
Demolished: The End of Chicago's Public Housing - _nullandnull_
http://apps.npr.org/lookatthis/posts/publichousing/
======
wallflower
> To explain the troubling effect of strangers on the streets of city gray
> areas, I shall first point out, for purposes of analogy, the peculiarities
> of another and figurative kind of street - the corridors of high-rise public
> housing projects, those derivatives of Radiant City. The elevators and
> corridors of these projects are, in a sense, streets. They are streets piled
> up in the sky in order to eliminate streets on the ground and permit the
> ground to become deserted parks like the mall at Washington Houses where the
> tree was stolen.

Not only are these interior parts of the building streets in the sense that
they serve the comings and goings of residents, most of whom may not know each
other or recognize, necessarily, who is a resident and who is not. They are
streets also in the sense of being accessible to the public. They have been
designed in an imitation of upper-class standards for apartment living without
upper-class cash for doormen and elevator men. Anyone at all can go into these
buildings, unquestioned, and use the traveling street of the elevator and the
sidewalks that are the corridors. These interior streets, although completely
accessible to public use, are closed to public view and thus lack the checks
and inhibitions exerted by eye-policed city streets.

From "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Chapter 2: "The uses of
sidewalks: safety", Jane Jacobs

~~~
fennecfoxen
One of the nastier bits about the construction of America's old public housing
stock was that when they built it in those neighborhoods which were considered
slums, replacing a lot of small individual properties with big state-owned
properties. Huddled masses yearning to breath free? Sure.

But in this transition, they mangled a lot of the informal economy -- good
old-fashioned under-the-table businesses operating out of privately-rented
homes, gleefully ignoring all regulations it feels like, and the source of
livelihood for many urban poor. Obviously, this was no boon to the future of
the community.

~~~
davideads
Absolutely. When I worked at Stateway Gardens in the 2000s, people would try
to set up little businesses in the grassy spaces and were invariably shut down
quickly by the police even while drugs were being sold openly 50 yards away.

------
brandnewlow
The article mentions that many of the people that "went missing" headed out to
the suburbs. If you're curious about that, read up on Markham, Illinois, one
of the towns that's picked up a lot of the public housing people.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois)

In journalism school I was assigned to cover happenings at the Markham
Courthouse, which often led me out to Markham proper.

As a middle class white guy raised in a white suburban small town, the 3
months I spent there were an eye-opening experience. Most people I talked to
had a shooting story or knew someone who had one. There was also little
confidence in local government as many believed that Markham was run by former
criminals who'd managed to win office.

At the time, there were two reporters at a newspaper called the Southtown
Daily Star who covered the numerous claims of police wrongdoing and general
violence in Markham. The Star's parent company, the Chicago Sun-Times, hit the
skids soon after and killed the Southtown. I don't know if anyone's reporting
on Markham these days.

------
sixQuarks
The story was good, but I was intrigued by the format of the "article". It
really catered to today's attention deficit society, in a good way. It pulled
me in and I read all the way through. Normally, I would be too impatient to do
so. I hope this format evolves for long-form articles, we need a change on the
web.

~~~
davideads
Thanks! I'm the author of the story. The NPR Visuals team works really hard to
make stuff that is substantial but that people still want to read online.
Obviously we're still learning and have a long way to go, but I share your
hope and we'd love your feedback on how to make it better. A goal is to figure
out how to do long form using some of these techniques.

For what it's worth the code that drives the story is open source:
[http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/](http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/)

~~~
sixQuarks
thanks for the github link.

------
brandnewlow
I lived in Atrium Village, the mixed income development 2 blocks from Cabrini
Green, from 2008-2012. It was designed to be transition housing for people
working to get out of Cabrini Green.

The high rises were empty and coming down by the time i moved in, but the low-
rises were still mostly inhabited. They were just awful places. Cinder block
cells.

Cabrini Green was interesting to me as an armchair urban planner because it
was surrounded by affluence. The main drag dumped right into a luxury car
garage. And the whole thing was about 100 feet from Groupon's headquarters.
When Groupon employees would step outside on smoke breaks, they faced a view
directly down into Cabrini Green. Very bizarre to have all that wealth created
so near a place without any.

