There's a tension here between making public housing residents the primary victims who these policies are intended to save and making them out to be the principal threats and perpetrators. Unsurprisingly, there there was tenant resistance to Hope 6 but you write that what is perhaps more remarkable than the demonstrations against housing demolition is the fact that they do not occur more frequently. Why did tenants so often acquiesce to or even support the destruction of their homes?
Featuring Edward Goetz on his book New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy. Goetz tells the story of American public housing and then its destruction and dismantling, which took off in the 1980s and accelerated during the 90s under the Clinton Administration’s Hope VI program.
Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig and get our weekly newsletter by email plus swag.
Check out Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire haymarketbooks.org/books/1861-light-in-gaza