Opinion: Is the LPRD No Longer Defensible?

In speaking of the Reform Act of 1867, the authors of 1715 to Present (Clough, Gay, Brandenberg, and Payne) observed that the act "demonstrates once again the genius of the British ruling class for abandoning that what is no longer defensible."

This is not an especially American trait where, paradoxically, a more egalitarian mindset than the British social class system has bequeathed no greater progressive tendency. Sir Winston Churchill, nearly a century after the Reform Act, noted that Americans can be counted upon to do the right thing after all alternatives have been explored. We still do things as though it were decades or even generations ago, prompting local journalist Michael A. Miller to quip that in Nassau County "it's always 1960."     

A case in point is our unique Levittown Planned Residence District (LPRD) code - the "Magna Charter of Levittown" as Vladimir Rus called it in the May 9, 1997 issue of Levittown Tribune. This brainchild of William Levitt is unique because it endows an unincorporated entity with its own zoning codes within the ordinances of a larger municipal entity, namely the Town of Hempstead. It has protected the community's residential character and integrity against profiteering spot developers who profited from legally questionable real estate deals and, indeed, from commercial blight.

It was renewed on Dec. 29, 1975 and became the principal weapon in the arsenal of the Levittown Property Owner's Association's years-long battle against development of abandoned sections of the old Vanderbilt Motor Parkway; said battle being characterized by the whiff of real estate transactions, sweetheart deals, and boiler room operations. (See my "The Motor Parkway and Questionable Real Estate Deals" in the January 16, 2004 issue of Levittown Tribune for details).    

It's clear that the LPRD code can't address the residential and commercial needs of 21st century Levittowners without radical revision and that it's part and parcel of a mindset and polity more suited to the Eisenhower/Kennedy era. Our attraction to schemes to erect more mini-malls, retail-laden entertainment venues and casinos, for example, can't address our resident's financial needs because jobs in fast food, gift shops, mega discounters, and supermarket chains can't generate the income needed for the kind of middle class suburban homeownership the LPRD describes, the way blue collar positions at Grumman's, Republic, Liberty, and Sperry did for many Levittowners in the four decades following WWII.

And "hold the line on taxes" is an election year catch-phrase that can be found in any 1950s newspaper for, indeed, taxes have continued to climb as incomes stagnate and public services are cut back prompting one struggling Levittown homeowner to recently tell me how fortunate renters are because they can just "pack their bags when the going gets tough."     

It's a curious trait amongst Levittowners: our NIMBYism that would see us the proverbial fly in the amber juxtaposed with the truly revolutionary nature of Levittown's founding. The dread of "low income housing" coming to Levittown has been around since the early 1980s when people thought their grandchildren would also be middle class; its cassandras being those who forgot that in 1950, Levittown was "low income housing."

Many have forgotten William Levitt's May 27, 1947 "march on Hempstead" in which he, accompanied by hundreds of home-seeking veterans, pleaded for a revision of the Town of Hempstead's zoning codes to allow basementless houses. (Basements would have considerably slowed-down the Levitt & Sons mass-production technique whilst adding to the cost of a house). Indeed, some of those veterans, armed with the LPRD, would many decades later rail against "smart growth", "mixed residential", and "affordable housing" plans, forgetting their own situation right after WWII.    

The choice is ours. We can become that one brief and shining moment after WWII or we can remain the vanguard of the revolution that is the American Dream. It depends upon us, like the British ruling class in 1867, "abandoning what is no longer defensible".    

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org.