Urban Areas Where Whites Still Live in Public Housing?

[Kevin]

I've had this question for a while and it's kind of a spin off on the question in this same section of the Atlas Forum about remaining white ethnic working class neighborhoods. However, is there any significant number of lower income/blue collar whites still living in public housing projects in any urban area in the United States?

I know this is still somewhat common in other First-World countries such as the U.K. and Canada but has declined dramatically in the US after white flight in the 1960's/70's where most forms of city owned low income housing became almost entirely Black/Latino or alternatively what ever disadvantaged racial group lived in that area . Even though in general, state or local provided rental housing has fell out of favor as a policy because of the social problems associated with it since then.

From my understanding Boston(particularity Southie and similar areas of the city)  had numerous city owned housing projects that were mainly still inhibited by lower income Irish-Americans.

The same goes for many parts of NYC where projects still had sizable numbers of working class whites living in them. Especially recent Hesdic Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union.

I really can't find much information on this topic and was wondering if there were possibly any other urban areas in the U.S. that still had large numbers of whites living in state/locally owned low income housing.

[bedstuy]

New York City Housing Authority project housing is 4.1% white.

[Kevin]

New York City Housing Authority project housing is 4.1% white.

Thank you for the link Bedstuy,

That's alot less then I thought given elsewhere I've looked but most of what I saw earlier was def dated information anyways in NY's case.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Other than NYC and a few other East Coast cities, the US has generally opted since the 1990s to pay for the poor to live in private housing rather than clustering a bunch of them together in public apartments. Housing projects in Chicago, St. Louis and other cities had become such nightmarish places and attracted such bad publicity from various murders and rapes that most of them have been closed and demolished. If you're interested in more about how and why public housing failed in the US, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

[traininthedistance]

Other than NYC and a few other East Coast cities, the US has generally opted since the 1990s to pay for the poor to live in private housing rather than clustering a bunch of them together in public apartments. Housing projects in Chicago, St. Louis and other cities had become such nightmarish places and attracted such bad publicity from various murders and rapes that most of them have been closed and demolished. If you're interested in more about how and why public housing failed in the US, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

This is true.

Interestingly, there is a lot of public housing in Philadelphia but it is not of the gigantic apartment tower variety- rather it is tiny little modern-looking homes and garden apartment-style construction in the midst of what used to be blocks and blocks of rowhomes.  A lot of the historically worst-off neighborhoods thus have some of the most suburban-style construction.

For example (almost certainly the most extreme example; most of their construction is more modest), this public housing project:

http://goo.gl/maps/dujp5

is in near North Philly, and several blocks away you can have a good idea of what it likely replaced:

http://goo.gl/maps/QclQ1

(The latter image is in a neighborhood that could plausibly be described as "up and coming", actually.  I was around there when I visited Philly two weekends ago, and there is new infill construction popping up here and there.  This image is kind of cherry-picked to find a block where that *isn't* in evidence... yet. )

Not that I'm particularly a fan of the architecture in that first picture, but I definitely have the sense that Philly public housing has avoided many of the worst sins of Pruitt-Igoe and their ilk.  I don't know whether they got a later start and learned from others' mistakes, or Edmund Bacon did an even better job than most people realize.

[Kevin]

Other than NYC and a few other East Coast cities, the US has generally opted since the 1990s to pay for the poor to live in private housing rather than clustering a bunch of them together in public apartments. Housing projects in Chicago, St. Louis and other cities had become such nightmarish places and attracted such bad publicity from various murders and rapes that most of them have been closed and demolished. If you're interested in more about how and why public housing failed in the US, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

This is true.

Interestingly, there is a lot of public housing in Philadelphia but it is not of the gigantic apartment tower variety- rather it is tiny little modern-looking homes and garden apartment-style construction in the midst of what used to be blocks and blocks of rowhomes.  A lot of the historically worst-off neighborhoods thus have some of the most suburban-style construction.

For example (almost certainly the most extreme example; most of their construction is more modest), this public housing project:

http://goo.gl/maps/dujp5

is in near North Philly, and several blocks away you can have a good idea of what it likely replaced:

http://goo.gl/maps/QclQ1

(The latter image is actually in a neighborhood that could plausibly be described as "up and coming", actually.  I was around there when I visited Philly two weekends ago, and there is new infill construction popping up here and there.  This image is kind of cherry-picked to find a block where that *isn't* in evidence... yet. )

Not that I'm particularly a fan of the architecture in that first picture, but I definitely have the sense that Philly public housing has avoided many of the worst sins of Pruitt-Igoe and their ilk.  I don't know whether they got a later start and learned from others' mistakes, or Edmund Bacon did an even better job than most people realize.

Washington D.C. and Baltimore have the same style of Public Housing as Philly too. Although I don't know much about Philadelphia D.C. and Baltimore were unable to avoid the same problems as Pruitt-Igoe or Cabrini-Green.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

However, is there any significant number of lower income/blue collar whites still living in public housing projects in any urban area in the United States?

It's common in northern Kentucky.