington today.
Sargent Shriver (right), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), announced that the block, containing 1,600 persons, including 557 children, will become the first major target of the drive for human and physical renewal.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) and New York City Council President Paul Screvane were on hand for the formal launching of the program.
The initial project will cost $5 million.
The major financial support for the project will come from a grant by the OEO with mortgage backing from the Housing and Home Finance Agency. The OEO grant is $390,000. The housing agency will insure a $4.5 million mortgage for the physical rehabilitation, the largest single mortgage the agency has underwritten for a rehabilitation project.
The 37 houses earmarked for renovation on W. 114th St. are among the 43,000 old law tenements built in the city before the turn of the century and which now provide housing for 1 million low-income New Yorkers.
Located in the center of Harlem, W. 114th St. is considered a typical deprived urban area.
Educational standards are poor, the housing is dilapidated, and toilet facilities are below the minimum considered necessary for normal hygiene.
The five-story walkup buildings are badly designed in terms of current standards but are fundamentally sound. While many experts would like to see them razed, the wholesale elimination of the structures would create impossible relocation problems.

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