Where Will They Go? Wheeling’s 1958 Urban-Renewal Promise

Correcting the “Human Hell”: Wheeling’s Housing Plans, Part One

In June 1949, The Wheeling News-Register published a shocking front-page investigation of housing conditions in Wheeling’s Black neighborhoods.

Accompanied by prominent Black dentist and civic leader Dr. R. M. Hamlin, reporter Arthur Mills entered houses with collapsing walls, broken windows, dangerous stairways, inadequate plumbing, outside toilets, and families crowded into rooms never intended to serve as complete homes.

The newspaper called the conditions a “human hell.”

That investigation forced Wheeling to confront a painful question: How could such conditions exist in a city that denied having slums?

Nine years later, another newspaper article asked the equally important question that followed:

If Wheeling demolished its deteriorated housing, where would the people living there go?

On October 5, 1958, The Wheeling News-Register published an opinion column by Harry Hamm under the headline:

“Where Will Relocatees Find Homes?”

The column examined the proposed Center Wheeling redevelopment project and the hundreds of families who could be displaced by it.

The article is an important chapter in Wheeling’s housing history because it captures the moment when the city began moving from documenting poor living conditions to planning large-scale clearance.

It also reveals that some residents and journalists already understood a danger that would become unmistakable in later decades:

Demolishing an inadequate house did not automatically provide its occupants with a better one.

From Exposure to Clearance

By 1958, Wheeling’s housing problem was no longer hidden.

The city had received years of warnings about overcrowding, deteriorating buildings, unsafe rooms, inadequate plumbing, outside toilets, poor sanitation, and the shortage of affordable housing.

Public officials increasingly embraced a solution then sweeping through American cities: urban renewal.

Under this approach, cities identified areas they considered “blighted,” acquired the properties, demolished the existing buildings, and prepared the land for redevelopment.

On paper, urban renewal promised progress. It could remove unsafe structures, modernize neighborhoods, create new commercial or industrial sites, and replace deteriorated housing.

But buildings were not empty objects on a planning map.

They were homes.

They contained families, memories, relationships, neighborhood businesses, churches, gathering places, and systems of mutual support. Before Wheeling could clear Center Wheeling, it had to determine what would happen to the people already living there.

Harry Hamm reduced that enormous problem to four words:

“Where will they go?”

The 287 Families

According to the newspaper, 287 families were living inside the proposed Center Wheeling redevelopment area.

Preliminary planning found that only approximately 50 were homeowners. The remaining households and individuals were renters.

That distinction mattered.

A property owner whose house was acquired could receive compensation for the property, although the payment might still be insufficient to purchase another suitable home. A renter would receive no payment for the building itself and would have to enter a private rental market already short of decent, affordable units.

The column acknowledged that relocation was often the most difficult part of urban renewal. In Wheeling, Hamm believed the challenge might be even greater because the city had little experience with redevelopment of this scale and was not experiencing the kind of major residential construction boom found in some other communities.

In other words, the city was considering removing hundreds of households without having a large supply of replacement homes waiting for them.

The question was not simply whether officials could clear the area.

The question was whether they could do so without creating another housing crisis.

Who Qualified for Public Housing?

The redevelopment survey determined that 106 of the 287 families fell within the low-income category and could qualify for public housing.

The newspaper identified two existing or developing public-housing resources:

• Vineyard Hills

• The new Lincoln Homes development then under construction

The Wheeling Housing Authority had promised to cooperate in helping eligible families obtain units.

The authority was also considering another low-rent public-housing development containing approximately 100 units. Several possible locations were reportedly under review, with federal officials expected to inspect them.

If constructed, the additional units were expected to accommodate the eligible families who wanted public housing.

But this promise contained several uncertainties.

The site had not been selected. The new project had not been completed. Eligibility did not guarantee that every family would want to move into public housing. Nor did it establish that the available units would be ready before demolition began.

Most importantly, only 106 of the 287 families were identified as qualifying under the low-income standard.

That left 181 households outside that particular category. Some had sufficient income to rent elsewhere. Some were homeowners. Others occupied the difficult space between public-housing eligibility and the actual cost of obtaining a safe private home.

The figures demonstrated why no single housing program could solve the relocation problem.

A Path Toward Homeownership

Hamm recognized that some displaced families would not want to remain renters. They might wish to purchase a home—although not necessarily a newly constructed one.

