lookatthisstory:

(Tiffany Sanders at the Clarence Darrow high-rises, 1993) 

In the first half of the 20th century, Chicago’s poor lived in privately owned tenements. Attempting to improve those often terrible conditions, the city built thousands of public housing units in modern high-rise apartment buildings from the 1940s-1960s. But in many places, they built them right on top of former slums.

These new housing projects accentuated the existing racial and class divides. Again attempting to fix what was broken, the city decided to demolish the system in the late ’90s.

The “Plan for Transformation” was to move all 16,800+ households in public housing out of the old buildings — and into better living conditions. In the end, only 56% of the original residents remained in the system. What happened?

Here’s the story, with photos by Patricia Evans.

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