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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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everybody had quote, decent housing in a period of ten years. Well, I regret to say that ten years went by and everybody didn't. But we did have some influence in that we were a factor in moving the Federal government in the direction of giving more assistance to housing through either public housing, or subsidized loans, aid to cities, so on, so on. All of which sounded pretty good to us in those days. That was the late '50s, and early '60s. And of course, when Johnson came in the largess from the Federal Government increased, quite considerably, and we had some role to play in that. But I suppose that in itself, ACTION could be easily forgotten if it hadn't developed along certain lines. The first development was that there was an organization headed by Steve Currier who was interested in improving our cities more from the aesthetic view point, than the economic, poverty view point. But Steve had quite a few assets. He was a very committed man. He had an organization. He was also married to the daughter of Melon Bruce, Ailsha. And they created a foundation called Taconic. And the Melon money flowed very freely into the Taconic Foundation and Taconic's major interest had to do with housing and cities and the appearance of cities. We, at ACTION, were somewhat poverty stricken, and we agreed to merge our two organizations into a new organization that was called Urban America. And I think I was chairman and he was president of that. And it continued the work of ACTION. It also, incidentally, when Time Inc. decided it could no





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