NOTES

Introduction

1. Broadly, the literature on European social housing takes one of two approaches: the convergence school (emphasizing similarities in response to continent-wide developments) and the divergence school (emphasizing differences in welfare systems grounded in social and cultural heritages, particularly between the continental and Anglo-Saxon countries). For convergence, see Michael Harloe, The People’s Home?: Social Rented Housing in Europe and America, Studies in Urban and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995); Bill Edgar, Joe Doherty, and Henk Meert, Access to Housing: Homelessness and Vulnerability in Europe (Bristol: Policy Press, 2002); and Christine M. E. Whitehead and Kathleen Scanlon, Social Housing in Europe (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2007). For divergence, see Jim Kemeny, The Myth of Home-Ownership: Private versus Public Choices in Housing Tenure (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Jim Kemeny, From Public Housing to the Social Market: Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 1995).

2. Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970); Katharine G. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 3 (May 1991); D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); William Peterman, “Public Housing Resident Management: A Good Idea Gone Wrong?,” Shelterforce, November/December 1993.

3. Monica Davey, “In a Soaring Homicide Rate, a Divide in Chicago,” New York Times, 2 January 2013; Susan J. Popkin, Michael J. Rich, Leah Hendey, Chris Hayes, and Joe Parilla, Public Housing Transformation and Crime: Making the Case for Responsible Relocation (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2012).

4. Chad Freidrichs, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, State Historical Society of Missouri/First Run Features, 2011.

5. Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934); H. Warren Dunham and Nathan D. Grundstein, “The Impact of a Confusion of Social Objectives on Public Housing: A Preliminary Analysis,” Marriage and Family Living 17, no. 2 (1955); Catherine Bauer, “The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing,” originally published 1957, repr. in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1985); John P. Catt, “Experts Critical of Public Housing,” New York Times, 20 July 1958; William Moore, Jr., The Vertical Ghetto: Everyday Life in an Urban Project (New York: Random House, 1969); David K. Shipler, “Troubles Beset Public Housing across Nation,” New York Times, 12 October 1969; Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls; George S. Sternlieb and Bernard P. Indik, The Ecology of Welfare: Housing and the Welfare Crisis in New York City (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1973); Rachel G. Bratt, “Public Housing: The Controversy and Contribution,” in Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Rachel G. Bratt, Chester W. Hartman, and Ann Meyerson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); William E. Schmidt, “Public Housing: For Workers or the Needy?,” New York Times, 17 April 1990; Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (New York: Doubleday, 1991); Michael H. Schill, “Distressed Public Housing: Where Do We Go from Here?,” University of Chicago Law Review 60, no. 2 (1993); A. Scott Henderson, “ ‘Tarred with the Exceptional Image’: Public Housing and Popular Discourse, 1950–1990,” American Studies 36, no. 1 (1995); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Bradford McKee, “Public Housing’s Last Hope,” Architecture 86, no. 8 (1997); Lewis H. Spence, “Rethinking the Social Role of Public Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 4, no. 3 (1998); John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Howard Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).

6. D. Bradford Hunt, “How Did Public Housing Survive the 1950s?,” Journal of Policy History 17, no. 2 (2005); Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster; Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth”; Edward G. Goetz, New Deal Ruins: The Dismantling of Public Housing in the U.S. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

7. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961). For a discussion of Jacobs’s earlier writings, see Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch, Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Boston: David R. Godine, 2009); and Anthony Flint, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (New York: Random House, 2009); Bauer, “The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing.”

8. Oscar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design (New York: Collier Books, 1973); Oscar Newman, Community of Interest (New York: Doubleday, 1980); Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Karen A. Franck and Michael Mostoller, “From Courts to Open Space to Streets: Changes in the Site Design of U.S. Public Housing,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 12, no. 3 (1995).

9. Goetz, New Deal Ruins; Larry Keating, “Redeveloping Public Housing: Relearning Urban Renewal’s Immutable Lessons,” Journal of the American Planning Association 66, no. 4 (2000).

10. Donald Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake; Bess Furman, “ ‘Socialistic’ Tag on Housing Hit,” New York Times, 10 June 1955.

11. J.S. Fuerst and D. Bradford Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster; Radford, Modern Housing for America; Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects; Lawrence J. Vale, Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). For liberal scholars’ dismissal of public housing as tainted by urban renewal, see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Peter Marcuse, “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 12, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 240–58; Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Bauman, Biles, and Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes.

12. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Edward Goetz, Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2003); Goetz, New Deal Ruins; Vale, Reclaiming Public Housing; Lawrence Vale, Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). For accounts that focus narrowly on poverty and pathos, see Moore, The Vertical Ghetto; Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls; Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here; Susan J. Popkin, The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000).

13. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, 40.

14. Mary Schmich, “Reshaping a Neighborhood,” Chicago Tribune, 4 July 2004.

15. Nicola Mann, “The Death and Resurrection of Chicago’s Public Housing in the American Imagination” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2011), 387.

16. David Fleming, “Subjects of the Inner City: Writing the People of Cabrini-Green,” in Towards a Rhetoric of Everyday Life, ed. Martin Nystrand and John Duffy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 232.

17. “Perspective: Inner-City School Has Come Around,” Chicago Tribune, 21 June 1974; Robert Young, “U.S. to Rehabilitate Public Housing,” Chicago Tribune, 11 July 1978; “Not Everyone Feels Defeated,” Chicago Tribune, 7 May 1982; Stanley Ziemba, “Study Pushes Tenant Ownership of Cabrini-Green,” Chicago Tribune, 8 October 1987; Steve Kerch, “Best of Chicago Needs Diverse Eye for Full Expression,” Chicago Tribune, 6 June 1999.

18. “Cracking Chicago’s Wall of Shame,” Chicago Tribune, 25 July 1988.

19. Wallace Turner, “San Francisco Tackling ‘Den of Thieves’ Project,” New York Times, 30 July 1981.

20. These charts use LexisNexis as a search engine and encompass about 40 sources—every newspaper for which the service provides continuous coverage for the full period between 1993 and 2010.

21. For a more extended discussion of public housing stigma, see Lawrence J. Vale, “The Imaging of the City: Public Housing and Communication,” Communication Research 22, no. 6 (1995): 646–63; and Lawrence J. Vale, “Destigmatizing Public Housing,” in Geography and Identity: Living and Exploring the Geopolitics of Identity, ed. Dennis Crow (Washington, DC: Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies/Maisonneuve Press, 1996).

22. National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing, The Final Report of the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992).

23. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, 42–43.

24. Michael Katz, Why Don’t American Cities Burn? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 157–58.

Myth #1: Public Housing Stands Alone

1. Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970); William Moore, Jr., The Vertical Ghetto: Everyday Life in an Urban Slum (New York: Random House, 1969).

2. Richard D. Bingham, Public Housing and Urban Renewal: An Analysis of Federal-Local Relations (New York: Praeger, 1975).

3. Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

4. Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States (London: Routledge, 2006), 125–26.

5. Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 85–102.

6. J.S. Fuerst and D. Bradford Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Joseph Heathcott, “In the Nature of a Clinic: The Design of Early Public Housing,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, no. 1 (March 2011).

7. “Four Vast Housing Projects for St. Louis: Helmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, Inc.,” Architectural Record 120, no. 2 (August 1956): 182–89.

8. Harland Bartholomew to Mayor Joseph Darst, 27 July 1949, Housing File, 1945–1951, series 1, box 24, Raymond Tucker Papers, Washington University Special Collection.

9. D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

10. John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

11. Alexander von Hoffman, “A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the 1949 Housing Act,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 299–323.

12. For the argument on massive slum clearance, see The 1947 Comprehensive Plan (St. Louis, MO: City Plan Commission, 1947).

13. Study reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27 April 1945. Also see Plan Commission Annual Report, 1944–1945 (St. Louis, MO: City Plan Commission, 1945), 16.

14. Becky Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, eds., The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006), 257–58.

15. Joseph Heathcott, “The City Quietly Remade: National Programs and Local Agendas in the Movement to Clear the Slums, 1942–1952,” Journal of Urban History 34, no. 2 (2008): 221–42.

16. “Slum Surgery in St. Louis,” Architectural Forum 94 (April 1951): 128–36.

17. Eugene J. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking: Programmed Failure in Public Housing (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1979), 66–69.

18. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

19. Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 22, 41–44.

20. Gordon, Mapping Decline, 225; Daniel J. Monti, Race, Redevelopment, and the New Company Town (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990).

21. Barbara R. Williams, St. Louis: A City and Its Suburbs. (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 1973), 25–28.

22. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

23. Lee Rainwater, “The Lessons of Pruitt-Igoe,” Public Interest 8 (Summer 1967): 116–26; Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 66–69.

24. scar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design (New York: Macmillan, 1972).

25. James Bailey, “The Case History of a Failure,” Architectural Forum 123 (December 1965): 23; Peter Blake, Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn’t Worked (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little, Brown, 1977); Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977); Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981).

26. Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

27. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 137–44.

28. Susan J. Popkin, et al., The Hidden War: Crime and Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000); Neil Websdale, Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001).

29. Katharine G. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 3 (May 1991): 163.

30. Minoru Yamasaki, “High Buildings for Public Housing?” Journal of Housing 9 (1952): 226; Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 71.

31. Alexander von Hoffman, “Why They Built Pruitt-Igoe,” in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000), 180–205.

32. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” 171.

33. Jane Holtz Kay, “Architecture: Pruitt-Igoe Project,” The Nation 217, no. 9 (September 1973): 284–86.

34. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 77.

35. Gordon, Mapping Decline, 10–11, 53–57, 214–16.

36. Florian Urban, Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing (London: Routledge, 2011).

37. Henry Schmandt and George Wendel, The Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing Complex, 1954–1976 (St. Louis, MO: Center for Urban Programs, Saint Louis University, 1976).

38. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 83–84.

39. Gordon, Mapping Decline, 189–95.

40. Howard Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).

41. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 77.

42. Henry G. Cisneros and Lora Engdahl, eds., From Despair to Hope: HOPE VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009).

43. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 143–52; William J. Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

44. Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 221–31, 289–91.

45. Nicholas D. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

46. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 77.

47. Radford, Modern Housing for America, 107–09; Joseph Heathcott, “Score One for Modernism,” Planning 72, no. 11 (December 2006): 42.

48. Roger Montgomery, Comment on “Fear and the House-as-Haven in the Lower Class,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 32, no. 1 (1966): 31–37.

49. Ibid.

50. Mary Comerio, “Pruitt-Igoe and Other Stories,” Journal of Architectural Education 34, no. 4 (1981): 26–31.

51. Gordon, Mapping Decline, 53–57, 168, 219.

52. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” 163–71.

Myth #2: Modernist Architecture Failed Public Housing

1. On the phrase “warehousing the poor,” see David Fleming, City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 154 and chap. 6. In 1990, the chair of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) described its projects as “little more than warehouses for the poor”; see New York Times, 17 April 1990. On the general public’s ambivalence toward housing the poor, see Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

2. The idea that architecture and planning determine outcomes in housing projects is implied in major works on the history of housing. See, for example, Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 218–21. For other critics of architectural modernism, see Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977). For a review of the literature on modernist architects as planners, see Nicholas Dagen Bloom, “Architects, Architecture, and Planning,” Journal of Planning History 7, no. 1 (2008): 72–79.

3. Catherine Bauer, “The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing,” originally published 1957, repr. in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1985); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961; repr., New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992); Oscar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design (New York: Macmillan, 1972); Oscar Newman, Community of Interest (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1980); Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981).

4. Mary Comerio and Katharine Bristol were the first to make this argument; see Mary C. Comerio, “Pruitt-Igoe and Other Stories,” Journal of Architectural Education 34, no. 4 (January 1981): 25–31; Katharine G. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 3 (May 1991): 163–71. See also Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 168–70. Garvin writes: “It is wrong to blame the failure of public housing on inadequate design or quality of construction. . . . The real explanation for the failure of specific public-housing projects involves fiscal policies, tenant selection procedures, maintenance practices, and project management.”

5. Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

6. This chapter draws heavily from the author’s work Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

7. Martin Meyerson and Edward C. Banfield, Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest: The Case of Public Housing in Chicago (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1955); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (1983; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

8. Alexander Polikoff, Waiting for Gautreaux (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006).

9. Chicago Tribune, 30 November 1986; Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here (New York: Doubleday, 1991). For other stories of growing up in public housing, see LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, with David Isay, Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago (New York: Scribner, 1997).

10. The Reagan administration had come close to talking over the CHA in both 1982 and 1987, following scathing reports of mismanagement, but HUD ultimately balked at the challenges involved.

11. Lawrence J. Vale, Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Janet Smith, “The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation,” in Where Are Poor People to Live? Transforming Public Housing Communities, ed. Larry Bennett, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 93–124.

12. CHA, Plan for Transformation, 6 January 2000; Susan J. Popkin, Michael J. Rich, Leah Hendey, Chris Hayes, and Joe Parilla, Public Housing Transformation and Crime: Making the Case for Responsible Relocation (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2012).

13. Mark L. Joseph, Robert J. Chaskin, and Henry S. Webber, “The Theoretical Basis for Addressing Poverty through Mixed-Income Development,” Urban Affairs Review 42, no. 3 (2007): 369–409.

14. CHA Executive Secretary Elizabeth Wood to Alderman George D. Kells, 21 September 1945, City Council file, CHA Subject files, CHA archives. (Note: The CHA maintains control over its historical records, and they are available only through FOIA requests. Photocopies of the documents cited in this article are in the author’s possession.)

15. “Experiment in Multi-Story Housing,” The Journal of Housing, October 1951, 367–69; Julian Whittlesley, “New Dimensions in Housing Design,” Progressive Architecture, April 1951, 57–68.

16. Public Housing Administration (PHA), “Low-Rent Public Housing: Planning, Design, and Construction for Economy,” December 1950. Four years earlier, federal housing officials issued a 294-page publication entitled Public Housing Design: A Review of Experience in Low-Rent Housing; it makes only the barest mention of elevator buildings (see p. 100). In a separate federal study, Livability Problems of 1,000 Families (PHA, 1945), public housing residents did express a preference for one- or two-story structures rather than apartments in multistory buildings. The files of federal officials at this time rarely discussed high-rise design and instead displayed an obsession with costs. For example, see “Address by John Taylor Egan, Commissioner, Public Housing Administration, at the 17th Annual Conference of the National Association of Housing Officials, Detroit, MI, October 16–19, 1950,” box 10, Miscellaneous Records of the Liaison Division, Record Group 196, National Archives II.

17. PHA, “Low-Rent Public Housing”; Catherine Bauer to Gilbert Rodier, 7 February 1952, box 4, outgoing correspondence, Catherine Bauer Wurster Papers, University of California, Berkeley.

18. Elizabeth Wood, “The Case for the Low Apartment,” Architectural Forum, January 1952, 102.

19. Douglas Haskell, “The Case for the High Apartment,” Architectural Forum, January 1952, 103–6.

20. Chicago Sun-Times, 4 September 1957; Daily News (Chicago), 8 March 1958; Chicago Tribune, 31 October 1958; telephone interview with Henry F. Leweling (former CHA planner), 13 August 1998, notes in author’s possession.

