TENANTS DID NOT INVEST IN PUBLIC HOUSING
Lisa Levenstein
During the 1940s and 1950s, African American women claimed ownership of public housing by investing in their homes and neighborhoods. Envisioning public housing providing them with a refuge that they had long desired, they tried to turn their apartments into places they could call home. Many women put great effort into creating attractive living arrangements for their families and tried to maintain their gardens and public spaces. They cared for their children, established relationships with neighbors, and invested in their communities. By the 1960s, however, most women and their families had become disillusioned with public housing. The staff’s rigid rules limited tenants’ autonomy and discouraged them from creating personal attachments to their surroundings. Living in cheaply constructed, increasingly run-down apartments, often segregated in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, tenants found it extremely difficult to create comfortable and safe homes. Therein lies the tragedy and missed opportunity of postwar public housing. Rather than nurturing tenants’ investments and aspirations, it became a public institution that increasingly restricted their abilities to substantially improve their lives.
In 1954, Mildred and Joseph Spencer moved with their four children into brand new public housing at Raymond Rosen Homes in North Philadelphia. Mrs. Spencer had stood in line for hours to submit an application to the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) and had managed to obtain one of the coveted apartments for six-person families. Like almost all of the public housing constructed in postwar Philadelphia, Raymond Rosen was racially segregated. Serving African American tenants in a predominantly black neighborhood, it combined high-rise towers with row homes, and the Spencers considered themselves fortunate to receive one of the low-rise dwellings. The Spencers and their neighbors appreciated the dramatic improvement in their standard of living that they experienced upon moving into public housing. They tried to put their mark on Raymond Rosen by decorating their homes, forging relationships with neighbors, and caring for public spaces. Many of the women who lived in the low-rises took particular pleasure in their yards and competed with one another over who had the “prettiest” garden.1 These commitments by tenants were critical to the success of Raymond Rosen. Public housing in Philadelphia thrived when tenants felt invested in their surroundings.
Over the course of the postwar period, government policies and practices began to undermine tenants’ commitments to their new homes. Fearing that tenants would ruin public housing if they were not tightly controlled, the management staff discouraged them from personalizing their apartments and intrusively supervised many elements of their daily lives. Federal authorities demanded low-cost construction, which resulted in barebones living spaces, growing numbers of high-rises, and a dearth of facilities for children’s recreation. With local officials not investing in the maintenance work and upgrades needed to keep public housing clean and efficient, tenants found it increasingly difficult to take pride in their homes. The PHA often located public housing for African American families in or near black neighborhoods that were deteriorating and dangerous, ultimately making it nearly impossible for tenants to maintain clean and safe surroundings. By the 1960s, tenants who had once felt deeply invested in public housing began to view it as a place of last resort.
African American women stood at the front lines of these transformations in public housing. Like African American men, they saw great promise in public housing because of the way racial discrimination limited their economic opportunities and confined them to the worst housing in the city. Yet women, and especially single mothers, faced unique burdens in their search for decent housing because many private landlords refused to rent to them, particularly if they had several children. Public housing replicated aspects of this sex discrimination by barring unmarried mothers. However, during the 1950s, widows and growing numbers of separated and divorced women secured admittance. Since women were typically the ones who held primary responsibility for housekeeping, child care, and community building, they played a key role in fostering the success of public housing and had the most to lose from its decline.
Public housing became an increasingly important presence in Philadelphia’s working-class neighborhoods during the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1940 and 1942, the PHA constructed Tasker, Richard Allen, and James Weldon Johnson Homes, and in 1947, the authority took over the federal government’s emergency wartime housing: Abbotsford, Passyunk, Bartram Village, and Oxford Village. More public housing followed the 1949 Housing Act, which called for the construction of 135,000 new units annually across the country for six years. Between 1952 and 1956, the PHA opened Arch, Wilson Park, Norris, Raymond Rosen, Schuylkill Falls, Liddonfield, Mill Creek, Queen Lane, Spring Garden, and Harrison Plaza (see Table 11.1). As in other cities, considerable public debate accompanied this rapid construction of public housing. Proposals to locate new public housing in working-class white neighborhoods became particularly contentious as residents feared that their property values and quality of life would plummet if African Americans moved in.2
Nevertheless, public housing’s affordable rents and modern conveniences inspired thousands of working-class Philadelphians to seek apartments. By 1949, the PHA had a waiting list of over ten thousand families, and the list would have been even longer if more people thought they had a chance of getting in.3 African Americans—and single mothers of color in particular—were overrepresented among the applicants because they were largely confined to the worst housing in the city.4 Yet, as in other places, they did not gain access to public housing in proportion to their applications. In 1956, African Americans constituted nearly 90 percent of the applicants for public housing in Philadelphia, but only 51 percent of its tenants.5 Single women faced additional burdens because authorities gave preference to two-parent families, accepted only a limited number of separated women with small families, and sought to exclude unmarried mothers from public housing altogether.6
Table 11.1 Philadelphia public housing, 1940–1956
Sources: Committee on Public Housing Policy, “Basic Policies for Low-Income Families in Public Housing in Philadelphia” (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Housing Association, 1957), 34; “Developments of the Philadelphia Housing Authority: March 1964,” Box 283, Folder 4953, Philadelphia Housing Association/Housing Association of the Delaware Valley, 1909–1975, Urban Archives, Temple University; John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 172–73.
