Week 2 post 1

 Week 2 Post 1- notes

Chapter 2- Public Housing, Black Ghettos

  • Most public housing is not tightly-cramped high rises with no gardens or white people, this is a misconception
  • The government stopped funding high rise public housing in the 1970s and now majority of high rise public housing is only in NYC
  • Projects were started not for people that couldn't afford homes, but for those who could afford it but couldn't find one because of the housing shortage
  • when projects started being built a lot more often in the 1950s they were given priority to veterans, and did inspections on tenants before they let them move in
  • During WWI 170,000 white workers and their families were housed in projects near shipyards and plants used for the war effort
  • The New Deal started the first projects created not specifically for defense work, since the great depression and WWII caused such a housing shortage. All these projects were segregated or excluded AAs all together
  • The TVA (TN) created a model village to give more people jobs which was only available to white people
  • CCC leaders refused to allow integrated work camps after some local leaders tried to integrate them
  • Harold Ickes was secretary of the interior when the PWA was created under the new deal. Ickes was president of the Chicago NAACP and made it so 1/3 of the first projects created were for black people, while 6 were segregated
  • racial composition rule- race composition of projects should reflect the neighborhood
  • many very poor urban areas were already integrated, since workers who had to walk to work had to live in the same place, regardless of race
  • The first PWA project was in ATL, and demolished the Flats, an already integrated neighborhood, and created a whites only project
  • St.Louis attempted to make a whites-only project in 1934, but the federal government required they also make a black only project, causing them to destroy an integrated neighborhood
  • The PWA seperated the integrated tenements of cleveland to create white and black only projects
  • the PWA stopped constructing projects in 1937 and required localities to create their own agencies to build projects
  • When building projects in Austin the USHA condemmed emancipation park, which was used for celebrations of the abolition of slavery
  • The lanham act financed housing for defense workers as the U.S. became involved in WWII
  • The Boston West Broadway project almost entirely excluded AA tenents until a civil rights complaint in 1962 forced them to allow more AAs to live there
  • Cambridge MA demolished integrated tenents to create white only projects with black only projects built as an extension a few years later
  • In Detroit, projects took years to actually be filled because people protested black only projects if they believed they were too close to white neighborhoods
  • When black families began to make up the majority of those living in projects, Detroit found it increasingly difficult to build projects in white areas out of fear that they would cause integration
  • When Japanese defense workers were put in internment camps, their apartments became available and helped the black housing shortage
  • In 1943 San Fransisco stated that the purpose of their projecst was to maintain the same racial ratios in a neighborhood's private housing in the new projects
  • When the NAACP took San Fransisco to trial in 1953, the city stated they would not allow African Americans into white projects, but would start allowing white families into black projects
  • Hunters Point temporary war projects housed black families 25 years after the war ended
  • Pres. Truman proposed more public housing efforts, but conservatives combated it by adding amendments that would require segregation in new public housing, knowing southerm democrats wouldn't want that
  • The 1949 housing act permitted continuing to segregate projects
  • The creation of larger black only projects packed african americans in each city into small areas with no community space or organization
  • Eisenhower was the first Republican president in 20 years at the time the republican party was becoming more conservative
  • After the Brown v Board decision of 1954, Fitzpatrick stated the decision in this case did not apply to housing
  • In 1984, 10 million Americans were living in public housing and majority were still segregated, with white projects having considerably better facilities than black ones.
  • The CHA actively fought throughout the 60s and 70s against placing projects in white neighborhoods, because they thought it would be a 'burden' on the private residents of the area
  • In Miami, while black people looking for housing were given spaces in public housing, whites got vouchers to purchase private apartments, and it wasn't unitl 1998 that black people could get these too
  • Nixon said public housing should not be forced on white communities- he called projects 'monstrous, depressing places-rundown, overcrowded, crime-ridden




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