Hi, GF. I read the first sentence of your post, then I read Malach’s post 63 about the loss of low income housing stock, then I posted #70 about the root causes of the loss of low cost housing. I mentioned the urban renewal craze in the 40s to 60s followed by the disastrous “Projects” craze and the loss of flophouses and SRO housing.
Then I finally read the second half of your post and saw you too traced it back to “urban renewal.”
The funny thing is here in North Idaho there are several “urban renewal” districts active today. I HATE that phrase and all it connotes. I wish they would find a better descriptor rather than one that is so charged with failure decades ago.
All that overlooks the facts of the matter. Government housing is shunned with preferance to tent dwelling on public land.
There are no homeless. There are tent dwelling squatters
In Chicago “urban renewal” of that era was also focused on the “poor Black” sections of the city. Areas of low cost rental housing was bulldozed and high rise apartments were built. The most infamous was the Chicago Housing Authroity controlled group of high rises known as Cabrini Green. It became a center for gangs and drugs, with the city government doing very little to NO maintenance on the apartments. They were finally torn down between 1995 - 2011.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
https://chicagoganghistory.com/housing-project/cabrini-green/