The Urban Institute is going to release a series of papers that look at how former public housing residents have fared after they moved from the Madden/Wells Homes. If you’re interested, email me at scombi@urban.org.

We’ve also published a book, “Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation.” An overview and the first chapter are available at http://www.urban.org/books/publichousing/. I’d be happy to mail you a copy.

Best,
Simona Combi

Having spent most of my life living next to one section 8 project or another, I am always fascinated by how the architecture creates an “us vs. them” attitude among neighbors. Some things that have helped in my current neighborhood are creating some shared gardening space not to mention good ol’ fashioned neighborliness.

Still, when people are isolated in big, ugly falling down buildings inside seriously isolating spaces of florescent lighting and poorly designed space, public housing serves as a sort of spatial punishment of the people who live there.

As if the “we don’t like them very much” has to get built into the environment.

What we need is public housing that is no different than middle class housing (and therefore not easily singled out).

“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” -Mark Twain

I can answer some of your questions but not all. I also looked for stats on whether public housing does breed crime, but I couldn’t find any. I didn’t do an exhaustive search – it may be out there. I’ll look again and tell you what I find.

As far as racial demographics, I only have stats for Chicago (where I live). Currently, 78 percent of family housing residents in Chicago are black. Ten percent are white and ten percent are Hispanic. Where did you grow up? I lived in subsidized housing in Michigan, where people were definitely white and poor.

Just as an anecdote, my friend Marian used to write a blog about legal issues. In Chicago, there was a case where a mother sued the Cook County Housing Authority because they failed to fix her faulty wiring and a fire started which killed her three kids. The mom’s name was Ebony, and a guy commented on the blog, saying he knew just from her name what kind of person Ebony was and that he was actually relieved to hear her kids died, as they wouldn’t grow up to become welfare sucking pigs like she was.

Nice, huh? Anyway, that didn’t really answer your question, but it came to my mind, so I thought I’d share.

Looking forward to reading your stuff and continuing to share information! Thanks for the comment!

Great, thoughtful piece. I hadn’t come across your page before, and it’s good to see someone focusing on these kinds of issues.

It made me want to know more. For example, when you write: “Regardless of what you believe, people associate crime with public housing, and they don’t want to invite crime into their neighborhood” … I’d love to know what the facts actually are.

I really like, for example, how you wrapped up No. 2, because it gives me a basis from which to judge the merit of public-housing-residents-are-lazy argument. As for some of the others, is there a strong correlation between public housing and crime? If so, why? What about the actual racial breakdown of public housing?

We think of them as predominantly black. No doubt because it’s true. But how true is it, exactly? What about poor whites? Latinos, Asians? I grew up in a government subsidized apartment. It wasn’t in the project towers, so people didn’t think of them it the same way. But they were overwhelmingly white. And we were definitely poor.

This isn’t a criticism: I realize the piece is about people’s perceptions. I’m actually just asking for my own edification because I often end up thinking and writing about some of the same things. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have the time.