×College Court Apartments

In the late 20th century, city planners across America from Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago and Milwaukee erased entire Black neighborhoods in the name of renewal. Homes and small businesses gave way to public housing projects that were supposed to promise stability and dignity. Instead, many devolved into symbols of neglect, crime, and broken policy, their concrete buildings later demolished as urban mistakes.

The poster child of failed public housing was Chicago’s massive Cabrini-Green complex. Today, public housing still carries that history. Across the U.S., roughly 886,000 units remain, sheltering just over 1.6 residents each. A quarter of those residents survive on incomes less than $5,000 a year. Forty-two percent are Black, compared to 13% of the

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