21. Comparing public housing total development costs with suburban housing costs was somewhat misleading, however. Public housing had to absorb greater site costs associated with slum clearance.

22. D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), chap. 5.

23. For an example of environmental determinism, see CHA, “Children’s Cities” (pamphlet), 1945.

24. CHA, Monthly Report, April 1955, available at the Chicago Public Library; CHA to Mayor Richard J. Daley, 19 July 1957, in Mayor’s folder, CHA Subject files, CHA archives; CHA, Official Minutes, 6 December 1957, CHA files, CHA archives.

25. CHA, Annual Statistical Reports, 1951–1960, available at the Chicago Public Library. The CHA’s files are shockingly silent on the shift to larger apartments. Basic planning decisions were driven largely by crude, macrolevel understandings of housing need rather than targeted market surveys. Moreover, the decision to program for large families appears driven more by waiting lists than community planning. By the mid-1950s, the CHA was having trouble finding tenants for its small apartments, while its waiting list for large ones soared. In one three-month period in 1957, the CHA reported that fourteen hundred families rejected offers of two-bedroom units at various projects (though the CHA specified neither which projects were rejected by applicants nor the race of the applicants who rejected them). See Chicago Tribune, 14 January 1958.

26. Youth density is nearly absent from the literature on planning and public housing. For early hints at the problem, see Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Housing and Social Structure: A Preliminary Survey,” reproduced by the Philadelphia Housing Association, 1952, 89; Richard S. Scobie, Problem Tenants in Public Housing: Who, Where, and Why Are They? (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975), 63; Clare Cooper Marcus and Robin C. Moore, “Children and Their Environments: A Review of Research,” Journal of Architectural Education 29, no. 4 (April 1976): 22–25. Extensive research in the 1970s asked how children adapted to high-rise buildings and public project grounds, especially in Great Britain and Canada. See E. W. Cooney, “High Flats in Local Authority Housing in England and Wales since 1945,” in Multi-Storey Living, the British Working Class Experience, ed. Anthony Sutcliffe (London: Croom Helm, 1974), 161; City of Vancouver, Housing Families at High Densities (Vancouver, BC: Vancouver Planning Department, 1978), 11, 17, 26; Pearl Jephcott, Homes in High Flats (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1971), 65–67; Alice Coleman, Utopia on Trial: Vision and Reality in Planned Housing (London: Hilary Shipman, 1985), 180. Coleman recommends that “there should not be more than one child under 15 per six adults aged 20 or more in a block of flats.” This translates to a youth density of roughly 0.3.

27. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1960, Final Report PHC(1)-26, Census Tracts for Chicago, IL, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, table P-1.

28. CHA, Annual Statistical Reports, 1964–1965, Chicago Public Library. In standard deviation terms, youth-adult ratios in Chicago census tracts containing mostly public housing were 1.9 to 6.3 standard deviations away from the mean in 1960, showing the “off-the-charts” nature of the CHA’s youth demographics. The standard deviation calculation uses a definition of youth as 18 or under, due to limitations in census data (at the tract level). See U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1960, Final Report PHC(1)-26, Census Tracts for Chicago, IL, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, table P-1. See also Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, chap. 6.

29. CHA, Annual Statistical Reports, 1965–1975, Chicago Public Library.

30. Chicago Defender, 30 November 1963, 14 December 1963, 15 January 1964, 22 January 1964, 28 January 1964, 4 February 1964, 25 February 1964, 9 March 1964, 31 March 1964, 2 May 1964, and 30 May 1964; Chicago Tribune, 27 February 1964.

31. For more on collective efficacy, see the work of Robert Sampson, especially Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Note that even in Sampson’s work, youth densities are either unexamined or taken as a given.

32. Daily News (Chicago), 25 April 1959; Mary Wirth, “Interview—Mr. Joe Ford, Supervisor, Robert Taylor Park, Chicago Park District,” 18 February 1965, in Mary Bolton Wirth Papers, University of Chicago Special Collections; Alvin Rose to C. L. Farris, 9 December 1960, “Authorities—Miscellaneous” folder, CHA Subject files, CHA archives; Chicago Defender, 14 May 1963, 14 December 1963, 6 January 1964, 13 March 1965; Chicago Tribune, 9 September 1963, 9 September 1965; Gus Master to William Bergeron, 8 June 1967, CHA Development files, IL 2–37, CHA archives. See also, William Mullen, “The Road to Hell,” Chicago Tribune Magazine, 31 March 1985.

33. Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, chap. 6.

34. CHA, Annual Statistical Reports, 1965–1980, Chicago Public Library; Robert Schafer, Operating Subsidies for Public Housing: A Critical Appraisal of the Formula Approach (Boston: Citizens Housing and Planning Association of Metropolitan Boston, 1975).

35. Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Roberta Feldman and Susan Stall, The Dignity of Resistance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets (New York: Penguin, 2008); Doreen Ambrose-Van Lee, Diary of a MidWestern Getto Gurl (Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2007).

36. William Moore, Jr., The Vertical Ghetto: Everyday Life in an Urban Project (New York: Random House 1969), xv; New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), “Project Data, Characteristics of Tenants as of January 1, 1968,” in NYCHA Archives, LaGuardia Community College. NYCHA figures are for all federal projects, including senior projects, but they were a small fraction of the NYCHA inventory in 1968.

37. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 1968 HUD Statistical Yearbook (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 269.

38. C. Peter Rydell, Factors Affecting Maintenance and Operating Costs in Federal Public Housing Projects, Report R-634-NYC (New York: The Rand Institute, 1970); Frank de Leeuw, “Operating Costs in Public Housing: A Financial Crisis” (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1970).

39. Generally, the criminology literature makes a strong link between declining numbers of youth and reductions in crime. See Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, The Crime Drop in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). However, a sociology dissertation using NYCHA crime data found a strong link between concentrated poverty and crime but did not find a link between youth density and crime. See Tamara Dumanovsky, “Crime in Poor Places: Examining the Neighborhood Context of New York City’s Public Housing Projects” (PhD diss., New York University, 1999).

40. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; Newman, Defensible Space. Jacobs intuitively understood youth density as a planning issue, noting on p. 82 that “planners do not seem to realize how high a ratio of adults is needed to rear children at incidental play. . . . Only people rear children and assimilate them into civilized society.”

Myth #3: Public Housing Breeds Crime

1. Howard Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 1.

2. Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 152; Garth Davies, Crime, Neighborhood, and Public Housing (New York: LFB Scholarly Pub., 2006), 7.

3. Hanna Rosin, “American Murder Mystery,” in Best American Crime Reporting 2009, ed. Jeffrey Toobin, Otto Penzler, and Thomas H. Cook (New York: Ecco, 2009).

4. Fritz Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops: The Rise and Fall of Community Policing in New York Public Housing (Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), chap. 1.

5. Brill and Associates, “Victimization, Fear of Crime, and Altered Behavior: A Profile of the Crime Problem in Capper Dwellings” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1977); Brill and Associates, “Victimization, Fear of Crime, and Altered Behavior: A Profile of the Crime Problem in Murphy Homes, Baltimore, Maryland” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1977); Brill and Associates, “Victimization, Fear of Crime, and Altered Behavior: A Profile of the Crime Problem in Four Housing Projects in Boston” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1975); Brill and Associates, “Victimization, Fear of Crime, and Altered Behavior: A Profile of the Crime Problem in William Nickerson Gardens, Los Angeles, California” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1976); Brill and Associates, “Victimization, Fear of Crime, and Altered Behavior: A Profile of the Crime Problem in Scott/Carver Homes, Dade County, Florida” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1977); Harold R. Holzman, Karl Roger Kudrick, and Kenneth P. Voytek, “Measuring Crime in Public Housing: Methodological Issues and Research Strategies,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 14, no. 4 (1998): 331; Oscar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design (New York: Collier Books, 1973).

6. Minorities and the poor disproportionately live in public housing developments (PHDs); surveys consistently identify these groups as more likely to be victimized. Victim data found at http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4494; current resident data found at http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/systems/pic/50058/rcr; Dennis W. Roncek, Ralph Bell, and Jeffrey Francik, “Housing Projects and Crime: Testing a Proximity Hypothesis,” Social Problems 29, no. 2 (1982); John E. Farley, “Has Public Housing Gotten a Bum Rap?,” Environment and Behavior 14, no. 4 (1982); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (1983; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

7. Crime mapping, obviously, neither requires GIS nor commenced with its arrival; however, the labor such mapping required before GIS did discourage researchers. See Keith Hayword, “Five Spaces of Cultural Criminology,” The British Journal of Criminology 52, no. 3 (2012). For GIS limitations, see Jeffrey Fagan et al., “Crime in Public Housing: Clarifying Research Issues,” National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 235 (1998): 4.

8. For periodization in public housing, see Edward G. Goetz, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), chap. 1. For the phrase “severe distress,” see Lawrence Vale, “Beyond the Problem Projects Paradigm: Defining and Revitalizing ‘Severely Distressed’ Public Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 4, no. 2 (1993).

9. For Pruitt–Igoe crime, see Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970), 16, 35, 239–40. See also Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); John Herbers, “The Case History of a Housing Failure,” New York Times, 2 November 1970. For progressive scholars’ intentions and impact, see Roger Montgomery, “Review Symposium: Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum,” Urban Affairs Review 7, no. 109 (1971); Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 201. For Pruitt–Igoe as stand-in, see Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 19.

10. Oscar Newman, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design (New York, NY; Macmillan Press, 1972). Katharine G. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 3 (May 1991).

11. Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops.

12. Newman, Defensible Space; Joy Ruth Knoblauch, “Going Soft: Architecture and the Human Sciences in Search of New Institutional Forms (1963–1974)” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012), chap. 3; Jack Rosenthal, “Housing Study: High Rise = High Crime,” New York Times, 26 October 1972.

13. Newman, Defensible Space, 25.

14. Knoblauch, “Going Soft,” 124.

15. D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

16. Knoblauch, “Going Soft,” 124–25 and 114; Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 155.

17. Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, 137–46.

18. Ibid. For more recent analysis of screening’s impact on safety, see Larry Buron et al., “Interim Assessment of the HOPE VI Program Cross-Site Report” (Bethesda, MD: Abt Associates, 2003). For eviction, see Justin Ready, Lorraine Green Mazerolle, and Elyse Revere, “Getting Evicted from Public Housing: An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Eviction Decisions in Six Public Housing Sites,” Crime Prevention Studies 9 (1998).

19. W. Victor Rouse, Crime in Public Housing: A Review of Major Issues and Selected Crime Reduction Strategies, vol. 1, A Report (Washington, DC: Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1978), 75.

20. 45 percent of tenants surveyed by HUD researchers at Baltimore’s Murphy Homes believed that tenant selection was a “serious,” “fairly serious,” or “very serious” cause of crime; only 11.8 percent identified “environmental improvements” as potentially useful. See Brill and Associates, “Victimization: Murphy Homes, Baltimore,” 43–44. For activism, see for example, Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, 127. For long-term tenants’ perceptions of tenants arriving after loosened screening, see Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 132.

21. Tamara Dumanovsky, “Crime in Poor Places: Examining the Neighborhood Context of New York City’s Public Housing Projects” (PhD diss., New York University, 1999), 90–115.

22. Harold R. Holzman, Tarl Roger Kudrick, and Kenneth P. Voytek, “Revisiting the Relationship between Crime and Architectural Design: An Analysis of Data from HUD’s 1994 Survey of Public Housing Residents,” Cityscape 2, no. 1 (February 1996): 107–26.

23. For Newman’s later work, see Rouse, Crime in Public Housing, vol. 1; and Oscar Newman, Housing Design and the Control of Behavior (New York: Doubleday, 1980). Newman later (and controversially) argued for quotas on welfare recipients and braided together socioeconomic factors and architectural details as drivers of PHD failure. See Oscar Newman, Community of Interest (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980).

24. James Q. Wilson & George L. Kelling, “Broken Windows,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1982; Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

25. For the failure of these efforts, see Anthony Pate, An Evaluation of the Urban Initiatives Anti-Crime Program: Final Report (Washington, DC: Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1984), chap. 2.

26. Harold R. Holzman, Tarl Roger Kudrick, and Kenneth P. Voytek, “Revisiting the Relationship between Crime and Architectural Design: An Analysis of Data from HUD’s 1994 Survey of Public Housing Residents,” Cityscape 2, no. 1 (February 1996): 107–26.

27. Brill and Associates, “Victimization: Capper Dwellings”; Brill and Associates, “Victimization: Murphy Homes, Baltimore.”

28. Ibid.

29. Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002).

30. Langley C. Keyes, Strategies and Saints: Fighting Drugs in Subsidized Housing (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1992), 28.

31. Farley, “Has Public Housing Gotten a Bum Rap?,” 463–64.

32. Roncek, Bell, and Francik, “Housing Projects and Crime,” 163.

33. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, chap. 1. For social isolation, see William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

34. Davies, Crime, Neighborhood, and Public Housing, 24.

35. Dumanovsky, “Crime in Poor Places,” 45.

36. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, chap. 2.

37. For the timing of crack’s arrival and a brief sketch of the consequences, see Roland Fryer et al., “Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine” (NBER Working Paper No. 11318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, May 2005).

38. Ann Mariano, “Kemp Wants Report on Drugs in Housing Projects,” Washington Post, 11 March 1989. Holzman, Kudrick, and Voytek, “Revisiting the Relationship between Crime and Architectural Design.”

39. The Police Foundation’s study of Denver and New Orleans public housing drug crime is discussed in Terence Dunworth and Aaron Saiger, Drugs and Crime in Public Housing: A Three-City Analysis (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 1994), 9–10. Dunworth and Saiger’s study itself addresses Los Angeles, Phoenix, and DC.

40. Alex Kotlowitz, “Urban Trauma: Day-to-Day Violence Takes a Terrible Toll on Inner-City Youth,” Wall Street Journal, 27 October 1987; Mercer L. Sullivan, “Getting Paid”: Youth Crime and Work in the Inner City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

41. Dunworth and Saiger, Drugs and Crime in Public Housing, 33.

42. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004); Jonathan Simon, Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010).

43. Dunworth and Saiger, Drugs and Crime in Public Housing, 30.

44. Adele V. Harrell and Caterina Gouvis Roman, Predicting Neighborhood Risk of Crime (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1994).

45. Dunworth and Saiger, Drugs and Crime in Public Housing, 30–38.

46. Harold R. Holzman, Robert A. Hyatt, and Joseph M. Dempster, “Patterns of Aggravated Assault in Public Housing: Mapping the Nexus of Offense, Place, Gender, and Race,” Violence against Women 7, no. 6 (June 2001): 662–84.

