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Author | D. Bradford Hunt |
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Language | English |
Series | Historical Studies of Urban America |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Publication date | July 15, 2009 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Hardcover |
Pages | 392 |
ISBN | 978-0-226-36085-0 |
Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing is a history of the public housing program in Chicago.
This book seeks to explain what went wrong with Chicago public housing through a detailed history. The reasons offered for the "disaster" include high youth-to-adult ratios, the loss of working-class families as more private sector housing became available, and high-rise design at Cabrini–Green and other infamous projects. Federal public housing administrators emphasized cost cutting in construction, which appeased Congressional critics of the program but led to a miserable quality of life for generations who had to live in high-rise towers.
According to Hunt, high youth-to-adult ratios caused chaos in the high-rise towers. In most Chicago neighborhoods, two adults supervise one child. In many public housing sites in Chicago, the ratio is one adult supervising two children. In one of the most crime-ridden, Robert Taylor Homes, the ratio was almost three children for every adult. More than 70% of the apartments built by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) from 1954 to 1964 had three or more bedrooms. Did high youth-to-adult ratio lead to crime? Elizabeth Taylor, reviewing the book for the Chicago Tribune , seems skeptical but finds that the book is still an important contribution to the literature. [1]
The loss of the working class is another important theme. Prior to 1967, more than half of the residents of Chicago public housing worked. After 1967, the percentage steadily dropped until it reached approximately 10% in the 1980s. In an important observation, Mr. Hunt explains that when Chicago had a shortage of private sector housing (the 1940s and 1950), public housing was desirable. When private housing became readily available starting in the 1960s, the working class left public housing.
Design is a third theme. Many have written about high-rise design as a contributor to the decline of public housing, so there was a risk that the book would retread familiar ground here. Instead, Mr. Hunt digs into the historical records and unearths some gems tying the design of the Chicago buildings to the cost-cutting obsessions of Washington bureaucrats. Cost cutting first became a political football back in the 1930s when Senator Harry Byrd added construction cost limits to the original public housing statute. Nathan Strauss and John Taylor Egan are federal administrators who are portrayed as driving the design train and running the public housing program into the ground. Their obsession with cost-cutting led them to promote 50 units per acre as the ideal density, with site plans that emphasized long, narrow and tall buildings to minimize sitework cost. While the Corbusier modernism fad might have been a factor in the design decisions, a much more important factor was the construction cost limits imposed by the federal administrators of the public housing program. The public housing program train runs so far off the tracks that Mayor Richard J. Daley begs Congress to put an end to the cost-cutting so he can build normal Chicago communities with the federal program.
The final chapters, on the Gautreaux public housing desegregation case and the rebirth of public housing, cover the messy attempts to remedy Chicago public housing. The lawyer who filed the Gautreaux lawsuit in the 1960s and battled it out for more than 30 years, Alexander Polikoff, is portrayed as a crusader who faced opposition from both the white establishment (especially Mayor Richard J. Daley) and black community activists. Polikoff has fought for Chicago to open all of its neighborhoods to subsidized African-American families, a fight that has drawn many opponents over the years. The final chapter offers a fairly balanced perspective on the effort to rebuild Chicago public housing in the 1990s through a "Plan for Transformation." Hunt views the transformation effort as important in acknowledging the failure of high-rise public housing, but the book recognizes that the plan's implementation may not be kind to the poorest of the poor.
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, known together as Pruitt–Igoe, were joint urban housing projects first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The complex of 33 eleven-story high rises was designed in the modernist architectural style by Minoru Yamasaki. At the time of opening, it was one of the largest public housing developments in the country. It was constructed with federal funds on the site of a former slum as part of the city's urban renewal program. Despite being legally integrated, it almost exclusively accommodated African Americans.
Cabrini–Green Homes are a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project on the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois. The Frances Cabrini Rowhouses and Extensions were south of Division Street, bordered by Larrabee Street to the west, Orleans Street to the east and Chicago Avenue to the south, with the William Green Homes to the northwest.
Robert Taylor Homes was a public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois from 1962 to 2007. The second largest housing project in the United States, it consisted of 28 virtually identical high-rises, set out in a linear plan for two miles, with the high-rises regularly configured in a horseshoe shape of three in each block. It was located along State Street between Pershing Road and 54th Street, east of the Dan Ryan Expressway. The project was named for Robert Rochon Taylor (1899–1957), an African-American activist and the first African American chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). It was a part of the State Street Corridor which included other CHA housing projects: Stateway Gardens, Dearborn Homes, Harold Ickes Homes, and Hilliard Homes.