------
aosmith
Chicago is my home and this was a mixed blessing for the city. When we
destroyed projects we created many small pockets of "section 8". This
introduced danger into otherwise nice neighborhoods. I live in wicker park and
I've had people try to rob me at gun/knife twice as a result of public
housing. It's an unfair burden on the residents.

~~~
tomohawk
I remember living in an affluent suburb (in the top 20 income wise in the
country) when I first graduated. There were section 8 folks peppered
throughout the condos we lived in. We got to know a number of them personally.
To get all of the benefits, they were required to follow a low probability of
success lifestyle, such as refusing to work and having children out of
wedlock.

We knew one young woman who had an affair with an older man, got pregnant,
then moved out of moms house into a hotel. She then called up the gov't and
went right to the top of their list (pregnant single woman with no means of
support and no skills, and in temporary housing). The next week, she was
living in a nicer condo than I could afford. She had free housing, food,
medical, and legal.

We visited the old neighborhood a few years after we left and there were open
air drug markets.

I think a negative income tax would be a much better approach:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

~~~
xacaxulu
We get more of what we incentivize. Give financial incentives for unhealthy
behaviour? Get more of it.

------
monksy
Cabrini Green will not be missed.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green)

~~~
bbarn
I remember a different history, and I don't miss those awful towers a bit.

I remember being in military uniform in the early 90's and still being
harassed by the locals as I walked down Division St the 3 miles to the train I
had to get to. I remember everyone I knew, black, white, well off, poor.. all
of them hating being around those things.

I remember the other set further up north (that still exist, and I'm not sure
if they were "renovated") just two years ago when I lived nearby, and the
crime that centered around it.

I also can't provide any sort of evidence to this, but I strongly remember an
idea that these were only ever intended to be stopping points - temporary
housing, and the problem being them becoming "homes" at all. No "Home" in this
country should resemble a prison cell as much as those did. Complete with
block wardens, cages to prevent violence or suicide on porches, etc.

To that end, is it really a bad statistic when you see that 44% that weren't
in the system 10 years later? The single biggest bucket if you lumped "no
longer qualified", "lost contact", and "private market" would be almost 30%
ten years later don't need to be in there anymore. Add in the other 35% that
are in mixed rentals (a la the questionably effective Wilson Yard
development), or just accepting a subsidized rental, I'd say that the bulk of
the community - those who lived there as well as those who lived around there,
are doing better without those terrible towers.

~~~
monksy
I was not here when it still existed. However, I have heard stories of:

1\. Cops getting shot for being in the area

2\. It being run by gangs

3\. Airline shuttle being shot at.
([http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/010731019...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/0107310193_1_crew-
members-continental-airlines-bus) Crap, I've been to that hospital they were
transported to)

If this article is trying to make me feel bad that Cabrini Green was shut
down, I consider the author and the individuals who put it on the site
completely lacking in any credibility.

~~~
davideads
I was there when it still existed. I'm also the author of the piece.

We're not trying to make you feel bad that the projects were shut down. We are
trying to convey:

* The scale of the process (the equivalent of relocating my entire hometown over the course of a decade). * Some of what was gained and what was lost for residents * The housing authority's demonstrated inability to meet their projections or deliver what they told residents they would. * The story of the photographer, who responded to an act of violence by trying to understand where that violence might come from, and in the process documented a historic moment in American urban life.

Like I said, I worked there and I'm not nostalgic about it. I saw some truly
awful stuff. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a huge social and personal
cost to residents in dismantling that system. If that cost had been honestly
reckoned with during the Plan For Transformation, some of the more egregious
problems could have been avoided.

------
sinemetu11
To me what's baffling about stories like this is that there are so many people
that are blind to the fact that this even happens. This was 50k+ people, yet
there are so many that think if you "just work hard" then you won't need to be
given help or better opportunities. What's supposed to happen when these
opportunities are taken away?

Providing legitimate services to people is a win for everyone not just the
people that are utilizing them.

------
percept
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

[http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-
Streets/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-
Streets/dp/014311493X/)

This is about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes).
The author contributed to the drug dealer economics portion of _Freakonomics_.

------
scotty79
Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe at least in 90% of
cases when care is taken so that percentage of poor and criminal residents do
not exceed some crtical value. The buildings themselves should also be kept
small and hallways short to prevent them from becoming streets.

Lots of trees, paths, playgrounds and small commerce between buildings seem to
help.

~~~
design-of-homes
_" Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe..."_

Does it? What's happened in Chicago has many parallels with public housing
projects in (some) European countries. There was a boom in large scale public
housing developments in many European countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Many
of these housing developments were large monolitic blocks. Some random
examples:

\- Droixhe in Liege, Belgium
[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg).

\- The Aylesbury estate in London:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg).

\- Chêne Pointu in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/)

Many public housing developments were not stitched into the fabric of the
city, but set apart from surrounding towns or city centres. The architects who
built these blocks had the best of intentions (although some also had strong
ideological views that influenced their designs). But today, we recognise that
this style of overscaled, monolitic block design was a mistake. In the UK, the
era of large scale mass public housing was largely over by the 1970s, but
their effects linger on today in our attitudes to public housing and housing
development.