47. Ibid., 677.

48. Harold R. Holzman, Robert Hyatt, and Tarl Roger Kudrick, “Measuring Crime in and around Public Housing,” in Geographic Information Systems and Crime Analysis, ed. Fahui Wang (London: Idea Group Publishing, 2005), 324.

49. Ibid., 325.

50. For the persistence and power of such fears, see George Galster, Kathryn Pettit, Anna M. Santiago, and Peter Tatian, “The Impact of Supportive Housing on Neighborhood Crime Rates,” Journal of Urban Affairs 24, no. 3 (2002): 289–315.

51. Portions of this discussion taken from Davies, Crime, Neighborhood, and Public Housing, 24–25, 99, 156; Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, 144.

52. Steven R. Holloway and Thomas L. McNulty, “Contingent Urban Geographies of Violent Crime: Racial Segregation and the Impact of Public Housing in Atlanta,” Urban Geography 24, no. 3 (2003): 194–96.

53. Elizabeth Griffiths and George Tita, “Homicide in and around Public Housing: Is Public Housing a Hotbed, a Magnet, or a Generator of Violence for the Surrounding Community?,” Social Problems, 56, no. 3 (2009): 489–90.

54. Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, 2; Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn, 89.

55. This paragraph draws heavily upon Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, 144–47.

56. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, 42.

57. Dinzey-Flores’s research focuses on the intersection of public perceptions of project crime and public policy and so, understandably, her analysis of crime data from Puerto Rico is not a full-fledged statistical study. Notably, her analysis lacks the precision more recent GIS-enabled studies might insist upon. Zaire Dinzey-Flores, “Criminalizing Communities of Poor, Dark Women in the Caribbean: The Fight against Crime through Puerto Rico’s Public Housing,” Crime Prevention and Community Safety 13, no. 1 (2011): 53–73. Dinzey-Flores subjects her data to a more sophisticated analysis in “Fighting Crime, Constructing Segregation: Crime, Housing Policy, and the Social Brands of Puerto Rican Neighborhoods” (PhD Diss., University of Michigan, 2005).

58. Edward G. Goetz, “Where Have All the Towers Gone?: The Dismantling of Public Housing in U.S. Cities,” Journal of Urban Affairs 33, no. 3 (2011).

59. Studies suggest about 30 percent of former site residents will move back to the redesigned sites; of those who do not return, about 50 percent will move to other public housing, 30 percent will find housing with Section 8 vouchers, and 20 percent will either be evicted for lease violations or relocated without assistance. Xavier de Souza Briggs, Susan J. Popkin, and John M. Goering, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 42–43. Goetz, New Deal Ruins, 42.

60. Susan J. Popkin, “Beyond Crime Prevention: How the Transformation of Public Housing Has Changed the Policy Equation,” Criminology & Public Policy 3, no. 1 (2003): 47; Susan J. Popkin et al., The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000); Goetz, New Deal Ruins, 70–72.

61. Briggs, Popkin, and Goering, Moving to Opportunity, 47–50.

62. Ibid., 90–91, 107–8.

63. Xavier de Souza Briggs and Peter Dreier, “Memphis Murder Mystery? No, Just Mistaken Identity,” Shelterforce, 22 July 2008. Available at http://www.shelterforce.org/article/1043/memphis_murder_mystery_no_just_mistaken_identity/ (accessed 23 August 2014).

64. Ibid.

65. Susan J. Popkin, Michael J. Rich, Leah Hendey, Chris Hayes, and Joe Parilla, Public Housing Transformation and Crime: Making the Case for Responsible Relocation (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2012), 5.

66. Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops, chap. 1.

67. Michel Foucault, L’Archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2002).

Myth #4: High-Rise Public Housing Is Unmanageable

1. Height data and national percentage from http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/hra-advisors-nycha-rehabilitation-replacement-20130816.pdf, 8.

2. New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), “Guide to Housing Developments,” 1965 Box 100A3, Folder 7, New York City Housing Authority Records, LaGuardia Wagner Archives, LaGuardia Community College (NYCHAR); Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008).

3. Current data retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/superstorm-sandy-testimony-1-17-13.pdf.

4. NYCHA Fact Sheet (2012). Current NYCHA data retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/about/factsheet.shtml.

5. Woodrow Wilson percentages derived from communication with Bradford Hunt and NYCHA Research division.

6. NYHCA, “Information on Kingsborough Houses,” November 1941, LaGuardia Papers, Roll 93. New York City Municipal Archives.

7. Chairman Philip Cruise to the New York Daily News, 27 February 1957, Box 65C8, Folder 6, NYCHAR, 4–9.

8. G. Swope to Fiorello LaGuardia, 15 January 1942, Box 54E6, Folder 9, NYCHAR.

9. Cyril Grossman interview by Marcia Robertson, 1 August 1990, NYCHA Oral History Project, Box 1, NYCHAR, 28, 45.

10. Edmond Butler to Fiorello LaGuardia, 1 June 1945, LaGuardia Papers, Roll 92A, MA.

11. Cruise to the New York Daily News, 4–9; Robert Stern, New York, 1960 (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), 901; “Fort Greene Houses Will Be Renovated,” New York Times, 10 February 1957, 71.

12. Ira Robbins, “Address to the ADA,” 13 September 1958, Box 59D3, Folder 5, NYCHAR, 2, 4; Charles Grutzner, “Tiled Lobbies, Closet Doors Give a Modern Look to Public Housing, “New York Times, 1 January 1957, 25; NYCHA, “Planning and Designing Public Housing Projects,” ca. 1956, Box 72D4, Folder 3, NYCHAR.

13. Charles Preusse, “Organization and Management of NYCHA,” September 1957, Box 100A2, NYCHAR, 5.

14. Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

15. Grutzner, “Tiled Lobbies, Closet Doors,” 25.

16. Elizabeth Lyman, “Tenant Response to a Series of Family Life Discussion Groups in a Public Housing Project,” Community Service Society, December 1966, Box 61C5, Folder 8.

17. Raymond Henson interview by Marcia Robertson, 6 August 1990, NYCHA Oral History Project, Box 1, NYCHAR, 14–15.

18. NYCHA, “Project Survey Report, Van Dyke Houses,” 1970–1972, Box 66E8, Folder 13, NYCHAR; Ida Posner, Brownsville Public Housing Coordinating Council, Memo, Box 65C2, Folder 6, NYCHAR.

19. NYCHA, “Requests from the Brownsville Community Council, Inc.,” 7 April 1970, NYCHA Internal Document, Box 65C2, Folder 6, NYCHAR.

20. NYCHA, “New York City Housing Authority Interim Report on Progress of Target Projects Program,” 14 January 1976, Box 76A5, Folder 1, NYCHAR.

21. NYCHA “Broken Glass Replacement,” 1973, unpublished memo retrieved from Box 65C1, Folder 1. NYCHAR; NYCHA, “Janitorial Standards,” 30 January 1974, unpublished memo retrieved from Box 90C4, Folder 14. NYCHAR.

22. Sidney Schackman to Joseph Christian, 22 November 1974, Box 88B2, Folder 6, NYCHAR; NYCHA Response to HUD Review of Operations, October 1973, Box 62A4, Folder 3, NYCHAR.

23. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 45–76, 128–51, 245–68.

24. Max Siegel, “Elevator Crisis in City Projects,” New York Times, 4 July 1973, 1.

25. City of New York, “Mayor’s Office of Operations (2012),” CPR: Agency Performing Reports, retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/cpr/html/themes/community.shtml; chart reproduced from http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/downloads/pdf/mmr0912/nycha.pdf; Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 245–68.

26. Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Housing New York City 2008, retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/pr/HVS-Archive.shtml, 476, 489; Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Housing New York City 2008, retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/downloads/pdf/HVS-report-2011.pdf, 447.

27. Office of the Comptroller, How New York Lives: An Analysis of the City’s Housing Maintenance Conditions, September 2014, retrieved at http://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/How_New_York_Lives.pdf, 7, 11.

28. City of New York, “Mayor’s Office of Operations (2012).”

29. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 181–200, 220–40, 245–68.

30. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/hra-advisors-nycha-rehabilitation-replacement-20130816.pdf; http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/news/maintenance-and-repair-backlog-action-plan.shtml, retrieved 4 December 2013.

31. http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/downloads/pdf/mmr0912/nycha.pdf. See also http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/hra-advisors-nycha-rehabilitation-replacement-20130816.pdf; http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/news/nycha-releases-economic-impact-reports.shtml, retrieved 4 December 2013.

32. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/j11apre.pdf.

33. George L. Kelling and Catherine M. Coles, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (New York: Free Press, 1998).

34. Senator Robert Wagner as quoted in Marcuse, Public Housing in New York City: History of a Program (Unfinished manuscript, NYCHA Central Office, 1989), 49.

35. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 77.

36. Ibid., 82.

37. Ibid., 168–98.

38. D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

39. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 168–80.

40. NYCHA Annual Report, “A Clearer Focus,” 1962, Box 100A2, Folder 12. NYCHAR.

41. NYCHA Tenant Data, 1 January 1974; data retrieved from NYCHA data books in Peter Marcuse Personal Data Collection, Columbia University.

42. Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 185.

43. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/news/nycha-releases-economic-impact-reports.shtml, retrieved 4 December 2013.

44. NYCHA Fact Sheet (2012); current NYCHA data retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/about/factsheet.shtml; http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/downloads/pdf/mmr0912/nycha.pdf; City of New York, “Mayor’s Office of Operations (2012).”

45. New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, The CEO Poverty Measure (New York: NYC Center for Economic Opportunity, August 2008), retrieved from http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2009/09/09/poverty_report.pdf, 3; http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/hra-advisors-nycha-economic-impact-20130912.pdf, retrieved 4 December 2013, 8.

46. See various NYCHA performance records on the newly created site, NYCHA Metrics, https://eapps.nycha.info/NychaMetrics.

Myth #5: Public Housing Ended in Failure during the 1970s

Acronyms for Endnotes

1. See, for example, Alexander von Hoffman, who writes that “when Richard Nixon placed a moratorium on federal funding for all housing programs in 1973, many felt that it seemed appropriate to end a bad program” (public housing) as symbolized by the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe; Von Hoffman, “High Ambitions: The Past and Future of American Low-Income Housing Policy,” Housing Policy Debate 7, no. 3 (1996): 436. David J. Erickson comments that “in subsidized housing programs, both liberals and conservatives were frustrated with the programs of the Great Society, and while they disagreed on emphasis, both looked to change the delivery of social services,” and, similarly, that “block grants and ‘federalism’ are associated with Nixon and conservative politics, but liberals who were disillusioned by earlier urban-renewal programs and perceived HUD inefficiencies were eager to move in this direction as well”; Erickson, “Community Capitalism: How Housing Advocates, the Private Sector, and Government Forged a New Low-Income Housing Policy, 1968–1996,” Journal of Policy History 18, no. 2 (2006): 170, 175. Louis Winnick argues that public housing had little to do with the moratorium, however, noting that the difficulties with the Sections 235 and 236 programs “prompted” the moratorium; see Winnick, “The Triumph of Housing Allowance Programs: How a Fundamental Policy Conflict Was Resolved,” Cityscape 1, no. 3 (September 1995): 98.

2. I refer to these policies as “conservative” in that both reducing federal government allocations and shifting power to lower levels of the federal system are hallmark policies of modern American conservatives. Richard P. Nathan, who was assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget between 1969 and 1972, argues that Nixon was a liberal on domestic affairs; Nixon’s programs, he argues, expanded federal programs, and his moratorium followed four years of unprecedented investment in expanded housing programs under the 1968 Housing Act. Indeed, new entitlement programs such as the Family Assistance Plan (FAP), had they been implemented, would likely have had a larger impact on reducing American inequality than programs like public housing, which were limited to those who were able to secure a unit. See Richard P. Nathan, “A Retrospective on Richard M. Nixon’s Domestic Policies,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 155–64.

3. Others have argued that the moratorium’s primary cause was not the failure of public housing. Alexander von Hoffman points out that “the real reason [for the moratorium] . . . was fiscal: the Office of Management and Budget . . . had imposed the freeze”; see “History Lessons for Today’s Housing Policy: The Politics of Low-Income Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 22, no. 3 (June 2012): 361. Critics like Von Hoffman underplay the Nixon administration’s ideological effort to refashion the federal government away from programs and toward income support and decentralization, which was at the heart of the motivations behind the moratorium. It should also be noted that the controversy over housing integration, which is not discussed here, might have played a role in the decision to enforce a moratorium, as discussed in Chris Bonastia, “Why Did Affirmative Action in Housing Fail during the Nixon Era?: Exploring the ‘Institutional Homes’ of Social Policies,” Social Problems 47, no. 4 (November 2000): 523–24.

4. In Los Angeles, the “red scare” empowered conservatives to completely shut down the city’s public housing program. Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

5. Eugene Meehan argues that, from the 1950s on, the program suffered from “a mindless concentration on dollar costs that disregarded the long-run cost of poor quality”; see Eugene J. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking: Programmed Failure in Public Housing (Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 1979), 31, 72, 90; Albert M. Cole, chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, Recommendations: A Report to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, December 1953); Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The President’s News Conference,” 13 May 1959; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Veto of the Second Housing and Urban Renewal Bill,” 4 September 1959. These presidential addresses, along with thousands of others, are available through the University of California, Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, compiled and frequently updated by John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, and available online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/.

6. In Detroit, just 758 public housing units had been built between 1956 and 1968, but urban renewal policies had resulted in the clearance of eight thousand existing low-income units during the same period; Roger Biles, “Public Housing and the Postwar Urban Renaissance, 1949–1973,” in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 149; National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1968). For contemporary critiques of urban renewal policy, see Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free Press, 1962); Martin Anderson, The Federal Bulldozer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964); James Q. Wilson, ed., Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966); and Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961).

7. Leonard Freedman, Public Housing: The Politics of Poverty (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 84; Joseph Heathcott, “The Strange Career of Public Housing,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (Autumn 2012): 360–75.

8. LBJ, “Special Message to the Congress on Housing and Community Development,” 27 January 1964; LBJ, “The President’s News Conference,” 21 May 1966.

9. Republicans and business interests supported Section 23 “in exchange” for the creation of the Rent Supplement program; neither program was funded comprehensively until 1968; Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 46; Charles J. Orlebeke, “The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy, 1949 to 1999,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 489–520.

10. Kerner Commission, Report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968; Douglas Commission, Building the American City: Report of the National Commission on Urban Problems, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1969; and Kaiser Committee, A Decent Home: The Report of the President’s Committee on Urban Housing, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1969; Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner. 2008), 240; Biles, “Public Housing,” 157–59; A Decent Home: The Report of the President’s Committee on Urban Housing (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1968); Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); A “Freedom Budget” for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966–1975, to Achieve “Freedom from Want,” (New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966).

11. See Alexander von Hoffman, “Calling upon the Genius of Private Enterprise: The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and the Liberal Turn to Public-Private Partnerships,” Studies in American Political Development 27, no. 2 (October 2013): 165–94.

