Science attempts to
inform politics, with mixed results.
Public health expert
offers recommendations and is ridiculed by a racist public official.
Research identifying
inequities suffers backlash.
Do these sound like familiar recent events? They actually
occurred in Saint Paul a little more than 100 years ago. Carol Aronovici, who
served as the first director of Wilder Research, found himself immersed in controversies
that arose because he did good social scientific work that did not align with the thinking of some people in power at the time.
In 1917, the Wilder Foundation board of directors hired Carol Aronovici, Ph.D., as the first research leader of the organization. Romanian-born Dr. Aronovici had earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at Brown University, under the supervision of Professor Lester Frank Ward, the first president of the American Sociological Association. Professor Ward stressed that science should work for the benefit of humanity – an axiom continuously underlying the quest of Wilder Research to improve the lives of individuals, families, and communities.
Immediately upon taking his position, Aronovici initiated a survey of housing and health conditions, which Wilder Research considers its first study. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press reported that Aronovici told the funders of the study and other community leaders that he wanted their assurance that the findings of the research would lead to action. “It is my conviction that a housing survey which is merely intended to give the community a bad reputation and does not result in immediate, practical, and far-reaching action, is detrimental rather than beneficial to the community.”1
Based on Aronovici’s survey, which included visiting the homes of more than 22,000 people, Wilder Research issued its first research publication: “Housing Conditions in the City of Saint Paul”.2 With statistical tables, graphs, maps, and pictures, the report provided a framework for significant recommendations intended to improve the lives of Saint Paul’s residents, including: development of housing ordinances; formation of a Housing Bureau; and initiation of comprehensive inspections of hotels and lodging houses to ensure that the conditions in which people lived met basic standards of sanitation.
The report by Aronovici exhibited wisdom more characteristic of the twenty-first century than of the twentieth. He understood the importance of managing the social and physical environments of an urban area in order to create equitable, healthy living spaces for all people, especially people of low income. He had observed city life across the United States and in other countries and had witnessed how housing design could enhance human life.
Some of his observations seem very prescient, given what we now know about the importance of green space, the mixed impacts of the advent of automobile travel, and the advantages and disadvantages of urban growth. He urged, for example, “comprehensive community planning of constructive character” that would produce “the maximum amount of light and air” and “the economical use of land without hindrance to requirements of safety, sanitation, convenience, or permanency of investment”.
Observing inequities that produced challenges for poor people and immigrants, as well as power dynamics that favored unscrupulous landlords over tenants, Aronovici proposed bold conclusions and recommendations. He acknowledged the importance of promoting health for all of Saint Paul’s residents, but noted the special importance of attending to the needs of lower income people:
“The entire city needs a constructive plan, but the elimination of the slums and the redistricting of the city to meet the housing and industrial needs of the wage earners and poorer elements of the population, should take precedence over the construction of costly public buildings, the development of improving thoroughfares, the building of boulevards designed for the automobile tourist, the opening up of park areas in districts undeveloped and inaccessible sections of the City. These things, while desirable, should not take precedence over the immediate needs for the improvement of the living conditions of the people.”
Based on the study, Aronovici felt that the city had failed to do as much as it could and should have done for its residents. He specifically faulted Saint Paul’s public officials for failure to enforce existing building codes, enact new health and housing codes, provide adequate water and sewer lines, and maintain an effective system of garbage collection. He identified tropes which stigmatized poor people and immigrants, and which public officials referenced in order to justify inaction by government with respect to addressing public health issues.
For the legislative branch, the report suggested that stereotypes of the “foreigner” served as excuses which legislators used to delay passing laws that would protect the health of immigrant and poor populations. Regarding the executive branch, the report strongly criticized the Health Department for inadequate attention to public health issues, citing a lack of personnel and lack of efficiency, but also citing the unwillingness of the Health Department to bring issues forward for attention, due to dominant prejudices against the poor. The report advised that anyone in the Health Department or in any other department of the City government responsible for the neglect of public health should receive “public condemnation” and be removed from office.
The judicial branch received disapprobation through statements in the report that reflected Aronovici’s values of equity and fairness, such as: “…the courts are frequently unwilling or unable to realize the importance of using their judicial power in the protection of the health of the people with the same sense of justice that guides them in the protection of mere property…Property can be reproduced, health cannot…”
Many people praised the report, and it did lead to changes in health and housing policies. Within four months of the report’s publication, the Saint Paul City Council enacted a housing ordinance which Aronovici had authored.
Not surprisingly, however, the report received a negative reaction from Saint Paul’s health officer, Dr. B.F. Simon: “I wish to go on record from the first that I have not given a great deal of time or attention to said Dr. Aronovici since taking public office because I absolutely refuse to give much of the public’s time to recommendations made by any man who is not a full-fledged American citizen.”
Aronovici died in 1957. His obituary in The New York Times indicated that, at the University of Pennsylvania, he had taught “the first course in city planning offered in this country”. After leaving Saint Paul, he became the State Commissioner of Housing and Immigration for California. The obituary also noted: “At the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 he was one of a group of naturalized citizens honored for contributions to ‘the welfare and progress of the United States’.”3 A profile of Aronovici in the StarTribune in 2017 characterized him as “years ahead of his time”.4
[1] Saint Paul Pioneer Press, March 5, 1917.
[2] Aronovici, Carol, “Housing Conditions in the
City of Saint Paul,” Amherst H. Wilder Charity, 1917.
[3] The New York Times, August 1, 1957.
[4] Brown, Curt, “Lifting the Lid on St. Paul’s
Poverty,” StarTribune, November 19, 2017