For those families, the Urban Renewal Authority pointed to a federal mortgage-insurance program identified in the column as Section 221 housing.

The program was intended to encourage private lenders and builders to provide lower-cost replacement housing for people displaced by urban renewal or highway construction. It could be used for new or existing homes offered for sale or rent.

According to the article, the program could insure a mortgage for as much as 100 percent of the Federal Housing Administration’s appraised value. The maximum mortgage was generally $9,000, or $10,000 in designated high-cost areas, with repayment periods extending as long as 40 years.

An eligible buyer might be required to make a down payment of only $200. If even that amount could not be raised immediately, the column stated that the seller could arrange for it to be paid later.

These terms sounded promising. They offered at least some families a possible path from displacement to homeownership.

Yet mortgage availability did not eliminate every barrier.

A family still needed to locate a house it could afford. The property had to satisfy program requirements. A lender and seller had to participate. Monthly payments, taxes, insurance, transportation, and maintenance still had to fit within the household budget.

Black families faced an additional barrier that the 1958 column did not fully confront: Wheeling’s housing market was not equally open to everyone.

Federal redlining, restrictive real-estate practices, racial discrimination, and resistance within white neighborhoods had long limited where Black residents could buy, rent, or finance homes. A mortgage program could provide favorable terms, but it could not by itself compel a seller, real-estate agent, lender, or neighborhood to accept a Black family.

The city might offer financing on paper while segregation continued restricting where that financing could actually be used.

A Relocation Officer and a Legal Promise

The opinion column reported that once the redevelopment program entered its active phase, Wheeling would appoint a full-time relocation officer.

That person would work directly with families, maintain lists of available homes and apartments, and seek assistance from the Real Estate Board and other agencies.

This was an acknowledgment that relocation required more than handing someone a notice and expecting the family to disappear from the project area.

The column also emphasized an important legal safeguard: replacement housing had to be available before a person’s home could be acquired and demolished.

That requirement was intended to prevent a city from clearing occupied housing without considering where the residents would live afterward.

But the difference between a legal requirement and a successful relocation could be enormous.

Was the replacement home affordable?

Was it safe?

Was it near employment, schools, churches, relatives, and public transportation?

Would the family be welcome there?

Could elderly residents manage the move?

Would a renter become responsible for higher monthly payments?

Would relocation break apart a neighborhood whose residents depended upon one another?

The phrase “replacement housing” could satisfy an administrative requirement while concealing profound losses in community life.

What the Column Got Right

Harry Hamm’s column did not reject redevelopment. It treated the Center Wheeling project as a civic improvement that could move forward if relocation were handled responsibly.

But its central question gave the article lasting value.

It refused to treat the people inside the project area as obstacles to progress.

The column recognized that clearance was not complete when the bulldozers finished their work. A redevelopment project had not succeeded merely because deteriorated buildings disappeared.

Success had to be measured by what happened to the people displaced.

Did they receive better housing?

Could they afford it?

Were families kept together?

Did homeowners retain the opportunity to own property?

Did renters gain stability?

Were residents given meaningful choices, or were they simply directed toward whatever housing the city made available?

Those questions were not secondary to urban renewal.

They were the moral test of the entire project.

The Center Wheeling Plan Stalls—and Returns

The Center Wheeling redevelopment proposal did not proceed immediately.

Historian Allen Dieterich-Ward reports that ballot initiatives intended to provide the local support required for the project failed to receive the necessary 60 percent approval in November 1958 and again in March 1959.

The 1958 vote came only weeks after Hamm’s column appeared.

The project was later revived through a different financing approach. By the end of 1963, the redevelopment area had been reduced to approximately 9.6 acres. Most of its land had been acquired, and about half of the structures had been demolished.

The delay did not resolve the fundamental relocation problem.

When federally supported urban renewal moved forward in Wheeling during the early 1960s, homes and businesses were demolished and families were displaced from Center Wheeling. The area was not exclusively Black; it was a racially and ethnically mixed part of the city. Nevertheless, Black families were disproportionately harmed because discriminatory housing practices restricted their alternatives.

Research presented by the Ohio County Public Library explains that some displaced Black families relocated to East Wheeling, Lincoln Homes, or Grandview Manor. Others crossed into Ohio or Pennsylvania, and some never returned to Wheeling. The result was not simply relocation. In many cases, it increased housing segregation and weakened established neighborhoods. Ohio County Public Library, “Urban Renewal and the Destruction of Wheeling’s Black Neighborhoods”.'

