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National Public Housing Museum

At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home

Chicago’s latest museum looks to change the narrative around the federally supported housing projects that US cities turned their backs on decades ago.
by Zach Mortice via CityLab on April 25, 2025
Title card of the cartoon, featuring FDR committing money to a federal housing program.

The Tragedy and Tenacity of Public Housing in America

A cartoon report on the only policy proven to address the housing shortage and how racism, inept management, and disinvestment led to long-term decline.
by Eric Orner via The Nation on March 18, 2024
Black and white photo of Pruitt-Igoe buildings being destroyed.

Pruitt-Igoe: A Black Community Under the "Atomic Cloud"

In the 1950s, the U.S. military conducted unethical radiological experiments on Black communities, including the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Protean on November 28, 2022
Picture of former President Bill Clinton looking downtrodden.

The Disastrous Legacy of the New Democrats

Clintonites taught their party how to talk about helping people without actually doing it.
by Alex Pareene via The New Republic on May 16, 2022
Protestors against eviction.
partner

Covid-19 Has Exposed the Consequences of Decades of Bad Public Housing Policy

A reduction in public housing units left Americans at the mercy of private landlords.
by Gillet Gardner Rosenblith via Made By History on September 8, 2020

The Depression-Era Book That Wanted to Cancel the Rent

“Modern Housing,” by Catherine Bauer, argued—as many activists do today—that a decent home should be seen as a public utility and a basic right.
by Nora Caplan-Bricker via The New Yorker on July 18, 2020

Inside the St. Louis Rent Strike of 1969

Led by African American women, the strike inspired legislation that affected the entire nation.
by Caitlin Lee, Clark Randall via Belt Magazine on June 4, 2019
A mother pushes a child, on a swing at the Cabrini-Green public housing project in Chicago, May 28, 1981.

The 1992 Horror Film That Made a Monster Out of a Chicago Housing Project

In Candyman, the notorious Cabrini-Green complex is haunted by urban myths and racial paranoia.
by Ben Austen via Zócalo Public Square on August 17, 2018

151 Years of America’s Housing History

From the first tenement regulation to work requirements for public-housing residents, these are key moments in housing policy.
via The Nation on May 24, 2018

Voices in Time: Horror Movie Scene-Setting

The author of 'High-Risers' revisits 'Candyman,' in which public housing is the greatest horror of all.
by Ben Austen via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 1, 2018
The Henry Rutgers Houses, a public housing development built and maintained by the New York City Housing Authority.
partner

The False Promise of Homeownership

Instead of boosting the American Dream, policies encouraging homeownership exacerbate inequality.
by Marisa Chappell via Made By History on July 20, 2017
Affordable housing development under construction in New York City
partner

The History of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

Expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit could make a successful program even better—and address a major crisis.
by Tom Hanchett via Made By History on June 12, 2025
The U.S. Housing Corporation built nearly 300 homes in Bremerton, Wash., during World War I.

A Time When the US Government Built Homes for Working-Class Americans to Deal With a Housing Crisis

During World War I, the government constructed entire communities for workers and their families, setting new standards for housing and neighborhood planning.
by Eran Ben-Joseph via The Conversation on May 19, 2025
Fiorello La Guardia.

How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is questioning what a socialist might accomplish as mayor of NYC. To answer it, it’s worth looking back on Fiorello La Guardia.
by Joshua B. Freeman via Jacobin on April 23, 2025
A rendering of Buckminster Fuller and June Jordan's “Skyrise for Harlem” project published in Esquire, April 1965.

Nowhere But Up

In the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots, June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s plan to redesign the neighborhood suggested new possibilities for urban life.
by Nikil Saval via New York Review of Books on June 8, 2024
A child in the backyard of the Avenel Cooperative.

The Most Dangerous Architect in America

Gregory Ain wanted to create social housing in Los Angeles. Dogged by the FBI, his hope for more egalitarian architecture never came to be.
by Kate Wolf via The Nation on December 21, 2022
A row of large new suburban houses at sunset.

The Ongoing Toll of Segregation

Sheryll Cashin’s “White Space, Black Hood” shows how economic discrimination combines with racial injustice in America’s housing policy.
by Richard D. Kahlenburg via The New Republic on December 2, 2021
Still from upcoming short film “Write No History” by Black Quantum Futurism, 2021.

Project: Time Capsule

Time capsules unearthed at affordable housing sites offer alternative, lost, and otherwise obscured histories.
by Camae Ayewa, Rasheedah Phillips via E-Flux on June 14, 2021
young George Floyd

Born With Two Strikes

How systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition.
by Toluse Olorunnipa, Griff Witte via Washington Post on October 8, 2020

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. City governments have demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
by Brent Cebul via Boston Review on July 22, 2020
partner

A New Housing Program to Fight Poverty has an Unexpected History

Some cities are trying to help poor children succeed by having their families move to middle-income, "opportunity areas" -- an idea once politically impossible.
via Retro Report on October 22, 2019
Political cartoon of people reaching toward a woman symbolizing Milwaukee who herself is reaching toward socialism.

When Socialists Swept Milwaukee

Democratic socialists attending the 2020 Democratic Convention won’t be out of place in a city with a long history of socialist governance.
by Lindsey Anderson via Belt Magazine on May 21, 2019

Privatizing the Public City

Oakland’s lopsided boom.
by Mitchell Schwarzer via Places Journal on May 1, 2019

The Housing Revolution We Need

A decade after the crash of 2008, a growing movement has thrust our prolonged housing crisis to the center of the national agenda.
by Thomas J. Sugrue via Dissent on October 1, 2018

Whitey on the Moon

Gil Scott-Heron's searing 1970 commentary on the nation's economic priorities.
by Joseph M. Thompson via Enviro-History on March 16, 2018

When Government Drew the Color Line

A review of "The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America."
by Jason DeParle via New York Review of Books on February 11, 2018
original

Encountering the Plantation Myth Where You'd Least Expect It

Well off Savannah's tourist trail, there's a replica of an antebellum plantation home in the middle of a public housing project.
by Kevin M. Levin on January 19, 2018

Rexford Guy Tugwell and the Case for Big Urbanism

New York City’s first planning commissioner lost a bigger battle against Robert Moses than the fight Jane Jacobs won.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on January 1, 2018

Rosa Parks’ Detroit Home And Hard Truths About The ‘Northern Promised Land That Wasn’t’

The civil rights activist and her family had to contend with racial discrimination beyond Montgomery.
by Jeanne Theoharis via The Root on September 7, 2017

The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything But Accidental

A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city.
by Richard Rothstein, Katie Nodjimbadem via Smithsonian on May 30, 2017
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