*Later enlarged to 340 units.
During the 1950s, civil rights activists successfully campaigned to persuade authorities to grant African Americans admission to public housing in proportion to their applications and to cease segregating public housing according to race. Consequently, African Americans increasingly became a dominant presence in public housing that had been previously reserved for whites.7 However, postwar civil rights activists did not address the gender-based restrictions on single mothers, which remained in place until 1968. Some single mothers advocated for themselves by repeatedly applying to public housing and forcing local authorities to grapple with their predicaments. Through such pressure, growing numbers of separated and divorced women secured admission, joining widows and women who had ended relationships with men while living in public housing. As a result, by the early 1960s, single mothers occupied nearly half of all of the units in Philadelphia’s public housing.8
The high numbers of applicants signaled the tremendous promise of new public housing. In the 1940s, the PHA employed innovative architects and encouraged them to improve the standards of urban design. During these years, the city’s public housing consisted mainly of low-rise buildings arranged in a “communitarian” fashion, facing a grassy court or common area where residents could gather. African Americans took particular pride in their 589-unit James Weldon Johnson Homes, which had 58 two- and three-story red brick buildings located around pleasant courts and walkways. Gabled roofs, landscaped walks, and white canopies over doorways made Johnson Homes uniquely warm and attractive. Although the 1,324-unit Richard Allen Homes for African Americans was larger and had a less original layout, its 53 three- and four-story red and yellow brick buildings formed pleasant quadrangles with small courtyards, and it had a conveniently located community center and library (Figure 11.1).9
Inside new public housing, tenants appreciated quarters that were more spacious and modern than their previous living situations. One of the first tenants at Richard Allen, Agnes Hawryluk, had previously lived with her two children in a one-room apartment with no sanitary facilities or running water. Her apartment at Richard Allen felt luxurious in comparison. Downstairs it had a living room and a kitchen with a gas stove, electric refrigerator, and built-in cabinets. The upstairs had two bedrooms, a bathroom with a sink, bathtub, and toilet, and a laundry tub for washing clothes.10 Mrs. Hawryluk had paid $14 each month for rent and utilities for her one-room apartment. At Richard Allen she paid $14.50 for her much nicer accommodations.11 Because of strict federal budgets, public housing had no “frills.” Apartments lacked dining rooms, closet doors, baseboards, and splashboards for the sinks. Floors were made of concrete, closets had steel shelves, and banisters were made of iron pipe. Still, because so many tenants who moved into new public housing had previously lived in the slums, they appreciated the significant improvement in their standard of living.12
Figure 11.1 Richard Allen Homes. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Within public housing, tenants tried to create safe havens for themselves and their families where they could feel comfortable and take pride in their surroundings. Since women typically took responsibility for household labor and community building, they played an essential role in this process. Many women sought to personalize their apartments to make them feel homey and inviting. On shoestring budgets, they tried to obtain a few pieces of decent furniture and added personal touches such as knickknacks and pictures.13 Those who had the means engaged in ambitious decorating projects, putting up curtains, buying rugs, and covering shelves with decorative paper. Edna Cooper explained, “All my life, I’ve been dreaming of a pretty little kitchen in red and white. I used to look at magazine pictures that showed the kitchen all white and shiny and plan how I’d make mine—someday.” Mrs. Cooper had not been able to realize her dream “in the place we used to live. The kitchen was dark and musty, with nothing but an old gas range and a dilapidated wooden ice box that wouldn’t keep anything cold.” Mrs. Cooper claimed ownership of her new apartment in public housing by decorating the kitchen entirely in red and white. She put up homemade curtains, covered her shelves with paper, and carpeted her floor.14
Women with more limited means still sought to create respectable and comfortable homes for their families. Mrs. Felton Reddy took great pride in the working bathtub in her new apartment. “We had our own bath in the old place,” she explained, “but no hot water. . . . Since we had to heat all our bath water on the gas range we couldn’t take many baths; it cost too much.” Mrs. Reddy told the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin that she bathed her five children daily in her new apartment at Richard Allen and sometimes gave them baths twice a day in warm weather.15 Her bathing routine served as a key marker of respectability that signaled her commitment to raising her children properly in public housing.
