Public housing is a program, introduced at the federal level in 1937, which provides for low-cost housing through public financing by means of publicly owned and managed multi-family developments. Several cities began providing publicly funded housing prior to the introduction of the 1937 Housing Act through local programs of their own. Additionally, it was these kinds of local programs that helped mold the model for the federal program. Although there are multiple themes and topics related to public housing this paper will solely focus on 6 themes that are critical in understanding the history and development of public housing. These themes are in regards to the population it was aimed for, financing, federal public housing authority, local public housing authorities, design, and urban renewal. Public housing did not originally aim to provide housing for the “extreme” lower-class, it was actually aimed towards select members of the working class. More specifically, public housing’s original design intended to serve the needs of the industrial middle class, who were temporarily unemployed or lacked adequate employment during the Great Depression. After the Second World War concluded, many individuals and members of the working class were able to purchase their own homes by utilizing low-interest mortgages through the VA and FHA. However, discriminatory practices took place through these benefits. In their study, sociologists Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, demonstrate the discriminatory nature of these practices. These benefits were targeted, for the most part, towards non-Hispanic whites and consequently helped move non-Hispanic whites into the suburbs, while simultaneously keeping blacks. This was especially done in the... ... middle of paper ... ... went on the infamous question of the deserving poor was brought up and low-income individuals and families had to fit into certain regulations in order to be allowed to live in public housing. Public housing also faced many financial difficulties at the federal level due to difficulties with congress and presidential administrations. Financial problems were also present at a local level and were reflected with poor housing authorities and rising rents and reduction of services. The actual design of these public housings also proved to be problematic, and its most problematic feature were perhaps the segregation among them and the violence that arose from some of these. Overall, public housing failed to be as successful as originally environed, because in practice they suffered from overcrowdings, racial tensions, violence, poor management, and financial problems.
The Making of the Ghetto: One of the biggest forms of equity is home ownership, and between 1933 and 1978, the Federal
Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green.
The loss of public housing and the expanse of the wealth gap throughout the state of Rhode Island has been a rising issue between the critics and supporters of gentrification, in both urban areas such as Providence and wealthy areas such as the island of Newport, among other examples. With the cities under a monopoly headed by the wealth of each neighborhood, one is left to wonder how such a system is fair to all groups. Relatively speaking, it isn’t, and the only ones who benefit from such a system are white-skinned. With the deterioration of the economic status of Rhode Island, and especially in the city of Providence, more and more educated Caucasians are leaving to seek a more fertile economic environment.
The New York Times Editorial Board, in their article How Segregation Destroys Black Wealth (2015), argues that African Americans have been — and still are — discriminated against when buying property, resulting in the sprawl of poverty stricken, predominantly black neighborhoods. The Editorial Board supports this argument by providing historical evidence and analysis of the issue. They specify that “The Federal Housing Administration, created during the New Deal to promote homeownership, openly supported these racist measures; it forbade lending to black people even as it subsidized white families that moved from the cities to the suburbs. Cut off from
In the Late nineteenth century the population was growing at a rapid pace. The country had people flooding the biggest cities in the country such as New York City and Chicago. These populations were gaining more and more people every single year and the country has to do something to make places for these people to live. The government would go on to create urban housing programs. These programs were created to make homes for these people to live in. At the time it provided a place for people to live but as the populations grew it became a more cramped and rundown area because of the large populations in one place. These reforms eventually led to these areas becoming dangerous, they were rundown, and it created a hole that was difficult for people to get out of.
The United States’ government has always had a hand on our country’s housing market. From requiring land ownership to vote, to providing public housing to impoverished families, our government has become an irremovable part of the housing market. The effects of these housing policies can affect American residents in ways they might not even recognize. As several historians have concluded, many housing policies, especially those on public housing, either resulted in or reinforced the racial segregation of neighborhoods.
Newark began to deteriorate and the white residents blamed the rising African-American population for Newark's downfall. However, one of the real culprits of this decline in Newark was do to poor housing, lack of employment, and discrimination. Twenty-five percent of the cities housing was substandard according to the Model C...
