Mistakes Made

There have been lots of mistakes made regarding public housing. Most of these mistakes can be attributed to the real estate industry and government mismanagement. Public housing was once very popular and provided cheaper and sometimes nicer alternatives to private housing. This proved to be a great threat to the real estate industry. The government with influence from the real estate industry then made public housing only available to the very poor by passing the 1949 Housing Act. This made public housing less popular and the stocks in public housing plummeted as a result. It also further isolated the poor keeping them in one area. When stocks declined government neglect of public housing began to rise. The concentration of poor people in public housing began to rise along with mismanagement and further neglect of maintenance. By 1988 the average income of a public housing household was one fifth of the national average. This shows that the changes made in public housing had a very detrimental effect. Public housing areas became areas of deep poverty and became more concentrated with minorities. In these public housing areas experiencing deep poverty crime rates and illegal activity increased dramatically. Concentration of poor, crime rates, and a discrepancy for funding public housing is why public housing is in such a miserable state today.
http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/77/pubhsg.html

The History Behind It

During the 1930s there was a high demand for affordable housing. Public housing provided the for low income families. The state of public housing has changed over the years and the situation has become more pressing. At the time the African Americans need for public housing was great because of redlining policies that excluded blacks from the suburbs. Despite this fact the earliest public housing units were in white neighborhoods reserved for white tenets. By the 1950s when the city's black population was on the rise public housing units for blacks where made in North and South Philadelphia. With more and more blacks living in these public housing projects less whites were willing to live in them creating more segregation in the city. Public housing projects took a turn for the worst during the 1960s. Traditionally rent from residents would be enough to cover management and maintenance costs but this changed when an amendment was passed limiting the rent to exceed no more than 25 percent of the residents income. At the same time, however, management and maintenance costs rose which led to a discrepancy on how to fund these housing units. This led to the deterioration of public housing in Philadelphia. Lately federal funding has supported public housing in Philadelphia allowing for new and rejuvenated houses to be built but a bigger problem still remains.
http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/public-housing/