It’s 1954 in St Louis, Missouri. The city is booming, but downtown is controlled by slumlords, keeping the mostly black urban poor living in intolerable conditions.
City traders want them out of their unsightly homes, so Pruitt-Igoe is constructed, a massive Public Housing estate promising dignity and equality for the city’s workers.
But it was set up to fail. No maintenance budget, an economic downturn, suburbanisation, racist paternalism, segregation and stigma meant that the estate quickly deteriorated into horrific conditions.
By 1972, the demolition of the estate was broadcast live on national television, telling a story of the failure of the Public Housing experiment. The United States began it’s neoliberal turn, and the rest of the world was dragged behind in it’s dark shadow.
Australian’s will recognise much of our story of Public Housing, both in the hope of a post-war egalitarianism as well as its abandonment. Still much of the extreme poverty and racism will shock viewers.
The documentary features older people who grew up as kids on the estate, recounting their sense of community and love for the place, as well as the violence and dereliction. It briefly covers how the residents organised to save the estate, with a rent-strike withholding rent for maintenance, working together to maintain the buildings for themselves, fighting for and winning the 25% rent-cap that we now take for granted.
Well worth a watch as we take on our own massive demolition of Public Housing in Victoria, and challenge the myth that Public Housing is the cause of it’s own failure.