Robert Clifton Weaver was an American economist, academic, and political administrator who served as the first United States secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) from 1966 to 1968, when the department was newly established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weaver was the first African American to be appointed to a US cabinet-level position.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a public development corporation which provides public housing in New York City, and is the largest public housing authority in North America. Created in 1934 as the first agency of its kind in the United States, it aims to provide decent, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs of New York City. NYCHA also administers a citywide Section 8 Leased Housing Program in rental apartments. NYCHA developments include single and double family houses, apartment units, singular floors, and shared small building units, and commonly have large income disparities with their respective surrounding neighborhood or community. These developments, particularly those including large-scale apartment buildings, are often referred to in popular culture as "projects."
Hills v. Gautreaux, 425 U.S. 284 (1976), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court.
HOPE VI is a program of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is intended to revitalize the most distressed public housing projects in the United States into mixed-income developments. Its philosophy is largely based on New Urbanism and the concept of defensible space.
Stateway Gardens was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, alongside the Dan Ryan Expressway just north of the former Robert Taylor Homes, and part of the State Street Corridor that also included Dearborn Homes, Harold Ickes Homes and Hillard Homes. Stateway Gardens consisted of mid- and high-rise apartment buildings.
The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is a municipal corporation that oversees public housing within the city of Chicago. The agency's Board of Commissioners is appointed by the city's mayor, and has a budget independent from that of the city of Chicago. CHA is the largest rental landlord in Chicago, with more than 50,000 households. CHA owns over 21,000 apartments. It also oversees the administration of 37,000 Section 8 vouchers. The current acting CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority is Tracey Scott.
James E. Rosenbaum, is a Professor of Sociology, Education, and Social Policy at Northwestern University.
The Gautreaux Project is a US housing-desegregation project initiated by court order. It is notable both for being one of the only social programs based in a randomized experiment, and the only anti-poverty housing program endorsed by the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.
In the United States, subsidized housing is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were one million public housing units. In 2022, about 5.2 million American households received some form of federal rental assistance.
Marvin E. Aspen is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 90–448, 82 Stat. 476, enacted August 1, 1968, was passed during the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. The act came on the heels of major riots across cities throughout the U.S. in 1967, the assassination of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and the publication of the report of the Kerner Commission, which recommended major expansions in public funding and support of urban areas. President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to the legislation as one of the most significant laws ever passed in the U.S., due to its scale and ambition. The act's declared intention was constructing or rehabilitating 26 million housing units, 6 million of these for low- and moderate-income families, over the next 10 years.
The Ida B. Wells Homes, which also comprised the Clarence Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes, was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was bordered by 35th Street to the north, Pershing Road to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the east, and Martin Luther King Drive to the west. The Ida B. Wells Homes consisted of rowhouses, mid-rises, and high-rise apartment buildings, first constructed 1939 to 1941 to house African American tenants. They were closed and demolished beginning in 2002 and ending in 2011.
Dearborn Homes is a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is located along State Street between 27th and 30th Streets, and bounded by the Metrarail line to the west. It is one of only two housing projects that still exist from the State Street Corridor which included other CHA developments: Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, Harold Ickes Homes and Hillard Homes.
Queen Lane Apartments opened in 1955 as one of several Post-War public housing hi-rise complexes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which were built and maintained by the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). The PHA demolished the Queen Lane high-rise on September 13, 2014. The PHA replaced it with 55 new, affordable rental units for individuals and families. The first of the new 55 units were opened on December 15, 2015. Mayor Michael Nutter, City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, City Councilwoman Cindy Bass, PHA President/CEO Kelvin Jeremiah, residents of the nine new units, and other dignitaries joined together to cut the ribbon.
The Chicago mayoral election of 1967 was held on April 4, 1967. The election saw Richard J. Daley being elected to a fourth term as mayor. Daley's main opponent was Republican nominee John L. Waner, who he defeated by a landslide 48% margin.
Robert Rochon Taylor was an American housing advocate and banker. A founder of the Illinois Federal Savings and Loan, a mortgager for black residents of Chicago's South Side, Taylor was the first black member of the Chicago Housing Authority and later its chairman. The Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing project completed in 1962, was named for Taylor.