12. For example, in New York City, the John Lindsay administration was pursuing a policy of scattered-site public housing and major renewal projects that included public housing, moderate-income Section 236 apartments, and middle-income state-subsidized units; Freedman, Public Housing, 122–23.

13. HUD, Housing in the Seventies (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1973).

14. Perlstein, Nixonland, 359, 393; Glenn Fowler, “No Further Cuts Seen for Housing,” New York Times, 11 November 1968, 79.

15. This is not to say the Romney would have found himself at home in the Johnson administration. In a speech at Harvard in 1972, he suggested that “the moral basis of reward for contribution is not unsound or indefensible,” and that government subsidies should reflect “compassion and humanitarianism,” rather than be provided by right. Memo for GWR, “America’s Value Crisis: Egalitarianism or Reward for Contribution—Suggested Background Material for January 28th Harvard Business School Address,” 17 January 1972, Memoranda folder (miscellaneous), box 8-P, RA.

16. “Staff Paper: ‘The Model Cities Program,’ ” 5 February 1969, Model Cities folder, box 9-P, RA; Floyd Hyde, memo to GWR, “The Basic Mission, Goals and Objectives of the Model Cities Program and Its Future,” 8 February 1969, Model Cities folder, box 9-P, RA; GWR, “Notes on Task Force on Model Cities Report,” “Cabinet Meeting, 5 March 1970: Camp David—Model Cities” folder, box 9-P, RA.

17. The task force’s members included James Q. Wilson and public-choice economist James M. Buchanan; Edward C. Banfield, Report of the Task Force on Model Cities (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1969), ii, 1, 13.

18. Charles Orlebeke, interview with the author, 30 March 2012; Ehrlichman Briefing, Draft #5, 26 January 1970, “Budget Misc., Jan. 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA.

19. “Special” revenue sharing became the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Bruce A. Wallin, From Revenue Sharing to Deficit Sharing: General Revenue Sharing and Cities (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998); Warren Weaver, Jr., “G.O.P. Asks Halt in Aid to States,” New York Times, 11 April 1967, 22; “Nixon’s Response to Inquiries about His Economic Policies,” New York Times, 27 October 1968, F14; Concept Paper on Special Revenue Sharing, 2nd Draft, 1 February 1971, “President and Ehrlichman 1971” folder, box 13-P, RA; White House, “Highlights of Revenue Sharing,” 10 February 1970, Revenue Sharing folder, box 11-P, RA.

20. Richard P. Nathan, The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975), 19.

21. GWR, memo to RN, 5 January 1971, “1972 Budget Appeals” folder, box 2-P, RA; Richard P. Nathan, letter to GWR, “HUD Restructured Programs Proposals,” 6 January 1971, “1972 Budget Appeals” folder, box 2-P, RA; Floyd Hyde, draft memo (administratively confidential), 29 December 1970, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) folder, box 10-P, RA.

22. Conversation between RN, Vice President Agnew, GWR, et al. Cabinet Room, 23 March 1971, 3:00 P.M., Conversation No. 51–2, Nixon White House Tapes, Nixon Presidential Library. Available online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/finding_aids/tapesubjectlogs/710323ca051.pdf (accessed 18 December 2012).

23. This bill did not include “special” revenue sharing (CDBG), which Nixon would continue to promote.

24. HUD, “HUD Fiscal Year 1971 Budget Shows Commitment to Housing” (press release), 2 February 1970, “Budget FY ’71” folder, box 1-P, RA.

25. The administration ordered a halt on government construction—with an exception made for housing—in August 1969. Floyd Hyde, memo to GWR, “Need for Additional NDP Funding,” 12 March 1969, “Budget Material 1969” folder, box 1-P, RA; Nathaniel Eiseman (director, Office of Budget) memo, “Bureau Mark on HUD Budget Review,” 13 March 1969, “Budget Material 1969” folder, box 1-P, RA; Robert P. Mayo, memos to GWR, 28 July 1969 and 20 September 1969, “Budget Material 1969” folder, box 1-P, RA.

26. GWR, memo to Conference on HUD Appropriations, “Conference on HUD Appropriations, FY 1970,” 13 November 1969, “Budget Appeal 1969” folder, box 1-P, RA; “Urban Renewal Appeal—Affirmative Presentation,” 23 December 1969, “Budget Appeal 1969” folder, box 1-P, RA; GWR, draft memo to Caspar W. Weinberger, Deputy Director, OMB, 12 December 1970, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA; GWR, memo to RN, “The Domestic Crisis and the Budget,” 12 June 1970, “President and Ehrlichman 1970” folder, box 13-P, RA.

27. GWR, memo to Conference on HUD Appropriations; “Urban Renewal Appeal—Affirmative Presentation,” 23 December 1969.

28. Floyd Hyde, draft memo, 29 December 1970.

29. Charles J. Orlebeke, memo to GWR, 14 October 1970, “Budget Misc., 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA; U.S. Conference of Mayors, Committee on Community Development, draft statement, 20 January 1971, “President and Ehrlichman 1971” folder, box 13-P, RA.

30. Richard C. Van Dusen, memo to GWR, 15 August 1969, Memoranda folder, box 8-P, RA; GWR, comment on “Inflation,” 13 January 1970, “Cabinet Meeting 1/13/70” folder, box 2-P, RA; Richard C. Van Dusen, memo to John Ehrlichman and George Schultz, “Independent Offices and Department of HUD 1971 Appropriation Bill (H.R. 17548),” 10 July 1970, “Budget Misc., 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA.

31. In this context, Nixon was referring to replacing the Food Stamp program with FAP. RN, “The President’s Remarks at the Opening Session of the Conference,” White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health, 2 December 1969.

32. The policy was crafted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan; it was never passed thanks to Democratic opposition to work requirements, but the Earned Income Tax Credit of 1975 and Welfare Reform of 1996 can be seen as its descendants. See Brian Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); “41 Years Ago—RN Unveils Family Assistance Plan,” Nixon Foundation, 10 August 2010. Available online at http://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2010/08/41-years-ago-rn-unveils-family-assistance-plan/ (accessed 15 April 2012).

33. HUD, “Bureau Hearings on FY 1971 Estimates, Housing Assistance Programs” (notes on comments made during meeting), 7 October 1969, “Budget FY ’71” folder, box 1-P, RA.

34. Rent subsidies were first provided for elderly public housing residents in the 1961 Housing Act. The rent limit was later raised to 30 percent. Judith Feins et al., Revised Methods of Providing Federal Funds for Public Housing Agencies: Final Report, Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1994); Richard C. Van Dusen, “The State of the Department,” November/December 1972, “HUD’s Future” folder, box 7-P, RA.

35. HUD, “Bureau Hearings on FY 1971 Estimates.”

36. Eugene A. Gulledge, memo to GWR, 26 August 1970,“Domestic Council—8/27/70—San Clemente” folder, box 6-P, RA; GWR, draft memo to George P. Schultz, 22 September 1970, “Budget Misc., 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA.

37. Irving Welfeld, “Toward a New Federal Housing Policy,” The Public Interest, no. 19 (Spring 1970).

38. See Observations on Housing Allowances and the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1974); Eugene A. Gulledge, memo to GWR, “Experiments in Housing Allowances,” 17 August 1971, Memoranda folder, box 8-P, RA; Louis Winnick. “The Triumph of Housing Allowance Programs: How a Fundamental Policy Conflict Was Resolved,” Cityscape 1, no. 3 (September 1995): 95–121.

39. Romney’s initial recommendations, which were brought up to OMB in late 1970, were not immediately considered because of a lack of “enough information about the new approach to make decisions.” GWR, draft memo to George P. Schultz, 1970; Lester P. Condon (Assistant Secretary for Administration), memo to GWR, “Cabinet Meeting on the Budget,” 4 November 1970, “Budget Misc., 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA.

40. GWR, memo to RN, 30 December 1970, “Budget Misc., 1970” folder, box 2-P, RA.

41. GWR, memo to Caspar W. Weinberger, 17 December 1971, “Budget Material Dec. ’71” folder, box 2-P, RA.

42. Caspar Weinberger, memos to GWR, 21 July 1972 and 6 October 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA.

43. GWR, memo to Caspar Weinberger, 28 September 1972, “Budget Misc., Sept.-Dec., 1972” folder, box 2-P, RA.

44. Conversation between RN, John Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman, Camp David, 16 November 1972, 2:23 P.M., Conversation No. 225–39, Nixon White House Tapes, Nixon Presidential Library. Available online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/finding_aids/tapesubjectlogs/cdhw225.pdf (accessed 18 December 2012).

45. Albert J. Kliman (Deputy Director, Office of Budget [HUD]), memo to GWR, “Highlights of OMB Hearing on HPMC Programs,” 13 October 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA; Albert J. Kliman, memo, “Highlights of OMB Hearing on HPMC Programs, 12 October 1972,” 17 October 2012, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA; Albert J. Kliman, memo, “Highlights of OMB Hearing on Housing Management Programs, 16 October 1972,” 18 October 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA.

46. Neither Nixon nor his assistant Haldeman understood the situation with Sections 235 and 236; in mentioning the possibility of problems at HUD, Nixon asked, “What is the housing scandal?” and Haldeman responded, “I don’t know—there’s something all screwed up.” Nixon nonetheless remained committed to the reduction in the HUD budget. Conversation between RN and H. R. Haldeman, Camp David, 21 July 1972, 3:05–3:57 P.M., Conversation No. 197–17, Nixon White House Tapes, Nixon Presidential Library. Available online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape197/197-017.mp3 (accessed 12 November 2013). It should be noted that, in describing the motivations for changing national housing policy, Orlebeke (“The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy,” 2000), focuses extensively on the anti-housing production findings of the 1971 President’s Third Annual Report on National Housing Goals. Yet, this report’s conclusions do not seem to have influenced the thinking of Nixon himself, whose statements recorded on tape revolve mostly around reducing HUD’s budget, not making programs more effective through policy reforms, as the report advocates.

47. Orlebeke, “The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy,” 499; Von Hoffman, “History Lessons for Today’s Housing Policy,” 355.

48. Nathan, The Plot That Failed, vii, 6.

49. In 1970, President Nixon reportedly asked Romney to serve as ambassador to India, a position the secretary declined. Record of HUD News Conference with GWR, 25 November 1970, “President 12/2/70” folder, box 14-P, RA; GWR, letter to RN, 10 August 1972, “Meeting with the President—8/12/72” folder, box 13-P, RA.

50. GWR, letter to RN, 9 November 1972, “Ehrlichman and President 1972” folder, box 14-P, RA. Conversation between RN and John Ehrlichman, White House Oval Office, 11 August 1972, 11:09–11:11 A.M., Conversation No. 767–18, Nixon White House Tapes, Nixon Presidential Library. Available online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape767/767-018.mp3 (accessed 18 December 2012). Conversation between RN, GWR, et al. White House Oval Office, 11 August 1972, 11:15 A.M.–12:22 P.M., Conversation No. 767–20, Nixon White House Tapes, Nixon Presidential Library. Available online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape767/767-020a.mp3 (accessed 18 December 2012).

51. The moratorium could be imposed by OMB because housing funds were “discretionary,” not “mandatory,” meaning that the executive branch was ignoring Congress’s appropriations and would simply not spend them. It effectively terminated the Model Cities and Urban Renewal programs. Caspar Weinberger, memo to GWR, 15 May 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA.

52. “Notes from Meeting with OMB Staff regarding 1974 Budget Decisions,” OMB folder, box 10-P, RA.

53. Letter to Caspar Weinberger, no date indicated, but c. late 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA; GWR, “Notes for Speech in Roosevelt Room,” 22 December 1972, OMB folder, box 10-P, RA.

54. Memo from GWR to RN, 28 December 1972, “Budget Misc., Sept.-Dec., 1972” folder, box 2-P, RA; Orlebeke also points out that Romney “strenuously opposed” the moratorium.

55. Romney avoided the term “moratorium” and instead referred to it as a “temporary hold”; Orlebeke, “The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy,” 501; Michael C. Jensen, “Romney Discloses Halt in Subsidies for New Housing,” New York Times, 9 January 1973.

56. Certainly part of the explanation for the decision to reduce funding to affordable housing programs was racial tension, a matter that Nixon had exploited with his stand against policies such as “forced” busing or housing integration. Though it may be argued that Nixon’s criticisms of the housing programs reflected his view that they benefited urban minorities and therefore were unappealing to his white, suburban base, his public statements on housing did not refer to race explicitly. RN, “State of the Union Message to the Congress on Community Development,” 8 March 1973; Christopher Bonastia, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2008).

57. Eugene L. Meyer, “Plan to Halt Housing Aid Draws Fire,” New York Times, 31 December 1972, A1; James M. Naughton, “M’Govern Warns of One-Man Rule; Exhorts Liberals,” New York Times, 22 January 1973, 1; James M. Naughton, “Congress Regards Cuts as Threat to Its Power,” New York Times, 30 January 1973, 22.

58. ICF, Incorporated, Impact of Federal Housing Programs on Community Development, part of the National Housing Policy Review study series prepared for HUD (Washington, DC: ICF, 1973), chap. 3; HUD, Housing in the Seventies; R. Allen Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing, 3rd ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), 123–38; James T. Lynn, Prepared Testimony and Questioning, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Housing of the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, First Session, October 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, and 17, 1973.

59. RN, “Special Message to the Congress Proposing Legislation and Outlying Administration Actions to Deal with Federal Housing Policy,” 19 September 1973.

60. Robert C. Weaver, Prepared Testimony and Questioning, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Housing of the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, First Session, October 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, and 17, 1973.

61. The vote was 76 to 11. “Senate Passes Housing Bill without a Major Change,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 16 March 1974, 691–95; Paul Delaney, “Major Housing Bill to Aid Poor Approved by Senate Committee,” New York Times, 11 February 1974, 38.

62. “House Passes Omnibus Housing Bill, 321–25,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 29 June 1974, 1702–6; Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing, 146–49; Edward C. Burks, “Ford Signs Bill to Aid Housing,” New York Times, 23 August 1974, 9; Delaney, “Major Housing Bill,” 38; Richard L. Madden, “Housing Measure Is Voted by House,” New York Times, 21 June 1974, 77.

63. If anything, the end to direct federal subsidies for new low-income housing construction came in 1983, when the Reagan administration enforced a switch from the Section 8 New Construction program to the existing housing voucher program. Edward C. Burks, “3 Biggest Cities Would Gain under New Housing Bill,” New York Times, 20 August 1974, 20.

64. Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking, 66.

65. Public housing production expanded again in the late 1970s and then was cut off during the 1980s under the Reagan administration. See Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark, “From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (Autumn 2012): 379–402.

