Public Housing
I harbor no ill will for people who live in public housing, but I absolutely hate it. Never has so much money gone to the destruction of neighborhoods, and the institutionalization of poverty.
The architecture is terrible. Le Corbusier's "tower in the park" may have some fans, but it is a terrible idea for housing projects. The park area must be maintained, at extra operational expense, or be neglected. Such neglect encourages criminal activity. The towers are way too tall. 30 story buildings are for affluent people because such buildings are more expensive to operate. 5-6 story buildings are the most cost effective. Then there is the reality that "towers in a park" break the urban grid, and isolate residents from a neighborhood.
Even if the architecture was good, housing projects usually exclude retail space. Stupid, stupid, stupid. In the private sector, first floor residential apartments are the least valuable. Retail, however, is profitable, and could help offset government subsidies. Also, retail provides goods and services. There are concentrations of public housing where the residents must travel to purchase basic goods and services. This lowers their quality of life. Retail also provides jobs, some of which would surely go to residents.
The earliest proponents of public housing, in the US, advocated the inclusion of retail space, as well as religous congregations. I understand the conflict with using public money for religion, but more thought should have gone here. Many different ethnic and racial groups have had their people in public housing, and continue to do so. However, I believe that African-Americans were hurt most by this exclusion. Black America is religous, and have traditionally relied on their churches as a support mechanism.
Then there is the warehousing of the poor. If you move into public housing, and start making a certain amount of money, you have to move out. So what happens? Those families who can get there act together move out, and you get an increasing concentration of dysfuntional families. They can't provide any effective support for each other, and provide negative examples to each other. This is institutionalizing poverty, and as I see it, its just wrong.
Some cities have addressed the terrible architecture of public housing. In the 1980s, Mayor Schmokes of Baltimore began a program of tearing down the tall, monolithic projects, and replaced them with townhouses. Townhouses fit the urban landscape much better, and are a more human scale. Newark has followed Baltimore's example, and hopefully others will follow suit.
I'd like to see this taken to the next step. Concentrating the poor is inhumane, as I see it. They should be dispersed among the general population, not isolated from it.
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