Women viewed the cultivation of community relationships as an essential part of their efforts to turn public housing into real homes. As in other neighborhoods, many of them formed close relationships with other mothers who lived nearby, shopping together and exchanging food, clothing, and child care. In 1955, shortly after moving into Raymond Rosen, Dorothy Medley described the bonds she had formed: “The neighbors here are all wonderful, after you have been here for a couple of months you feel as if you have known them all of your life.”16 Some women participated in Mothers’ Clubs and encouraged their children to join Boys and Girls Clubs and Scout troops as well as sports and other recreational activities. The Department of Recreation ran playground activities in public housing, and the Free Library of Philadelphia operated two branch libraries, three extension libraries, and one bookmobile. With many mothers urging their families to make use of these facilities, in 1955 alone, tenants made 10,097 visits to the library at Richard Allen and 15,756 to the one at James Weldon Johnson.17
The energy and optimism that characterized public housing’s early years of operation proved difficult for tenants to sustain. Over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, morale began to plummet as public housing became increasingly run-down, dangerous, and conflict-ridden. This transformation in public housing occurred at the very same time that the tenant population began to change, with more African Americans, women, and the poor gaining admission. Although authorities often blamed these new tenants for the changing conditions, many of the problems that developed had little to do with tenants’ economic status, race, or gender. Problems began to develop in the early 1950s, when many upwardly mobile families still lived in public housing, and they developed similarly among African Americans and whites. In some sites, the problems began to appear after only a few years of operation. Certainly some tenants broke rules and disrespected public and private spaces. Yet many authorities’ adopted a top-down management style, fueled by a strong bureaucratic emphasis on the need to maintain a respectable image of public housing and a profound distrust of tenants. Their approach helped to gradually erode tenants’ affinity for public housing. The lack of funds devoted to the upkeep of public housing and decisions about site selection also played a critical role in fostering the decline in the standard of living. Yet it was much cheaper and more politically expedient to place the blame for public housing’s problems on tenants than it was for authorities to acknowledge and remedy the flaws in their policies.
The growing disaffection among tenants stemmed in part from their interactions with local staff members. Women in particular frequently encountered the PHA’s on-site staff of managers, assistant managers, management aides, and maintenance workers whose job was to care for public housing but who often worked at cross-purposes from tenants.18 The staff’s main responsibility was to collect rent and keep properties running smoothly and in good condition. As in other public institutions, staff members differed significantly in their approaches to their jobs, with some exhibiting more respect for tenants than others. Black staff members were not necessarily more sympathetic to black tenants than white staff members, nor were women always more understanding than men. All managers had to follow policy directives from the central office and they could also create rules to meet specific needs. From the tenants’ perspective, what stood out was the sheer number of rules, and the demoralizing and sometimes demeaning enforcement practices. Some staff members tried very hard to help tenants when they faced difficulties, but tenants had virtually no voice in public housing’s operations. Most managers neither consulted tenants before implementing new policies nor solicited their suggestions.19 Theresa Davenport, a tenant at Richard Allen, described clashing with her manager whose “theme song” was “if you don’t like it, get out.”20
The PHA enforced strict housekeeping policies targeted at female tenants. Intended to ensure that the conditions of public housing did not deteriorate, these policies often undermined women’s abilities to feel that their apartments were their own. Most notoriously, staff members conducted surprise biannual household inspections. If tenants were not home, the staff let themselves in with pass keys. Myrna Coulter protested: “They come in any time they want.”21 Women who were home when the staff members arrived described a wide range of experiences. Marcelle Blackwell recalled female staff members coming into her apartment, having a “cup of tea,” and talking amicably about coming events at Raymond Rosen.22 Other women complained about staff who inspected much more thoroughly, turning down bedspreads to make sure beds had clean sheets, checking under cupboards for vermin, and judging the cleanliness of toilets and walls. Many women particularly resented the staff evaluating the neatness of their apartments. If they failed to wash their breakfast dishes, pick up toys, or make the beds, they could receive poor grades. Emma Taylor’s apartment at Richard Allen received a rating of “fair” when it was inspected because she had certain household chores that she required her children to perform each day and if they did not complete the chores before going to school in the morning, she purposely left the tasks unfinished. The staff member, Alice Moore, refused to take Mrs. Taylor’s explanation into account and lowered her score on account of her children’s mess. Several of Mrs. Taylor’s neighbors shared deep misgivings about Mrs. Moore. Barbara Watson observed that if Mrs. Moore could not “find anything wrong with your place, she starts pulling the beds apart and poking around until she finds something.” Mrs. Taylor agreed that Mrs. Moore never “builds you up—always tears you down.”23