Despite the run-down nature of many estates, strong social ties developed
among residents. When estates are marked for regeneration, those ties are
often broken as people are re-housed and dispersed. What does community even
mean nowadays in cities when housing is snapped up by absentee investors and
buy-to-let landlords with no interest in their neighbours or the neigbourhood?

~~~
scotty79
Occasionally it goes bad but I feel I left plenty of padding by claiming 90%
of time it works in Europe.

This kinds of buildings don't necessarily need to be public projects. There
are a lot of private investments like that.

And it works. It provides plenty of green spaces that make living pleasent
while providing extraordinary privacy. You can easily live there for a decade
without as much as knowing a name of any of your thousand neighbours or faces
of more than 5 of them. People comming from smaller communities often value
this newfound privacy and freedom to pick people to interact with.

It allows for proximity to public transportation. You are never farther than
10 minutes walk from a vehicle that can take you anywhere in the city.

It really works. You just have to design it for working people and their
families that keep to themselves. Don't build too large, leave plenty of space
and set up the rates so that not too many troubling people can afford that.

------
rjurney
In college I lived in a mixed income development in Atlanta that replaced
Techwood Homes, a notorious project. It was pretty cool. The two-rent-level
system seemed to work well.
[http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/](http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Techwood Homes, the first public housing of that type in the US, was still
there when I was at Ga Tech. For the most part there was little interaction
between the residents there and Tech students, even though it was literally
just across the street. Guys selling weed or a mugging now and then on that
side of North Ave. was about the most that ever happened.

There was also one old Tech dorm building on that side of the street,
separated from campus. On paper it was the least appealing dorm - old, poor
facilities and a proximity to crime. In practice, many of the student who
lived there did so by choice, as kind of a mild misfit/artistic community.
People were always doing interesting things in their dormrooms there.

My mom and stepdad owned a mechanical engineering firm that did a lot of work
in Atlanta housing projects. Mostly replacing old metal gaslines with plastic
ones. Me, my brother, and one of my stepbrothers all worked for them at
various points, so we all got a fair amount of experience in the Atlanta
projects. My stepdad always made sure each crew had a couple guys from
whatever project we were at, which was a good practical step. Otherwise we'd
have been a bunch of white guys (mostly really redneck construction dudes) in
all-black projects. We rarely had much trouble, beyond some petty theft of our
tools, and one doofus on the crew who followed someone into a basement to "buy
a cheap TV" and got robbed at shotgun point as a result.

I didn't do the job at Techwood, but my brother did, and one day there was a
gun fight in the street. The crew all ran and hid in doorways and behind
steps. My brother said he saw one of the teens who was shooting crouched
behind a car door, and the guy looked at him and grinned like he was having a
great time, then went back to shooting.

In retrospect, it's kinda crazy our mom let us work there, but we never really
told her those kind of stories. Heh.

------
rayiner
When Cabrini Green came down, I remember seeing a bunch of articles about
public housing, which portrayed these high-rise projects as an outgrowth of
the optimistic attitude of the time. There's a strong cognitive dissonance
there, because the projects were just as much an outgrowth of the powerful
segregationist attitude that also characterized the era.

I'm quite excited to see the move to what will hopefully be more
integrationist attempts at public housing. I really like the idea of Section 8
(we had Section 8 buildings in Streeterville where I lived in Chicago) and
would love to see it extended to wealthy suburban neighborhoods.

~~~
kasey_junk
Those stories were largely revisionist history. At the time the large Chicago
high rise public housing were built (Cabrini and the Robert Taylor Homes) it
was pretty common knowledge that it was a bad idea to build large segregated
high rises for this purpose. There was lots of opposition to the plans by
urban planners and housing experts.

These large homes, the Chicago interstate system, and the placement of UIC
were all outgrowths of the segregationist and the cynical political climate of
the time, much more so than any optimistic belief in the future.

[edit] Blueprint for Disaster was a pretty good book that covered this topic.

~~~
jessaustin
The interstate system in many cities had those harmful effects. Certainly,
down the road in St. Louis, the placement of I-44 and I-70 destroyed
neighborhoods and business districts in a fashion that was both completely
avoidable and motivated by racism.

------
_nullandnull_
"Bauhaus blunders: architecture and public housing" is also worth reading [1].
I studied modern art history for a while and I always found it fascinating how
designers could create something so horrible as the "projects".

1\. [http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-
bl...](http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-blunders-
architecture-and-public-housing)

------
mjfl
All this crime and misery, stemming from a simple enough plan to give people
affordable housing...

~~~
NegativeK
Stemming from a plan to give people affordable housing and keep them where
they won't be seen.

