Our de-mythologizing continues this week with a closer look at healthy, stabilized integrated communities.

In Shaker Heights, a real estate appraiser, Roger D. Rittley, discovered values gained an average of 8.8% in Lomond, which has a higher percentage of Blacks than Sussex. The average since in Sussex increased by 5.1%. In Rocky River, a closely comparable but all white community on Cleveland’s west side, values rose by 10.9% over the same period.

INTEGRATION FROM THE START

When residents of Columbia, Maryland, are asked about the effect of race on property values, they tend to shake their heads in puzzlement. Such is the nature of integration in this new town of 31,000 nestled about halfway between Baltimore and Washington. In July 1967 Columbia’s first resident braved mud and bulldozers to move in, and, as it happened, the town’s first baby, born two months later, was the child of a Black father and a white mother. The population is 16% Black, but who’s counting?

“Race isn’t a factor,” says John N. Bowers, a builder who has put up $4.5 million worth of houses in Columbia over the past four years and who is a resident himself. In Bowers’ opinion, few people move to Columbia in search of integrated living, but those who are uncomfortable about integration stay away. William Rose and his family did choose Columbia for its racial mix. Ross, a Black man who runs the Urban League’s low-income housing program in Washington, paid $36,000 for his house in 1967 and thinks he could get around $65,000 for it now. Carmen Colandrea, president of Cortland Realtors, calls Ross' estimate conservative. Her company handles better than half the used-house transactions in Columbia, and she puts the annual rise in housing values over the past three years at 20% to 22% a year. Values are not affected by the color of the buyer or seller, Mrs. Colandrea adds. In adjacent Montgomery County, where Blacks are few and the median family income is the highest in the U.S., house prices have been increasing less rapidly than in Columbia: 2.8% in 1970, 12% in 1971, 7.5% in 1972.

Living in Columbia is by no means cheap. The upward spiral in the housing market has begun to price middle-income families out of the town. The least expensive new detached house sells for $38,000, and most models are priced $10,00 to $20,000 higher. Most townhouses cost upwards of $35,000. Morton Hoppenfeld, a wiry, restless man who helped plan Columbia, is unhappy about the high prices. Creating a good mix of people from all income levels was a primary goal of the Rouse Co. in developing this new town. “Now, says Hoppenfeld, a Rouse Co. vice president, “I don’t see how it can be done, even though we’re working our tails off to find a way.”

Gertrude White, a Black real estate agent, says she moved to Columbia in August 1972 “to get out where it is freer, greener, safer – and where everything is within walking distance. In Washington I was afraid to let my daughter walk three blocks for fear she would be attacked.” The master plan for Columbia divides it into seven villages, the last one scheduled for completion by 1981. Each village is to have a population of 10,000 to 15,000 clustered within walking or biking distance of a village center consisting of a junior high school, a community building, several retail stores and a recreational facility with an indoor-outdoor swimming pool. Each village then is further divided into two to four neighborhoods with their own elementary schools, day-care programs and recreational facilities.

A few people grumble that Columbia is too rigid, too planned: hanging clothes outdoors isn’t allowed, outside TV antennas are forbidden (indoor antennas provide good reception, however), and many home improvements must first be approved by an architecture review committee. A small but noticeable number of Black residents deliberately reject contact with whites; a Black real estate agent calls them the “honky haters.”