Some women complained that managers’ concern with the outward appearance of public housing sabotaged their attempts to create orderly and aesthetically pleasing apartments. Laundry became one of the biggest sources of contention. Many women avoided drying their laundry on the racks in the courtyards, which were often falling apart or located in heavily trafficked areas where clothes got dirtied by children playing. Managers infuriated women by prohibiting them from hanging their laundry out of their windows to dry, a sight that could tarnish public housing’s “respectable” image. Unable to hang wet clothes outside, women had to drape them on the furniture in their apartments or on the stair rails in the hallways. Women wanted their homes to feel inviting, and the wet clothes hanging in and around their apartments were an eyesore. Mothers of asthmatic children, who needed to avoid damp conditions, complained that their inability to hang their clothes out of the windows threatened their families’ health.24
Some managers prevented tenants from personalizing and claiming ownership of the exteriors of their homes. Perhaps nowhere was this more clearly evident than at Raymond Rosen in the late 1950s, when a nearby factory burned down and tenants in the low-rises reused its bricks to edge their lawns. Members of each family made several trips to the factory, carrying armfuls of heavy bricks. They believed that the aesthetic payoffs made their labor worthwhile, reporting that their lawns edged with bricks looked “beautiful,” especially when viewed in a row. Raymond Rosen’s manager did not agree. Without consulting the tenants, he sent trucks to take the bricks away. Tenants stood powerlessly, while maintenance workers dug up their gardens before their eyes. The conflict shattered tenants’ sense of ownership of their surroundings. “It was as if the management staff told us, ‘We’re letting you live here out of charity,’ ” explained Marcelle Blackwell. “We no longer felt that the apartments were really ours.”25
The lack of adequate funding for public housing further diminished tenants’ appreciation of their homes. An amendment to the 1937 Wagner-Steagall Act, written by Harry Byrd, the Democratic Senator from Virginia, implemented strict spending restrictions on all new construction.26 The United States Housing Authority (USHA) pushed cities to reduce costs even further by requiring local authorities to remove all of the “frills” and design innovations from their plans for new public housing.27 These federal restrictions on construction expenditures weighed heavily on tenants. Over time, many of them ceased remarking on the luxuries in public housing and began to complain about its inadequacies. Concrete floors were extremely cold, and closets without doors had to be in perfect order or else their contents spilled out onto the floors. Without dining rooms, families had to eat in their living rooms. The inadequate cupboard space forced many women to store canned food, dishes, and utensils in their bedrooms. Buildings lacked finished basements for storage, so tricycles, bicycles, and baby carriages usually ended up in the hallways or lodged in the tiny living rooms.28 Tenants in older buildings resented not having on-site laundry facilities, and residents who had them found them expensive and insufficient because members of the surrounding community frequently made use of them.29
The dearth of facilities for children weighed heavily on mothers. Play areas rarely had enough equipment or space. At Raymond Rosen, the two hundred-seat auditorium provided the only indoor recreation space for five thousand tenants. The PHA did not construct a gymnasium at Raymond Rosen because authorities assumed that tenants would be able to use the recreation facilities at the school across the street and at a nearby public recreation center. However, the school did not organize community programs in the afternoons or evenings, and the recreation center was already overcrowded and could not accommodate the thousands of new children from Raymond Rosen. Richard Allen had only two sets of swings and two jungle gyms for its three thousand children. With the nearest public recreation center one mile away and no public parks nearby, children from the surrounding neighborhood also relied on Richard Allen’s facilities.30 In 1952, Richard Allen tenants became so frustrated that they raised funds to install a recreation center and gymnasium in the basement of a nearby church.31