Myth #6: Mixed-Income Redevelopment Is the Only Way to Fix Failed Public Housing

1. Henry Cisneros and Lora Engdahl, eds., From Despair to Hope: Hope VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009); Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark, “From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing: 75 Years of Social Experimentation,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, 4 (2012): 379–402. In addition to the United States, many countries have attempted to replace public housing or social housing with various forms of “mixed communities.” For discussion of examples from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia, see Gary Bridge, Tim Butler, and Loretta Lees, Mixed Communities: Gentrification by Stealth? (Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, 2012).

2. Parts of this chapter draw upon and extend arguments first made in Lawrence J. Vale, “Comment on Mark L. Joseph’s ‘Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?’ ” Housing Policy Debate 17, no 2 (2006): 259–69. For an overview and compendium of recent research, see “Mixed Messages on Mixed Incomes,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 1–221. The website of the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities also provides an extensive bibliography and other resources, available at http://nimc.case.edu.

3. Peter Marcuse, “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 12, no. 3 (1995): 240–58.

4. Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

5. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Vale and Freemark, “From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing.”

6. Cisneros and Engdahl, From Despair to Hope; Sean Zielenbach, Richard Voith, and Michael Mariano, “Estimating the Local Economic Impacts of HOPE VI,” Housing Policy Debate 20, no. 3 (2010): 485–522.

7. Edward Goetz, Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2003); Janet L. Smith, “Mixed-Income Communities: Designing Out Poverty or Pushing Out the Poor?” in Where Are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities, ed. Larry Bennett, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2006); Loretta Lees, “Gentrification and Social Mixing: Towards an Inclusive Urban Renaissance?,” Urban Studies 45, no.12 (2008): 2449–70; Bridge, Butler, and Lees, Mixed Communities.

8. Susan J. Popkin, Larry F. Buron, Diane K. Levy, and Mary K. Cunningham, “The Gautreaux Legacy: What Might Mixed-Income and Dispersal Strategies Mean for the Poorest Public Housing Tenants?,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 4 (2000): 911–42; Susan J. Popkin, Bruce Katz, Mary Cunningham, Karen D. Brown, Jeremy Gustafson, and Margery Turner, A Decade of HOPE VI: Research Findings and Policy Challenges (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, 2004); Mindy Turbov and Valerie Piper, HOPE VI and Mixed-Finance Redevelopments: A Catalyst for Neighborhood Renewal (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005); Rachel Garshick Kleit, “HOPE VI New Communities: Neighborhood Relationships in Mixed-Income Housing,” Environment and Planning A 37 (2005): 1413–41; Mark Joseph and Robert Chaskin, “Living in a Mixed-Income Development: Resident Perceptions of the Benefits and Disadvantages of Two Developments in Chicago,” Urban Studies 47, no. 11 (2010): 2347–66.

9. Mark L. Joseph, “Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?” Housing Policy Debate 17, no. 2 (2006): 209–34; Diane K. Levy, Zach McDade, and Kassie Bertumen, “Mixed-Income Living: Anticipated and Realized Benefits for Low-Income Households,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 15–28.

10. George C. Galster, Jason C. Booza, and Jackie M. Cutsinger, “Income Diversity within Neighborhoods and Very Low-Income Families,” Cityscape 10, no. 2 (2008): 257–300. The efforts in the United Kingdom to sell off much of the Council Housing stock after 1980 have also sometimes led to communities that are both mixed tenure and mixed income, though often with little social mixing; Reinout Kleinhans and Maarten Van Ham, “Lessons Learned from the Largest Tenure-Mix Operation in the World: Right to Buy in the United Kingdom,” Cityscape 15, no. 2: 101–17; Ade Kearns, Martin McKee, Elena Sautkina, George Weeks, and Lyndal Bond, “Mixed-Tenure Orthodoxy: Practitioner Reflections on Policy Effects,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 47–67.

11. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged,1987; Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

12. Laura Tach, “More than Bricks and Mortar: Neighborhood Frames, Social Processes, and the Mixed-Income Redevelopment of a Public Housing Project,” City & Community 8, no. 3 (2009): 273–303.

13. Ibid.

14. Alex Schwartz and Kian Tajbakhsh, “Mixed-Income Housing: Unanswered Questions,” Cityscape 3, no. 2 (1997): 71–92; Paul C. Brophy and Rhonda N. Smith, “Mixed-Income Housing: Factors for Success,” Cityscape 3, no. 2 (1997): 3–31.

15. Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 307.

16. James E. Rosenbaum, Linda K. Stroh, and Cathy Flynn, “Lake Parc Place: A Study of Mixed-Income Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 4 (1998): 703–40; Lawrence J. Vale, “Comment on James E. Rosenbaum, Linda K. Stroh, and Cathy A. Flynn’s ‘Lake Parc Place: A Study of Mixed-Income Housing,’ ” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 4 (1998): 749–56; Chicago Housing Authority, Tenant Selection Plan, Lake Parc Place, Screening and Selection Policy, 2009, available at http://www.thecha.org/filebin/pdf/MixedIncome/LPP_TSP.pdf (accessed August 11, 2012).

17. Ellen Pader and Myrna Breitbart, “Transforming Public Housing: Conflicting Visions for Harbor Point,” Places 8, no.4 (1993): 34–41; Jane Roessner, A Decent Place to Live: From Columbia Point to Harbor Point (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000).

18. National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities, “Social Dynamics of Mixed-Income Communities,” State of the Field Scan #1, November 2013, available at http://blog.case.edu/nimc/2013/11/07/State_of_the_Field_Scan_1_National_Initiative_on_Mixed-Income_Communities.pdf.

19. Erin M. Graves, “Mixed Outcome Developments,” Journal of the American Planning Association 77, no. 2 (2011): 143–53. See also, Robert C. Ellickson, “The False Promise of the Mixed-Income Housing Project,” UCLA Law Review 57 (2010): 983–1021. For discussion of the limits of income-mixing in Europe and skepticism about the power of “neighborhood effects” on low-income residents, see David Manley, Maarten van Ham, and Joe Doherty, “Social Mixing as a Cure for Negative Neighbourhood Effects: Evidence Based Policy or Urban Myth?,” Discussion Paper No. 5634, April 2011, available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp5634.pdf.

20. Joseph, “Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?”; Mark L. Joseph, Robert J. Chaskin and Henry S. Webber, “The Theoretical Basis for Addressing Poverty Through Mixed-Income Development,” Urban Affairs Review 42, no. 3 (2007): 369–409; Joseph and Chaskin, “Living in a Mixed-Income Development.”

21. Joseph, “Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?,” 222.

22. Vale, “Comment on Joseph.”

23. See Joseph, “Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?,” and Joseph, Chaskin and Webber for a full list of community studies that they assessed.

24. James DeFillipis and Jim Fraser, “Why Do We Want Mixed-Income Housing and Neighborhoods? In Critical Urban Studies: New Directions, ed. Jonathan S. Davies and David L. Imbroscio (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010): 136, 138.

25. Dispersal policies have most famously included the Gautreaux public housing antidiscrimination program in Chicago and the Moving to Opportunity demonstration. See Alexander Polikoff, Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006); and Xavier de Souza Briggs, Susan J. Popkin, and John Goering, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

26. Edward G. Goetz and Karen Chapple, “Dispersal as Anti-Poverty Policy,” in Davies and Imbroscio’s Critical Urban Studies, 153–57, 159; Susan Clampet-Lundquist, “HOPE VI Relocation: Moving to New Neighborhoods and Building New Ties,” Housing Policy Debate 15, no. 2: 415–48; Karen Gibson, “The Relocation of the Columbia Villa Community: Views from Residents,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 27, no. 1 (2007): 5–19; Edward G. Goetz, “Better Neighborhoods, Better Outcomes? Explaining Relocation Outcomes in HOPE VI,” Cityscape 12, no. 1 (2010): 5–31; Victoria Basolo, “Examining Mobility Outcomes in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: Neighborhood Poverty, Employment, and Public School Quality,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 135–53; Kimberly Skobba and Edward G. Goetz, “Mobility Decisions of Very Low-Income Households,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 155–71; Rachel Garshick Kleit, “False Assumptions about Poverty Dispersal Policies,” Cityscape 15, no. 2 (2013): 205–9.

27. Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn, “Lake Parc Place”; Vale, “Comment on Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn.”

28. Vale, “Comment on Joseph.”

29. Ibid.

30. Lawrence J. Vale and Erin M. Graves, The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation: What Does the Research Show So Far? Report prepared for the MacArthur Foundation, 2010, available at http://web.mit.edu/dusp/dusp_extension_unsec/people/faculty/ljv/vale_macarthur_2010.pdf; Erin M. Graves and Lawrence J. Vale, “The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation: Assessing the First Ten Years,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, 4 (2012): 464–65.

31. For a full account of Commonwealth’s redevelopment, see Lawrence J. Vale, Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

32. Lawrence J. Vale, “Public Housing Redevelopment: Seven Kinds of Success,” Housing Policy Debate 7, 3 (1996): 491–534.

33. Joseph, “Is Mixed-Income Development an Antidote to Urban Poverty?,” 220.

34. Edward G. Goetz, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 185.

35. Susan J. Popkin, Mark K, Cunningham, and Martha Burt, “Public Housing and the ‘Hard-to-House,’ ” Housing Policy Debate 16, no. 1 (2005): 1–24.

Myth #7: Only Immigrants Still Live in European Public Housing

1. This definition resonates with the one used by CECODHAS Housing Europe (Comité Européen de Coordination de l’Habitat Social—European Coordination Committee on Social Housing). CECODHAS researchers define public housing by affordability, the existence of administrative rules for tenant allocation, a strong link with public policies, and security of tenure. Alice Pittini and Elsa Laino, Housing Europe Review 2012 (Brussels: CECODHAS Housing Europe, 2011), 22–23.

2. Karl Christian Führer, Mieter, Hausbesitzer, Staat und Wohnungsmarkt (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 77–108.

3. In the 1900 Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Civil Code), apartments were tied to plots, and co-ownership in a multistory building was outlawed—a measure that was meant to diminish lawsuits between neighbors. See Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Berlin: Guttentag, 1903), §§ 93 and 94. This was only revoked by the 1951 Gesetz über das Wohneigentum und das Dauerwohnrecht [Law on Residential Ownership and Permanent Dwelling Right], Bundesgesetzblatt I (10 March 1951), 175.

4. Berlin data: company Infas Geodaten (2010), quoted in “Berlin bleibt die Mieter-Hauptstadt,” BZ (Berlin), 4 July 2011, and by the Berlin government on its official website, http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/mieterfibel/. London data (2010) by National Housing Foundation, online at http://www.housing.org.uk/news/housing_market_crisis_as_home/full_press_release_on_housing.aspx (both accessed August 2012).

5. 2007 data quoted in Michelle Norris and Nessa Winston, “Does Home Ownership Reinforce or Counterbalance Inequality?” (Dublin: University College Dublin, 2011), online at http://www.ucd.ie/appsocsc/publicationsandresearch/workingpaperseries/ (accessed August 2012).

6. Georg Wagner, Sozialstaat gegen Wohnungsnot (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995), 22, 38.

7. Ibid., 2, 8–12.

8. Ibid., 8–12.

9. In Germany, this concept was brought forward by the planner Edgar Salin and the sociologist Hans Paul Bahrdt. See Edgar Salin, “Urbanität,” in Deutscher Städtetag, ed., Vorträge, Aussprachen und Ergebnisse der 11. Hauptversammlung des Deutschen Städtetages (Augsburg: Kohlhammer, 1960); and Hans Paul Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt (Hamburg: Wegner, 1961).

10. Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. Geschichte und Strukturen der DDR (Munich: Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit, 1998), 283; Joachim Palutzki, Architektur in der DDR (Berlin: Reimer, 2000), 113–120.

11. Jürgen Dobberke, “Märkisches Viertel, Star der Bauwochen,” Berliner Leben, no. 9 (1966); Ingeborg Glupp, “Die Trabanten kommen” Der Abend (Berlin) 11 July 1966; or Alexander Wilde, Das Märkische Viertel (West Berlin: Nicolai, 1989), 126.

12. Hellmut Maurer, “Menschenfeindliche Gettos statt sinnvoller Ordnung,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 20 January 1969.

13. See for example “Slums verschoben,” Der Spiegel 22, no. 37 (9 September 1968), 138; “Es bröckelt,” Der Spiegel, no. 6 (1969), 38–42; or Kurt Wolber, “Leben wie im Ameisenhaufen,” Stern 23 no. 3 (19 July 1970): 62–77. For a press review, see Alexander Wilde, Das Märkische Viertel (West Berlin: Nicolai, 1989), 127. For a comparison between anti-urban-renewal protest in Europe and the United States, see Christopher Klemek, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

14. See, for example, Eberhard Schulz, “Die Hölle ist es nicht—Plädoyer für das Märkische Viertel,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10 November 1973; Hermann Wegner, “Märkisches Viertel, August 1975—Wachsendes Heimatgefühl,” Gemeinnütziges Wohnungswesen 28, no. 9 (1975): 412–14; Thomas Schardt, “Hochhausstadt ist besser als ihr Ruf,” Berliner Morgenpost, 31 January 1986; “Märkisches Viertel als Vorbild,” Berliner Zeitung, 12 May 2010.

15. The acceptance of “the slab” is, for example, evidenced by classified ads in which East Germans could legally look for apartment swaps. They are analyzed in Gerlind Staemmler, Rekonstruktion innerstädtischer Wohngebiete in der DDR (West Berlin: IWOS-Bericht zur Stadtforschung, 1981).

16. David Clay Large, Berlin (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 466.

17. Michel Hubert, Deutschland im Wandel—Geschichte der deutschen Bevölkerung seit 1815 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1998), 303 (East) and 325 (West).

18. pi [abbreviation], “ ‘Züge von modernem Sklavenhandel,’ ” Berliner Zeitung, 2 November 1996; Josefine Janert, “Ethnologien untersuchen die Gettos in Berlin und die Regeln, die sie schufen,” Tagesspiegel (Berlin), 21 February 2000.

19. For a brief overview of “Little Istanbul” in public perception, see David Clay Large, Berlin (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 466–69.

20. Approximately 110,000 Turks are registered in Berlin. “Jeder siebte Berliner ist ein Ausländer,” Berliner Morgenpost, 14 September 2008.

21. Ralf Schönball, “Kreuzberg ist teurer als die City West,” Tagesspiegel (Berlin), 28 February 2012.

22. For the corresponding law see “Gesetz zur überführung der Wohnungsgemeinnützigkeit in den allgemeinen Wohnungsmarkt,” Bundesgesetzblatt I, 25 July 1988, 1093, 1136.

23. Darinka Czischke and Alice Pittini, Housing Europe 2007—Review of Social, Cooperative, and Public Housing in the 27 EU Member States (Brussels: CECODHAS Housing Europe, 2007), 52.