In this book, Gottesdiener writes about four different families and their challenges. These families deal with having their homes forcefully foreclosed by banks. Apart from that, African Americans were discriminated when purchasing homes, making it difficult for them to find a place. As Walt Whitman said, "a man is not a whole and complete man unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on" (35). This quote said by Whitman can be interpreted that homeownership is a way to show power and wealth. Due to the discrimination, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act was created, which allowed loans to minorities to receive equal loans of the surrounding communities. This was specifically focused in the lower and moderate neighborhoods, but it failed due to redlining. Redlining was the act of categorizing specific areas of a neighborhood by racial conduct. For example, when a white is looking for a home, the relator shows them a map that avoids the low income area, which is typically of African
The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...
This paper will be predominantly focusing on public housing within Ontario. Not only will it look at the basics of Ontario but examine more directly on Regent Park within Toronto. It will discuss what public housing is and the explanation for why it exists, the government housing programs that are present with regards to public housing and the results of the government programs. The Purpose of this essay is to argue that the problem of public housing will never
In contrast to popular assumption, discrimination in public housing is becoming more prevalent than ever before. Testing done by the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston has found that today people of color are discriminated against in nearly half of their efforts to buy, sell, finance, or rent property (“1968-Present Housing Discrimination). The statistics are even worse when considering colored people who have families as the testing found that they are discriminated against approximately two thirds of the time (“1968-Present Housing Discrimination”) In addition to facing great difficulty in property affairs, people of color are less likely to be offered residence in desirable locations. 86 percent of revitalized
So why would one have the connection with minorities and poverty? Could there possibly be some sort of relation between race and class? This all started with our Federal Housing Agency or the FHA. In the book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness the author George Lipsitz put extensive research into how the FHA started and how its agency ties into minorities receiving loans or the lack of. In 1934 the FHA was provided from the government who then gave the agency’s power to private home lenders, and this is when racial biasness came into place through selective home loans. Lipsitz says “[the] Federal Housing Agency’s confidential surveys and appraiser’s manuals channeled almost all of the loan money toward whites and away from communities of color”(5). These surveys were conducted by the private lenders who had free reign to prove the loans to whomever they want. Because the minorities did not get a chance to receive the FHA loans that they needed, they are then forced to live in urban areas instead of suburban neighborhoods. There was this underground suburban segregation going on with these private lenders, which would then greatly diminish better opportunities for minorities to live in better neighborhoods.
The issue of poverty has not sprung upon the citizens of the United States living in the 21st century; rather it has been present and dealt with both here and globally in different degrees of success. This success is reviewed through our country’s welfare history in the solutions to welfare during war, provisions by the people and lastly government provided benefits. When taxes increased to fund the Civil War and a national income tax was issued in 1913 by the U.S. tax code, home mortgage deductions came into play (Welfare Politics 20). These deductions as will be seen have secured its place in the welfare solutions only when in the right hands. As some may believe, the solution to the issue of the problems that arises from the less fortunate is different d...
From slavery to Jim Crow, the impact of racial discrimination has had a long lasting influence on the lives of African Americans. While inequality is by no means a new concept within the United States, the after effects have continued to have an unmatched impact on the racial disparities in society. Specifically, in the housing market, as residential segregation persists along racial and ethnic lines. Moreover, limiting the resources available to black communities such as homeownership, quality education, and wealth accumulation. Essentially leaving African Americans with an unequal access of resources and greatly affecting their ability to move upward in society due to being segregated in impoverished neighborhoods. Thus, residential segregation plays a significant role in
There were not many options in housing available for black Americans, so they were forced to buy houses “on contract”. With this type of contract, the owner of the house would buy it a lower market price, and then sell the house to black families usually double the price that it was bought for. The family would then make costly monthly payments until they paid off the house, but would have to pay for maintenance and upkeep of the house as well. If the family could not make a payment then they would be kicked out of the house, and lose all of the money that was put into it, and another family would take their place and the cycle would continue. Contract owners made enormous sums of money off the misfortune of African-American families, and in the process created some of America’s ghettos