Most of the people on the East coast live in older housing than those projects. Stop making excuses for those people.
What excuses. They destroyed these building on their own, I’m not blaming anyone but the people that lived in them.
“Most of the people on the East coast live in older housing than those projects. Stop making excuses for those people.”
The Robert Taylor housing project was completed around the time I entered my freshman year in high school. My high school (DuSable) was right across the street from this new housing development.
Many of my friends lived in the ‘projects’. You will be surprised to know that there were flower and vegetable gardens in the front and back. Residents voluntarily took turns cleaning the common area. During my 4 years of high school the ‘projects’ (at least the ones I visited) rivaled any middle class high rise in cleanliness and livability. Of course, like any other high rise, if you had a criminal record you were not allowed in. Have a drug history? Don’t apply (drugs weren’t much of a problem back then). Garbage around the area got your name or address in one of the bags? Goodbye. Kid got arrested? So Long. Too many complaint from neighbors or a ‘floor manager’? Next waiting applicant. At that time many fathers were in the home. My mother and father were on the waiting list.
After high school I went away to college. After a few years I noticed a difference in the make up of the residents. Many of my friends (a couple names even you will recognize)left the projects along with their families. Wanna know why?
The projects became a dumping ground for societal rejects. Anybody and everybody who could not live in society on their own were dumped there...along with their ‘under the radar’ friends and relatives. Give ‘em free housing, free food (stamps), free medical (card) and a government social (secretary} worker to hold their hands. Of course with this influx of new denizens, mostly single mothers and a string of live in boyfriends, conditions rapidly deteriorated until nobody, regardless what they did, would not be evicted. Welfare even sent rent payments directly to the Chicago Housing Auth. if rent was not paid.
I was a Landlord for many years. The condition of any building is determined by the Landlord. You can find a scummy building in any neighborhood. If the landlord does not screen his tenants or evict the bad ones, that place will stand out in any neighborhood.
For the above reasons I blame the landlord not the people living there. Anyone could have known what to expect from the type of people that CHA (landlord) filled its buildings with.
What’s the old parable? ‘...but you know I was a snake’.