24. “Ausverkauf an Großinvestoren,” Focus (Munich) 20 October 2006. Similar numbers can be found in Dresden (48,000 flats) and many other German cities. For a critical overview of the privatization strategies, see Berliner Mieterverein [Berlin Tenants Association], ed., Schwarzbuch Privatisierung (Berlin: Berliner Mieterverein, 2006). See also Hans Jörg Duvigneau [former chief executive of the GSW public housing corporation], “100 Jahre Berliner Wohnungsbau,” public lecture at the Schader-Stiftung, May 2001, online at http://www.schader-stiftung.de/wohn_wandel/340.php (accessed August 2012).

25. “Ausverkauf an Großinvestoren,” Focus (Munich), 20 October 2006.

26. On the development of public housing in Europe see Czischke and Pittini, Housing Europe 2007, online at http://www.bshf.org/published-information/publication.cfm?lang=00&thePubID=CE5EBB45-15C5-F4C0-992A576CD5800BEB (accessed July 2012).

27. They have risen significantly from the symbolic levels under socialism but remained moderate in a European context.

28. The Berlin government’s rent index is at €4.49 per square meter for the East Berlin slab areas in Marzahn. This amounts to €292 monthly, plus an estimated €100 for heating and utilities. For the West Märkisches Viertel, the rent index is at €6.11 per square meter, which would bring the sample flat up to €397 plus heating and utilities (2011 figures); see http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/mietspiegel/ (accessed July 2012).

29. Data by Handwerkskammer [Chamber of Crafts] Leipzig, online at http://www.hwk-leipzig.de/3,0,3359.html (accessed August 2012).

30. Census data from 2005, Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Monitoring Soziale Stadtentwicklung (Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, 2006), 214, available online at http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/basisdaten_stadtentwicklung/monitoring/de/2006/index.shtml (accessed August 2012).

31. Census data from 2004, Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Monitoring Soziale Stadtentwicklung (Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, 2006), available online at http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/basisdaten_stadtentwicklung/monitoring/de/2006/index.shtml (accessed August 2012).

32. Census data from 2004 for “Berlin” (p. 191), for the neighborhood “Märkisches Viertel” (p. 191), and for the neighborhood “Mariannenplatz” (p. 188), Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Monitoring Soziale Stadtentwicklung (Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, 2006), available online at http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/basisdaten_stadtentwicklung/monitoring/de/2006/index.shtml (accessed August 2008). The numbers do not include nationalized foreigners or German nationals with foreign parents.

33. Census data from 2004 for the neighborhood “Lipschitzallee,” ibid., 191.

34. Census data from 2004, Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/basisdaten_stadtentwicklung/monitoring/de/2006/tabellen.shtml (accessed August 2012).

35. Census data from 2005, Statistisches Landesamt Berlin, available online at http://www.statistik-berlin.de/framesets/such.htm (accessed June 2008).

36. In 2004, Berlin’s unemployment rate for non-Germans was 14.7 compared to 13.9 for Germans. This encompasses all foreigners, including specialized professionals. The disparity is more dramatic in the areas with a high percentage of former “guest workers.” The Neukölln district, for example, had 20.2 percent unemployment among foreigners, compared to 16.5 percent among Germans. Census data from 2006, available at http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/basisdaten_stadtentwicklung/monitoring/de/2006/tabellen.shtml (accessed July 2012).

37. Pittini and Laino, Housing Europe Review 2012, 23.

38. Ibid., 19. Severe housing deprivation indicators include overcrowding, lack of sanitary facilities, or structural shortcomings such as a leaking roof.

39. Ibid., 23.

40. Ibid.

41. See Vienna’s official website http://www.wien.gv.at/wohnen/wienerwohnen/ (accessed July 2012).

42. Ibid., 23, 56.

43. Ibid., 64; Czischke and Pittini, Housing Europe 2007, 68–69.

44. Ibid., 69.

Myth #8: Public Housing Is Only for Poor People

1. Debates over precisely why public housing provision began center on these potential explanations, put forward (in order) by official retrospectives, including: Hong Kong Housing Authority, An Illustrated Summary of 40 Years of Public Housing Development in Hong Kong, 1953–1993 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Housing Authority, 1993); Alan Smart, The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, Fires, and Colonial Rule in Hong Kong, 1950–1963 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 12–17; Yue-man Yeung and David Drakakis-Smith, “Comparative Perspectives on Public Housing in Singapore and Hong Kong,” Asian Survey14, no. 8 (August 1974): 765–66; and Manuel Castells, Lee Goh, and Reginald Kwok, The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome: Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore (London: Pion Limited, 1990).

2. Quote from Richard Ronald, The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 183. Literature and debate on the developmental state abounds. For one summary, see Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed., The Developmental State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

3. Castells, Goh, and Kwok, 1.

4. Press statement on New Resettlement Policy by Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of National Development, 6 January 1964, HDB box 1239, National Archives of Singapore (hereafter NAS).

5. ECAFE Committee on Industry and Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Housing, Building, and Planning, Ninth Session, 2–9 July 1969, HDB box 1239, NAS.

6. Letter from chief architect Teh Cheang Wan to HDB chair Lim Kim San, 23 October 1961, HDB box 1223, NAS. The original document says, “The extent and scope of aid given by the American Government to public housing authorities in America is interesting.” When looking at the full context of his memo, however, it becomes clear that Teh was not only referencing public housing but broader federal housing aid to private and public programs.

7. P.D. Kulkarni, Regional Social Development Adviser, “Social Policy Implications of Urban Development and Slum Clearance,” ECAFE Committee on Industry and Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Housing, Building, and Planning, Ninth Session, 2–9 July 1969.

8. Lee Sheng-Yi, The Monetary and Banking Development of Singapore and Malaysia, 3rd ed. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990): 90–91.

9. “Cities as Modernizers,” speech delivered at the inauguration of the World Assembly of Youth Asian regional seminar, 16 April 1967, reproduced in Goh Keng Swee, The Economics of Modernization (Singapore: Federal Publications, 1995), 16–26.

10. William S. W. Lim, “Land Acquisition for Housing with Singapore as a Case Study,” in Land for Housing the Poor, ed. Shlomo Angel, Raymon W. Archer, Sidhijai Tanphiphat, and Emiel A. Wegelin (Singapore: Select Books, 1983), 405.

11. Goh, 16–26.

12. Lee, 90; Addendum to President’s Speech, 6 May 1968, Parliamentary Debates, Republic of Singapore, Legislative Assembly Sittings, Official Report, First Session of the Second Parliament, Part I of the First Session, 6 May 1968 to 1 August 1968, vol. 27.

13. Ibid., 119; Housing and Development (Amendment) Bill, Parliamentary Debates, Republic of Singapore, Official Report, First Session of the Second Parliament, Part III, 11 June 1969 to 30 March 1970, vol. 29, 16.

14. Jennifer Robinson, “Power as Friendship: Spatiality, Femininity, and ‘Noisy’ Surveillance,” in Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance, ed. Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo, and Ronan Paddison (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 73; extract from Verbatim Report of Ordinary Meeting of the City Council of Singapore held on 31 August 1956, HDB box 1100, NAS.

15. Attendance figures and costs from Public Relations and Advisory Committee report, 11 January 1961; quote from chairman’s speech at opening of HDB exhibition, Microfilm 1244, NAS.

16. The Lands Department did not state what it would display. Summary of Exhibition on Low-Cost Housing by Department, Microfilm 1244, NAS.

17. Accession Nos. 91260, 91270, Photograph Collection, NAS.

18. Oral history of Alan Fook Cheong Choe, interviewed 1 August 1997 and 29 August 1997 by Ms. Cheong Eng Khim, Reel 7, NAS.

19. My italics. “Applicants for Flats: Housing Board Amends Regulations,” Eastern Sun, 5 August 1967, Microfilm NA 563, NAS.

20. HDB memo from Estates Manager, 6 January 1965, HDB box 1225, NAS.

21. Aline Wong and Leong Wai Kum, eds., A Woman’s Place: The Story of Singaporean Women (Singapore: The People’s Action Party Women’s Wing, 1993), 28.

22. Ibid., 3.

23. Ibid., 42–43.

24. Choe, Reel 8.

25. Draft paper, n.d. “Review of Progress of the Sale of Flats Scheme,” HDB box 1227, NAS.

26. Secretary, HDB, “National Day Supplement,” 26 April 1965, HDB box 1251, NAS.

27. HDB Annual Report 2008/09, “Key Statistics,” 1. Available online at http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10221p.nsf/Attachment/AR0809/$file/index.html (accessed. 2 January 2013).

28. Stephen H. K. Yeh, “Housing Conditions and Housing Needs,” in Public Housing in Singapore: A Multi-Disciplinary Study, ed. Stephen H. K. Yeh (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1975), 45.

29. Gundy Cahyadi, Barbara Kursten, Marc Weiss, and Guang Yang, “Singapore Metropolitan Economic Strategy Report: Singapore’s Economic Transformation,” Prague, June 2004, 6, available online at www.globalurban.org/GUD%20Singapore%20MES%20Report.pdf (accessed 20 December 2012).

30. Data extracted from Time Series on Annual GDP at Current Market Prices, Singapore Department of Statistics, available at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/hist/gdp2.html; World Economic Outlook Database, April 2006, International Monetary Fund, available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2006/01/data/dbcselm.cfm?G=2001 (accessed 1 January 2013).

31. Lim Kim San, foreword to Tan Sook Yee, Private Ownership of Public Housing in Singapore (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998), xi.

32. Chua Beng-Huat, Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore (London: Routledge, 1997), 124–141.

33. Chua, “Public Housing Policies Compared: US, Socialist Countries, and Singapore,” paper presented at 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, GA, 24–28 August 1988, 12.

34. Belinda K. P. Yuen, Teo Ho Pin, Ooi Giok Ling, Singapore Housing: An Annotated Bibliography (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 1998), 5–6.

35. The People’s Association, The People’s Association, 1960–1990: 30 Years with the People (Kallang, Singapore: People’s Association, 1990), 1–5, 22.

36. Ibid., iii, 22.

37. Manuel Castells, “The Developmental City-State in an Open World Economy: The Singapore Experience,” BRIE Working Paper #31, February 1988, 39.

38. Ibid., 6.

39. Sim Loo Lee, “Planning the Built Environment for Now and the 21st Century,” in City and the State: Singapore’s Built Environment Revisited, ed. Ooi Giok Ling and Kenson Kwok (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23.

Myth #9: Public Housing Residents Hate the Police

1. Ivy and Renee Alford, interview by author and Nicholas Alford, 15 December 2006, tape of interview in author’s possession.

2. United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1961 Report, Book 5: Justice (Washington, DC: 1961), 5–28; see also Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 229–34. Victor Gonzalez, interview by author, 17 September 2008, tape of interview in author’s possession.

3. For NYCHA’s changing architecture, see Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), chap. 3.

4. Lawrence Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 151, 358–59, 361. See also Samuel Walker, A Critical History of Police Reform (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1977); and Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

5. Morton Bard, “Police Management of Conflicts among People,” 8 August 1970, folder 10, box 60E7, NYCHA; prepared remarks by Joseph Christian, 19 November 1973, folder 7, box 65B1, NYCHA.

6. For the percentage of black officers in 1965, see John J. Truta, “A Comprehensive Study of Recruitment of Negroes by the New York City Police Department with Other Law Enforcement Agencies” (master’s thesis, Bernard M. Baruch College, 1969), 70. For the ethnicity of HAPD officers in the 1970s, see “Ethnic Survey, Housing Authority Police Department,” 15 August 1974, folder 1, box 88B5, NYCHA. Black and Hispanic patrol officers represented 60.6 percent of the patrol force in 1974. For the size of the HAPD relative to other departments, see Joseph Weldon and Robert Ledee, “High-Rise Policing Techniques,” ca. 1966, folder 4, box 60E7, NYCHA.

7. For comparative number of minority officers, see W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), app. B. The NYCHA population figures include what the authority estimated to be the one hundred thousand unregistered residents who double up in the same unit with the tenant(s) of record. For racial composition, see NYCHA, “Racial Distribution in Operating Project at Initial Occupancy and on December 31, 1960, All Programs,” 18 January 1961, manuscript box IVB, NYCHA. For the size of the HAPD in 1975, see Joseph Christian to Hon. Matthew J. Troy, Jr., Chair of Finance Committee, New York City Council, 17 June 1975, folder 1, box 88B5, NYCHA.

8. Gonzalez interview.

9. Joseph Keeney, interview by author, February 2007 and July 2008, tape of interviews in author’s possession.

10. Mary and Tricia Alfson, interview by author and Nicholas Alfson, 15 December 2006; Maria Vasquez, interview by author and Christian Nunez and Maria Figueroa, November 2006; Rachael Ryans, interview by author, 3 December 2006; tapes of all interviews in author’s possession.

11. Judith Cummings, “230 Inducted as Housing Police; One Is the First Woman Recruit,” New York Times, 20 November 1973. In 1965, NYCHA centralized both time records and check payments, and record rooms ceased to play this function; see “Centralization of Time Records in Security Headquarters,” 10 November 1965, folder 3, box 64C3, NYCHA.

12. Raymond Henson, interview by author, 28 November 2007, tape of interview in author’s possession.

13. Richard Schauss, interview by author, 1 February 2008, tape of interview in author’s possession.

14. Peter Grymes, interview by author, 10 February 2008, tape of interview in author’s possession.

15. William Reid to Hon. James Gaynor, 5 May 1959, folder 3, box 71B7, NYCHA. Average violations reported extrapolated from state-funded projects data for both complaints and Juvenile Record Cards. Using population totals for state-funded projects with HAPD coverage as of 1959, the rate of violations reported to managers was roughly 0.8 per 1,000 project residents. For population totals, see Property Protection and Security Division, “Present Assignments and Additional Personnel Requested,” n.d., folder 3, box 71B7, NYCHA. For a list of finable offenses, see “Red Hook Houses,” 11 June 1945, folder 2, box 71B7, NYCHA.

16. Arthur Wallander to the Members of the New York City Housing Authority, 1 October 1957, folder 3, box 64E7, NYCHA.

17. Ellen Lurie, “Rough Draft of a Study of the George Washington Houses,” 1956, II-32, folder 13, box 11, Union Settlement Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

18. Occupancy was not complete at Castle Hill until December 1960, but residents started moving in by 1959. For completion dates on NYCHA developments, see Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, app. A; Grymes interview.

19. Terri Sheeps, interview by author, 10 February 2007, tape of interview in author’s possession; Gonzalez interview; Fritz Umbach, The Last Neighborhood Cops: The Rise and Fall of Community Policing in New York Public Housing (Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), chap. 4.

20. Gonzalez interview.

21. Jennie McIntyre, “Public Attitudes toward Crime and Law Enforcement,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 374, no. 1 (1967).

22. New York City Police Department, Statistical Report: Complaints and Arrests, Crime Analysis Section (New York: Office of Management, 1960–1982). Until 1968, the lowest grade for arrests was “offenses,” but the 1968 revision of the New York State penal code replaced that term with “violation.” In 1964, 86,319 of the 190,289 total arrests were for “offenses,” but by 1970, of the 250,902 total arrests, only 44,243 were for violations.