The later history makes Hamm’s 1958 question even more important.

He asked where the families would go before the large-scale demolition began.

History shows that the answer was not the same for everyone—and was not always better than what they had lost.

From the “Human Hell” to Urban Renewal

The distance between the 1949 exposé and the 1958 opinion column marks an important change in Wheeling’s public conversation.

In 1949, the newspaper and Dr. R. M. Hamlin forced the city to look inside buildings that many residents preferred not to see.

By 1958, officials were developing plans to remove some of those deteriorated structures and reshape entire sections of the city.

That represented progress of a kind. Wheeling could no longer deny that housing conditions demanded action.

But urban renewal introduced a new danger: officials could begin treating demolition itself as the solution.

The houses condemned as “slums” were often deteriorated because owners had failed to maintain them, families lacked access to financing, and discriminatory housing policies had concentrated Black and immigrant residents in neighborhoods denied adequate investment.

The residents did not create those systems.

They lived with their consequences.

If government removed the buildings without correcting the policies that produced the conditions, it risked moving the hardship rather than ending it.

A Plan Was Not Yet a Home

The 1958 column described several possible protections:

• Public housing at Vineyard Hills and Lincoln Homes

• A proposed additional 100-unit development

• Federally insured mortgages for displaced families

• Assistance for both renters and prospective homeowners

• A full-time relocation officer

• Cooperation from the Real Estate Board and public agencies

• A legal requirement that housing be available before demolition

Together, these measures formed a relocation plan.

But a plan was not yet a home.

A list of possible apartments was not a signed lease. Mortgage eligibility was not an accepted offer. A proposed public-housing project was not a completed unit. A legal safeguard was not proof that a family had been treated justly.

That distinction is what makes the newspaper column so important.

It recorded the promises before the demolition.

It gives us a standard against which the project’s later results can be measured.

What Responsible Renewal Should Mean

Cities must address dangerous housing. No family should be expected to live with collapsing walls, unsafe exits, broken plumbing, inadequate heat, or unsanitary conditions.

But the dignity of a neighborhood cannot be measured only by the condition of its buildings.

A responsible redevelopment program must protect the people who live there. Residents should participate in decisions about their community. Replacement housing must be safe, affordable, accessible, and genuinely available. Homeowners must receive fair value. Renters must not be forgotten simply because they do not hold title to the property.

Most importantly, families should not be forced to exchange inadequate housing for displacement, isolation, or exile from their city.

In 1949, Dr. Hamlin helped Wheeling see a housing crisis it had tolerated for too long.

In 1958, Harry Hamm asked whether the proposed solution would truly help the people most affected.

“Where will they go?” was not a procedural question.

It was a question about whose future mattered in the city Wheeling hoped to build.

More than six decades later, it remains the question every redevelopment plan must answer.

-T

Sources and Research Notes

Principal primary source: Harry Hamm, “Where Will Relocatees Find Homes?” The Wheeling News-Register, October 5, 1958, p. 21.

Earlier newspaper investigation: Arthur Mills, “‘Human Hell’ Is Found in City Negro Section,” The Wheeling News-Register, June 12, 1949, pp. 1 and 18. Dr. R. M. Hamlin accompanied Mills and photographer Don Muhleman through the affected neighborhoods.

Later historical analysis: Allen Dieterich-Ward, Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America, particularly the discussion of Wheeling’s redevelopment campaigns and the Center Wheeling project.

Local historical context: “Urban Renewal and the Destruction of Wheeling’s Black Neighborhoods,” Ohio County Public Library.

Research cautions:

• The 1958 article described plans, eligibility rules, and official assurances at that moment. It did not establish that every proposed housing unit was built or that every displaced family received the assistance described.

• The 106 families identified as eligible for public housing were a subset of the 287 families in the redevelopment area. The article does not provide a racial breakdown of all households or identify every family by name.

• Center Wheeling was a racially and ethnically mixed neighborhood. Black families were disproportionately affected by relocation because discrimination and redlining restricted the housing available to them.

• “Slum” and “slum clearance” are retained only when discussing the language and policies of the period. Buildings may have been deteriorated, but the people living inside them were families and neighbors—not “slum people.”