The dwindling resources available for the upkeep of public housing had similarly deleterious effects on tenants’ morale. Local authorities used the income they collected in rents to pay for salaries, utility bills, maintenance work, and modernization. When tenants’ incomes were high, as they were during World War II, securing funding to keep public housing running smoothly was not difficult. However, as the number of two-parent, steadily employed families in public housing declined and the number of poor families increased, the income that the PHA collected from rents dwindled. At the same time, public housing became more expensive to maintain. Buildings and appliances aged, requiring costly repairs and upgrades.32 As the booming postwar consumer economy made ranges and refrigerators considered luxurious in the early 1940s antiquated by the 1950s, tenants wished for newer items.33 With little money to spend on upkeep, the PHA restricted the painting of the interior walls in public housing to every four years, even when apartments changed hands. Some tenants had to do the painting themselves. Families moving into apartments with marked-up walls and outmoded appliances did not view public housing as an inviting place to live.34
Fueling tenants’ growing alienation, managers conserved funds by forcing them to bear some of the costs of public housing’s operations. Rents included utilities, but when a manager suspected that a family was using too much electricity, he installed a meter in their apartment and charged them for any use he deemed “excessive.” In order to avoid getting stuck with extra electricity bills, some tenants felt compelled to turn off their lights and go to bed early in the evenings.35 When apartments needed repairs, the PHA typically paid only for relatively inexpensive problems such as busted locks and broken electric switches. Tenants usually had to pay for more expensive repairs and damage deemed to have been caused by their “heedlessness,” such as smashed windows, out-of-order toilets, and broken doors. They also had to pay for damage caused by bad weather or other people. Tenants were angry about the expense of repairs, especially since the management prevented them from fixing problems themselves or shopping around for the cheapest handymen.36
The PHA’s meager expenditures on public spaces inspired similar resentment. When public housing first opened, many tenants tried to keep the exteriors clean. “One of the most spick-and-span spots in Philadelphia these days is the Richard Allen Homes,” reported the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, five years after it opened. “What little trash blows around there blows in from the outside and the residents are justifiably proud of the appearance of the area.”37 In an area of only eight city blocks, Richard Allen housed 6,100 people, over three thousand of them children. Yet tenants took such good care of their surroundings that Richard Allen won an award from Philadelphia’s Chamber of Commerce and Sanitation Squad for being one of the cleanest spots in the city. Women carefully swept the hallways outside their apartments; reporters noted that in “not a single hallway entered was there any accumulation of trash or even dust.”38 Although not every tenant maintained these high standards, the community ethos in support of cleanliness created generally neat and pleasant public spaces. Tenants in the new public housing that opened in Philadelphia in the 1950s similarly prided themselves on their clean and well-maintained surroundings.39
Yet alongside these accounts praising public housing’s high standard of living lay evidence of the seeds of future decline. On several premises, the PHA did not support tenants’ efforts to maintain public spaces. When people put graffiti on the walls, littered, or vandalized the premises, managers rarely provided much assistance in repairing the damage. One 1957 inspection found the landscape around Richard Allen Homes plagued by “erosion, water pockets, inadequate drainage, irregular surfacing, spindley [sic] plantings, makeshift fencing, [and] bare muddy spots.” At Norris, water and urine had accumulated in the stairwells, creating a terrible stench. Even Raymond Rosen had begun to show signs of disrepair after only two years of operation.40
Adding to these problems, authorities often located public housing in troubled areas, seeming not to recognize that the boundaries between public housing and these neighborhoods were permeable. During the late 1950s, crime and drug selling became part of life in some of the city’s public housing, and the PHA became particularly concerned about the high-rises. “Problems in high-rise structures are mounting,” observed PHA executive director Walter E. Alessandroni in 1958. “There is vandalism from outsiders who get into the projects, which have no proper supervision, and nobody is willing to give [the] authority money to do the policing job. Women are raped.” Some women began to avoid going out at night because they feared for their safety. In 1958, at Norris, when a group of people waiting for an elevator got frustrated because it was slow to arrive, they yanked the door loose and dropped it down the shaft. Nobody called the police for fear of retaliation.41 By the 1960s, although African Americans, and especially single mothers, continued to apply for public housing in large numbers because their options in the private market remained limited, many began to doubt that it would improve their lives demonstrably. Once a source of tremendous pride and hope, public housing increasingly became a reflection of their degradation.