23. Annual Statistical Report—1976, 30 March 1977, folder 3, box 89A3, NYCHA.

24. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 327–28.

25. “Riot Flares in Brooklyn Project; 8 Persons Injured, 5 Arrested,” New York Times, 16 August 1962; “2 Housing Officers Pelted with Bottles by a Harlem Crowd,” New York Times, 31 August 1974.

26. Max Siegel, “S.I. Broker and 3 Indicted in Damaging Black’s Home,” New York Times, 15 October 1975; George Todd, “Former Cops Guilty of Vandalizing Black Home,” New York Amsterdam News, 2 October 1976.

27. Cummings, “230 Inducted as Housing Police.”

28. “Police Department, HPS # 284,” 10 December 1969, and “Police Department, HPS #3,” 2 February 1970, both in folder 3, box 62C1, NYCHA.

29. Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 6, 8; for the role of tenant patrols as “viable community spokespersons” within NYCHA, see “Tenant Organizations in Public Housing—The Need for Professional Mediation,” 6 December, 1976, folder 13, box 90B4, NYCHA.

30. Bonnie Bucqueroux, “Community Policing Is Alive and Well,” Community Policing Exchange (May-June 1995), http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/cpe0595.txt.

31. So certain, for example, was Howard Husock, director of public policy case studies at Harvard, that “everyone knows how quickly . . . housing projects . . . in big cities turn into dangerous, demoralized slums,” that he neglected even to provide a citation for this sweeping generalization in his America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 1.

32. Although, as José Ramón Sánchez has observed, not until the 1970s would Puerto Rican residency in public housing reflect their share of the city’s low-income population, this pattern was much less true in East Harlem. The Johnson Houses, for example, were 25.4 percent Puerto Rican at their initial occupancy in 1949. See José Ramón Sánchez, “Housing Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1945 to 1984: A Study in Class Powerlessness” (PhD diss., New York University, 1990), 563.

33. Ellen Lurie would eventually acquire fame as an activist defending community control in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville strike. See Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 175.

34. Ellen Lurie, “Los Vigilantes,” September 1959, folder 1, box 17, Union Settlement Records, Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Leonard J. Duhl, The Urban Condition: People and Policy in the Metropolis (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 249.

35. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment—Perspectives on Gender (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990); Nancy Naples, “Activist Mothering: Cross-Generational Continuity in the Community Work of Women from Low-Income Urban Neighborhoods,” Gender & Society 6, no. 3 (1992): 441–63.

36. Lurie, “Los Vigilantes”; Duhl, The Urban Condition, 255.

37. Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 192–96; for the number of tenant associations, see William Reid, “Towards a Slumless City: 1954–1965,” November 1965, folder 5, box 59D5, NYCHA.

38. Val Coleman, “Tenant Organization in Public Housing—The Need for Professional Mediation,” 6 December 1976, folder 13, box 90B4, NYCHA; see also Blanca Cedeno, “Human Relations Committee Meeting from Millbrook House,” 19 October 1972, folder 2, box 88B4, NYCHA; Blanca Cedeno to Albert Walsh, 30 November 1967, folder 1, box 70D5, NYCHA.

39. Randall Bennett Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 710–11.

40. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 369–74.

41. David Preston “New Expectations for Public Housing: Paper Presented at the 1965 Annual Meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, New York, New York,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 36, no. 4 (1966): 678; David Preston, “Department of Social and Community Services,” 1966, 1, box 59D5, NYCHA; Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 236–37, Nancy Naples, Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty (New York: Routledge, 1998), 76–77, 210–11.

42. Les Mathews, “Greenpoint Slaying Laid to Race Strife,” New York Amsterdam News, 17 December 1960. Tudy’s activism, however, long predated the 1960 events described by the Amsterdam News; as Tudy recounted, her grandmother took her to protests on 125th Street organized by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. It is likely that Tudy was recalling Powell’s “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” Harlem campaign. See Colin Campbell, “A Lifetime of Leadership: An Interview with Mildred Tudy,” Greenline, 10 October 1986, folder 23, box 97, National Congress of Neighborhood Women Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Women’s History Manuscripts, Smith College.

43. Harold Berger to Irving Wise, 14 October 1966, folder 10, box 66E8, NYCHA; Harold Berger to Irving Wise, “Follow-up to Cooper Park Houses Community Meeting,” 17 October 1966, folder 10, box 66E8, NYCHA.

44. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, The Politics of Turmoil: Essays on Poverty, Race, and the Urban Crisis (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 24, 21–22, 7–9.

45. For Tudy’s record of activism, see Mathews, “Greenpoint Slaying”; Rhea Callaway, “Hi There!,” New York Amsterdam News, 28 November 1970; “Locals Demand Jobs on Hospital Site,” New York Amsterdam News, 24 July 1971; “Residents Demand Jobs on Williamsburg Site,” New York Amsterdam News, 18 December, 1971; “Charge Racism on District 14 School Board,” New York Amsterdam News, 11 December 1971; “Blacks Fear Exclusion in Williamsburg Housing,” New York Amsterdam News, 22 January 1972; “Black Principal Ouster May End School Peace,” New York Amsterdam News, 9 June 1973; “Court Hears Arguments in Woodhull Suit,” New York Amsterdam News, 19 July 1980; “A Call to Convene the Black Population of New York,” New York Amsterdam News, 15 May 1982; “Community Service—Mildred Tudy,” New York Amsterdam News, 28 December 1991. For Tudy’s conception of “basic needs” community activism, see Campbell, “A Lifetime of Leadership.”

46. Jim Fuerst and Roy Petty, “Public Housing in the Courts, Pyrrhic Victories for the Poor,” The Urban Lawyer (Summer 1977): 503.

47. For evictions, see relevant tables, folder 13, box 64A4, NYCHA; for population totals, see NYCHA, “Racial Distribution in Operating Project,” 18 January 1961; Martin interview; for telegrams, see Tompkins Tenants Association to Walter Washington, 1 June 1967, folder 10, box 66E8, NYCHA.

48. For the first of these, a three-week vigil in 1963, see the discussion of past protests in Manhattanville Improvement Association, press release, 15 April 1968, folder 1, box 64D3, NYCHA; Les Mathews, “New Locks, More Policemen Promised St. Nicholas Houses,” New York Amsterdam News, 2 April 1966; notice posted in the lobbies at Marble Hill Houses, “Project Families Demand Our Own Lock,” 10 March 1967, folder 5, box 65D8, NYCHA; Edith Paris to Sidney Schackman, 8 August 1967, folder 10, box 65E3, NYCHA; Metropolitan Council on Housing, “Rutgers Project Stands Firm to Continue Vigil until Guards Are Place [sic] in Lobby” (press release), 11 August 1967, folder 4, box 64B7, NYCHA; Alfredo Graham to Mr. Roberts, 13 November 1967, folder 4, box 65E4, NYCHA; Simon Obi Anekwe, “Mugged as Others Picket,” New York Amsterdam News, 18 November 1967; Manhattanville Improvement Association, press release; Ben Gould to Stanley Roberts, 1 May 1968, folder 4, box 60D8, NYCHA; “City School Budget Assailed; Housing Police Funds Allotted,” New York Times, 24 May 1968; Stanley Roberts to Joseph Christian, “Patterson Houses Delegation at Mayor’s Officer,” 6 August 1968, folder 7, box 65E1, NYCHA; “Threaten Rent Strike,” New York Amsterdam News, 8 August 1970; “Potential Tension Situations,” 20 November 1970, folder 4, box 70D2, NYCHA; “Potential Tension Situations,” 4 December 1970, folder 4, box 70D2, NYCHA; “Potential Tension Situations,” 12 December 1970, folder 4, box 70D2, NYCHA; “Potential Tension Situations,” 29 January 1971, folder 4, box 70D2, NYCHA; Les Mathews, “Lincoln Project Crime Wave ‘Unfounded,’ ” New York Amsterdam News, 20 March 1971; “Tenants Protest Cutbacks,” The Chief, 12 May 1971; “Project Tenants Threaten Rent Strike,” Long Island Press, 30 May 1971; “Redfern Tenants Patrol Plans Protest,” Long Island Press, 30 May 1971; “Project Groups Hits Golar on V-Gals,” Daily News, 11 November 1971; “Baruch Tenants in a Protest,” New York Post, 30 November 1971; Arthur Mulligan, “Lindsay Won’t Hike Force: Housing Cops,” Daily News, 11 December 1971; George Todd, “Angry Tenants Group Launches Drive for More Housing Cops,” New York Amsterdam News, 25 December 1971; “Potential Tension Situations,” 14 January 1972, folder 7, box 70D2, NYCHA; “Public Housing Tenants Demand 2,500 More Cops,” New York Amsterdam News, 5 February 1972; “Bronx Tenants Demand Security,” New York Voice, 11 August 1972; “Vladeck Tenants Hold Rally,” Daily News, 21 July 1972; “Tension Report,” n.d., but shortly after 3 August 1972, folder 7, box 65C5, NYCHA. See reference to demonstration at Millbrook Houses: “Tenants Demonstrate at Lehman Village Housing,” New York Amsterdam News, 8 December 1973; “Law Makers Support the Rent Strike,” New York Amsterdam News, 3 August 1974; Ad Hoc Committee against the New York City Housing Policy to Mayor Beame, 8 November 1974, folder 5, box 88B2, NYCHA; “New York City Housing Authority Police—Federal Program,” 12 December 1976, folder 5, box 90B4, NYCHA; Les Mathews, “Manhattanville Tenants Demand Protection,” New York Amsterdam News, 24 July 1976; Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Dear Friend,” 11 May 1977, p. 4, folder 4, box 89E7, NYCHA; “Williamsburg Houses—Security Demonstration,” 3 June 1980, folder 1, box 90A4 NYCHA.

49. In a recent dissertation, for example, historian Tamar Carroll addresses Mobilization for Youth’s (MYF) 1964 rent strike and lovingly details the activism of a number of women in NYCHA developments from the 1970s onward, but skips over the 1968 rent strikes for more police officers. See Carroll, “Grassroots Feminism.”

50. For the history of “section 755” that provided legal protection for striking tenants under certain conditions, see Joel Schwartz, “Tenant Power in the Liberal City, 1943–1971,” in The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904–1984, ed. Ronald Lawson and Mark Naison (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 134–208; see also Junius Griffin, “ ‘Guerrilla War’ Urged in Harlem; Rent Strike Chief Calls for ‘100 Revolutionaries,’ ” New York Times, 20 July 1964.

51. For rent strikers getting priority for admission to NYCHA, see Michael Lipsky and Margaret Levi, “Community Organization as a Political Resource,” in People and Politics in Urban Society, ed. Harlan Hahn (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1972), 195–96; Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980), 63–64; Simon Obi Anekwe, “Call Tenants Vigil a ‘Beautiful Thing,’ ” New York Amsterdam News, 20 April 1968; for Anekwe’s career, J. Zamgba Browne, “Simon Anekwe: A True Journalist,” New York Amsterdam News, 7 December 2000.

52. For MFY’s internal decisions, see Schwartz, “Tenant Power in the Liberal City, 1943–1971”; Roberta Gold argues that the Harlem rent strikes were more effective than Schwartz believes them to have been, but she doesn’t take issue with his analysis of MFY at the time. See Gold, City of Tenants (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), chap. 4.

53. Noel A. Cazenave, Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 120–21; Griffin, “ ‘Guerrilla War’ Urged in Harlem”; Harold H. Weissman and Mobilization for Youth, Individual and Group Services in the Mobilization for Youth Experience (New York: Association Press, 1969), 120.

54. New York City Housing Authority v. Medlin, 57 Misc. 2d 145, 291 N.Y.S. 2d 672 (New York County, 1968); “Tenants of East Side Projects Vow to Continue Rent Strike,” New York Times, 14 April 1968; “Harlem Tenants Open Vigil to Press Protection Drive,” New York Times, 5 May 1968; “Tenant Protection Held Outside Scope of Housing Board,” New York Times, 28 June 1968; David K. Shipler, “City Is Evicting Rent Protesters,” New York Times, 7 January 1969.

55. For the Young Lords’ thirteen-point program, see Lois Palken Rudnick, Judith E. Smith, and Rachel Rubin, American Identities (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 170–73.

56. “Tension Report—Carver Houses,” December 1970, folder 4, box 70D2, NYCH; Sánchez, “Housing Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1945 to 1984,” 565.

57. “Threatens Rent Strike.”

58. For the funding history of the HAPD, see “Comprehensive HUD Review,” September 1983, folder 1, box 91C4, NYCHA; for HAPD’s size, see New York City Council Resolution, 13 April, folder 4, box 62 C2, NYCHA; and Joseph Garber, “The History, Organization and Structure of the New York City Housing Authority Police Department” (honors thesis, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 1970). For the population of NYCHA, see “Project Data Statistics (Blue Book),” 1965–1975, box 72A1 and box 72A2, NYCHA. For the size of the NYPD, see New York Police Department, “Annual Reports,” 1965–1971, Special Collection, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. For the hiring freeze, see Murray Schumach, “City Ends Freeze on Police, Fire, Sanitation Jobs,” New York Times, 3 November 1972; Martin Tolchin, “City Puts Freeze on Jobs of Police and Garbage Men,” New York Times, 27 April 1970.

59. “Minutes of Project Security Problems Meeting,” 18 October 1968, folder 5, box 64B7, NYCHA.

60. Walter Washington to Mayor John V. Lindsay, 22 September 1968, folder 5, box 64B7, NYCHA.

Myth #10: Public Housing Tenants Are Powerless

1. I would like to thank Fritz Umbach for inviting me to contribute to this edited collection. This essay is a condensed version of chapter 6: “An Awakening Giant,” from Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 155–91. By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.

2. See the following essays by Rhonda Y. Williams: “ ‘To Challenge the Status Quo by Any Means’: Community Action and Representational Politics in 1960s Baltimore,” in The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980, ed. Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian (Athens: Georgia University Press, 2011), 63–86; “The Pursuit of Audacious Power: Rebel Reformers and Neighborhood Politics in Baltimore, 1966–1968,” Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level, ed. Peniel E. Joseph (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 215–41; “ ‘Something’s Wrong Down Here’: Poor Black Women and Urban Struggles for Democracy,” in African American Urban History since World War II, ed. Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe William Trotter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 316–36; “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power,” The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights–Black Power Era, ed. Peniel E. Joseph (New York: Routledge, 2006), 79–103.

3. Author’s interviews with Shirley M. Wise, 22 January 1996, 7 February 1996, 23 April 1996, 1 November 1997, 21 June 2002.

4. Wise interviews.

5. Author’s interviews with Julia Matthews, 19 December 1996, and Shirley M. Wise.

6. U-JOIN is Union for Jobs or Income Now, established by the Students for Democratic Society’s Economic Research and Action Project (SDS-ERAP).

7. Author’s interviews with Goldie Baker, 29 January 1997, 15 July 2000, 24 September 2001, 13 October 2001.

8. Author’s interview with Clyde Hatcher, 26 May 1998.

9. “Poverty Plan Is Questioned,” Baltimore Afro-American (hereafter abbreviated as BAA), 15 December 1964. On U-JOIN protests, see Jobs Now Newsletter of U-JOIN, 8 February and 15 February 1965; “We Call for a Real War on Poverty” (flyer, n.d.), all in Folder 12: Baltimore, Newsletters and Leaflets, 1964, Box 22, Series 2B, SDS Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS). Also see “Baltimore U-JOIN Report War on Poverty,” n.d., submitted by David Harding and Kim Moody; CAP Report submitted by Bob Moore; ERAP Report, n.d., submitted to Rennie Davis, all in Folder 13: SDS Baltimore Reports and Prospectuses, 1964,1965, SDS Papers, WHS.

10. “Why Anti-Poverty Fight Lags,” BAA, 20 November 1965; George W. Collins, “OEO, CAA React Quickly to Critique,” BAA, 14 May 1966; “How Council Holds Up Major Poverty Plans,” BAA, 23 July 1966; “Uncle Sam Advises CAC to Be More Independent,” BAA, 23 July 1966; “City Council ‘Conservatives’ Want Poverty Program Control,” BAA, 18 March 1969.

11. “Poor Speak Out at First Convention; Firm Plans Due in Dec. 18 Meeting,” BAA, 13 December 1966; A. W. Geiselman, Jr., “Battle Looms in Poverty Program,” Baltimore Evening Sun (hereafter abbreviated as BES), 19 January 1967.

12. Baker interviews.

13. Douglass Homes was formerly part of another “combo” with Somerset Courts. Memo to Robert S. Moyer from Van Story Branch, 30 January 1968, Folder: Douglass Homes—General 1949–1970, Box 11, Series 14, RG 48, Baltimore City Archives (BCA).

14. Eugenia Davis and Matthews interviews; memo to Charles Knight from John Meehan, 1 July 1968, Folder: Douglass Homes—General 1949–1970, Box 11, Series 14, RG 48, BCA.

15. Hatcher interview.

16. Author’s interview with Ann Thornton, 28 May 1996.

17. Baker interviews. Also see Eileen Boris, “When Work Is Slavery,” in Whose Welfare?, ed. Gwendolyn Mink (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 36–55.

18. Minutes of the Commission Meeting of the HABC, 6 February 1968, Folder 13, Box 5, Series I, BURHA Collection, University of Baltimore Archives (UBA).

19. Matthews interview. On the Joyce Thorpe case, see Christina Greene, “ ‘Our Separate Ways’: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina, 1940s–1970s” (PhD diss., Duke University, 1996), especially chap. 4; “Supreme Court Decides to Rule on Eviction Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, 18 April 1967. In 2005, Christina Greene’s dissertation was published in book form by University of North Carolina Press.

20. Jack Bryan, “Public Housing Modernization,” Journal of Housing (hereafter abbreviated as JOH) 28, no. 4 (1971): 169.

21. “Minneapolis Gets First Modernization OK,” JOH 25, no. 3 (1968): 153; HUD circular quote in “Philadelphia Authority Contracts with Residents,” JOH 27, no. 3 (1970): 144; “Tenant-Management Issues,” JOH 27, no. 10 (1970): 540.

22. Bryan, “Public Housing Modernization,” 170.

23. “Tenants Participate in Modernization Programs,” JOH 26, no. 8 (1969): 419; Wise interviews.

24. Bryan, “Public Housing Modernization,” 170; “Tenant-Management Issues,” 540.

25. Minutes: Public Housing Tenant Representatives, 16 August 1968, Folder: 1968–69—RAB, Box 13, Series 13, RG 48, BCA.

26. Minutes of the First Meeting of the Resident Advisory Board, 3 October 1968, Folder: 1968–69—RAB, Box 13, Series 13, RG 48, BCA.

27. Bryan, “Public Housing Modernization,” 173. Also see memo to Embry from Branch, 16 September 1968, and Minutes of the First Meeting of the Resident Advisory Board, 3 October 1968, both in Folder: 1968–69—RAB, Box 13, Series 13, RG 48, BCA; “Tenant-Management Issues,” 536; Steen R. Weisman, “Tenants Council Will Advise City,” New York Times (hereafter abbreviated as NYT), 22 November 1970; and John Herbers, “Tenants Win Policy Voice in Nation’s Public Housing,” NYT, 27 November 1970. On New Haven, Connecticut, community-based tenant organizations, see Edward White, Jr., “Tenant Participation in Public Housing Management,” JOH 26, no. 8 (1969): 416–19.

28. “Low-Income Groups More Active,” BES, 27 December 1972.

29. Bryan, “Public Housing Modernization,” 171–72.

30. Jean King was a leader at Darst-Webbe and Peabody complexes. See “Public Housing Tenants in St. Louis Have Been on Rent Strike for Six Months, “JOH 26, no. 7 (1969): 351–52. Also in Newark, public housing residents led by a group called Poor and Dissatisfied Tenants initiated a rent strike, picketed up to four complexes, and demanded a reduction in the maximum rent of tenants receiving public welfare. Washington public housing tenants also withheld rents, protesting bad upkeep and slum conditions. “Tenant-Management Relations,” JOH 27, no. 10 (1970): 534–43. On the St. Louis case, see George Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 145–71.

31. “Tenants Began Newark Strike,” BES, 2 April 1970; Sanford J. Unger and Michael Hodge, “Consumers’ New Weapon: Rent Strike,” Washington Post, 26 July 1970; “Newark Tenants Will Defy Court Order,” NYT, 15 February 1972, and “Tenant Association in Newark Faces Contempt Charges, NYT, 24 February 1972; Joseph P. Fried, “ ‘Tenant Power’ Is a Spreading Slogan,” NYT, 19 March 1973.

32. Neil Gilbert describes the War on Poverty’s goal as the “democraticization [sic] of social welfare” through “transforming clients into constituents.” Gilbert, Clients or Constituencies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1970), x, 9, 29–32.

33. Author’s interviews with Gladys Spell, 22 October 1993, 4 November 1993.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Author’s interview with Rosetta Schofield, 5 November 1993.

37. Jewell Chambers, “Community Leaders Explore Forming Black Unity Front,” BAA, 16 March 1968.

38. “Deficit of Action Agency Squeezes Out 10 Centers,” Baltimore News American, 19 March 1971.

39. Baker interviews.

40. Author’s interview with Maxine Stephenson, 4 November 1993.

41. David Farber uses “customized wars” in The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 107.

Myth #11: Tenants Did Not Invest in Public Housing

1. Author’s interview with M.B.M., Philadelphia, PA, June 27, 2000. The names of tenants and social workers in this essay are pseudonyms with the exception of the names of people quoted in newspapers.

2. For an overview of public housing in Philadelphia, see John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). On the origins and importance of the 1949 Housing Act, see Alexander von Hoffman, “A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the 1949 Housing Act,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 299–326.

3. “First Housing Projects Here Pay Dividends in Happiness,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 11 June 1949, 6.

4. Bauman, Public Housing, 151.

5. Committee on Public Housing Policy, “Basic Policies for Public Housing for Low-Income Families in Philadelphia” (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Housing Association, 1957), 27a. African Americans were overrepresented among applicants prior to the 1950s; see James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 66.

6. Questionnaires on Public Housing: a collection of completed questionnaires that were sent out to social workers by the Committee on Public Housing in 1956 to get feedback on public housing in Philadelphia, Box 282, Folders 4924 to 4933, Philadelphia Housing Association/Housing Association of the Delaware Valley, 1909–1975, Urban Archives Temple University (hereafter cited as Questionnaires); “Memo to the Files of Committee on Public Housing Policy from Howard W. Hallman,” Box 282, Folder 4933, Philadelphia Housing Association/Housing Association of the Delaware Valley, 1909–1975 (hereafter cited as HADV), Urban Archives Temple University (hereafter cited as UATU); Committee on Housing Policy, “Basic Policies for Public Housing,” 25–26.

7. Bauman, Public Housing, 171. Abbottsford, Passyunk, Bartram Village, Wilson Park, and Schuylkill Falls became nearly half African American by 1968. Liddonfield and Hill Creek remained predominantly white.

8. See Lisa Levenstein, A Movement without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Housing in Postwar Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 98–103. On single mothers’ collective efforts to gain admittance to public housing in Durham, NC, see Christina Greene, Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 135. In 1968, Community Legal Services, a legal aid agency for low-income Philadelphians, helped a group of thirteen unwed mothers win a suit against the PHA challenging the ban on their admission.

9. Bauman, Public Housing, 49–51.

10. “The Philadelphia Housing Authority Presents Richard Allen Homes,” pamphlet, Folder Richard Allen Homes, 1945–1967, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Newsclipping Collection, UATU.

11. “Laborer with Six Children First Allen Homes Lessee,” Philadelphia Tribune, 24 February 1942, 1, 2; “New Life Opens for Widow’s Child as First Allen Homes Lease Is Signed,” Philadelphia Record, 25 February 1942, 3; “New Homes, New Health, New Fun, New Happiness,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 1 August 1942, 8; “Everything Very Wonderful for Rosen Homes Residents,” Philadelphia Tribune, 2 August 1955, 1, 2; “Rosen Homes Families Finding Happiness in New Apartments,” Philadelphia Tribune, 6 August 1955, 1, 2.

12. “Glenwood’s 1st Tenants Due Tuesday,” Philadelphia Record, 29 September 1940, 1; “A Preview of Low-Rent Housing,” Philadelphia Record, 21 August 1940, 2; “New Homes, New Health.”

13. “Richard Allen Homes,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 27 July 1949, 13.

14. Quoted in “New Homes, New Health.”

15. Quoted in “New Homes, New Health.”

16. “Everything Very Wonderful for Rosen Homes Residents,” quotation on 2.

17. Philadelphia Housing Authority, “Report of Activities Conducted in Community Buildings,” October 1955, Box 10, Folder 177, Urban League of Philadelphia Records, 1935–1963, UATU; Philadelphia Housing Association, “1955 Report of Community Activities,” Box 282, Folder 4920, HADV, UATU; Philadelphia Housing Authority, Report for 1955, 8.

18. Philadelphia Housing Authority, 20 Years of Service: The Story of Public Housing in Philadelphia, 1937–1957 (Philadelphia: Gelmans, 1957), 23.

19. Although tenant advisory organizations began in Baltimore in the 1940s, they did not begin in Philadelphia until later. On Baltimore, see Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 63–86.

20. Quotation is social worker paraphrasing Mrs. Davenport, Philadelphia Housing Authority, Housekeeping Discussion Group, April 17, 1961, Box 82, Folder 109, Friends Neighborhood Guild, 1922–1980 (hereafter cited as FNG), UATU.

21. Quoted in Gail Levy and Judith Shouse, “Concept of Alienation: A New Approach to Understanding the AFDC Recipient” (Master of Social Service Thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1965), 39; Anthony F. C. Wallace, Housing and Social Structure: A Preliminary Survey, with Particular Reference to Multi-Storey, Low-Rent Public Housing Projects (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Housing Authority, 1956), 64, 79.

22. M.B.M. interview.

23. Social worker quoting tenants in Philadelphia Housing Authority, Family Discussion Group, February 6, 1961, Box 82, Folder 109, FNG, UATU; “What Happens at a Project in a Blighted Area,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 29 April 1956, sec. 2, p. 5. See also “What Happens When Public Housing Is Erected in a Neighborhood of Privately-Owned Homes?,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 29 April 1956, 1, 4.

24. Public Housing Authority, Family Discussion Group, 19 February 1961, Box 82, Folder 109, FNG, UATU; “What Happens When Public Housing Is Erected.”

25. M.B.M. interview. Similarly, see “Tasker Homes Up in the Air over Curb on TV Antennas,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 21 July 1958, 33.

26. Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 190–92, 200.

27. For an interesting account, see D. Bradford Hunt, “Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory,” Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (2005): 208–9, 213–14.

28. Questionnaires; Philadelphia Housing Authority, Family Discussion Group, April 3, 1961, Box 82, Folder 109, FNG, UATU; Federal Public Housing Authority, National Housing Agency. The Livability Problems of 1,000 Families (Washington, DC: FPHA, 1945), 31.

29. Questionnaires; Philadelphia Housing Authority, Family Discussion Group, 1 May 1961, Box 82, Folder 109, FNG, UATU; Philadelphia Housing Authority, Public Housing: Report to the Community IV:2 (May 1954), 9.

30. “Low Rent: Richard Allen Homes,” 1945, Box 24, Folder Philadelphia Housing Association, YMCA of Philadelphia–Christian Street, 1943–1964, UATU; Philadelphia District Health and Welfare Council, Use of Community Facilities in Developments of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Health and Welfare Council, 1955); Philadelphia Housing Authority, Public Housing: Report to the Community 11:4 (April 1952), 6.

31. Wharton Center, “Rosen-Johnson Housing Neighborhood,” draft, n.d., Box 6, Folder 93, Wharton Center Records, 1913–1968, UATU. The problem had a different configuration in more economically stable neighborhoods with better and less crowded recreational facilities. In those cases, tenants frequently were not welcome at nearby recreation centers. See Health and Welfare Council, Use of Community Facilities. On recreation space in public housing in Chicago, see D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Public Housing in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 158–64.

32. For an excellent account of Chicago, see Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 195–200.

33. In 1955, the PHA made plans to replace the fifteen-year-old ranges and fridges at Richard Allen, Johnson, and Tasker; see Philadelphia Housing Authority, Report for 1955.

34. Committee on Public Housing Policy, “Basic Policies for Public Housing,” 32; “Maintenance Subcommittee Report,” Box 286, Folder 5053, HADV, UATU.

35. Health and Welfare Council, Inc., Family Division, Committee on Social Service in Public Housing, Minutes, April 21, 1960, Box 4, Folder 111, Health and Welfare Council Inc., Records, 1928–1966, UATU; Levy and Shouse, “Concept of Alienation,” 39. On working-class African American women’s protests against utility bills in 1960s Durham, NC, see Greene, Our Separate Ways, 183.

36. “What Happens When Public Housing Is Erected?”

37. “A Spick-and-Span Spot,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 5 June 1947, 14.

38. “Richard Allen Homes”; “Bright Spot in Public Housing,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 24 June 1948, 20F.

39. “A Spick-and-Span Spot”; “Everything Very Wonderful for Rosen Homes Residents.”

40. “Maintenance Committee Report,” 29 January 1957, Box 281, Folder 4886, HADV, UATU.

41. Quoted in Bauman, Public Housing, 176; “Girls, 9 Molested in Project, At Home; Two Suspects Sought,” Philadelphia Tribune, 28 July 1959, 13; “600 Quizzed about Murder,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin,17 August 1958, 3; “Man Admits Killing Guard at Project,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 19 August 1958, 1; M.B.M. interview.