There is absolutely no shame in being poor/low income. This does not go hand in hand with destroying your environment. It costs nothing to be clean and take care of your home.
Ah yes the good ole fallacy of composition is hard at work here. Pruitt-Igoe was an institutional failure. It was designed to fail, because it comes from a system that was specifically designed to create 'ghettos'. But sure, if everyone just picks up their trash I'm sure it would have been a smashing success! Oh wait the CIA was purposely poisoning people in that area!
There is no shame in BEING poor. There's millions of decent, law abiding, hard working people who are low income. However, Being a thug, a vandal and a slob are the best ways to STAY poor.
They likely kept their apartments clean, but the skip stop elevators likely caused the trash to build up because disabled/elderly people were located to the wrong floor for them. Removing trash can be difficult as can bringing in groceries. Large families certainly would hate having to tote stuff up and down stairs as they created proportionately more garbage...
Crime is rife in all poor communities. Same is said for the largely white population in places like West Va and other rural areas... poverty, crime and lack of employment opportunities. Those who aren't committing crime are all hostaged to it.
Whittier Alaska is doing just fine. 200 people living in one building in the middle of nowhere. It is absolutely the culture, mindset, and economics that set up many of these projects to fail.
@@davidwright873 that's the "culture/mindset" part. imo, well fare's job should be getting people off well fare. a lot of them have that mindset of "if i work/make too much i am going to lose my free home and healthcare" They want things given to them, they act like it is owed to them, and they don't want to work to take care of it.
@@davidwright873 it isn't just black people if that is what you are thinking. i am white and grew up in government apartments in a small town. a lot of the other poor white people thought the same way too. they just wanted enough money for their beer and cigarettes and paid in cash so they don't have to tell the gov how much they actually have... lot of drunk men with waitress wives that live on tips and odd jobs, with a suspiciously nice car for the home they live in. when you get a whoooole lot of people like that together in one place it isn't going to end well and they teach their children to act the same too.
Problem was that these were for low income households, in a high crime area. If these were built in Tokyo, they would still be standing today with 95% occupancy.
as a person who actually lived in a super-apartment high-rise in the Tokyo suburbs, (well over 100'000 residents within a few buildings) I can say that for Tokyoites the high-rise system works really well... the social dynamic is suited to that. however, even in Tokyo, a lot of the present human traits do become concentrated/sharpened when you put people in that sort of an environment... I would say, if your original society is a good one, it kind of will bring out some problems, but, generally, it will concentrate that vibrant nature your society possesses, however, if you have an already criminalized and violent society, you are basically turbocharging it's negative aspect... which was the case with high-rises in the US or in Russia.
I worked for several years rehabbing public housing units in Milwaukee after the previous tenants were evicted from their FREE apartments for legitimate reasons. Every unit was looted, vandalized, and destroyed in various creative ways as the occupant was on their way out. We absolutely cannot overlook the culture and attitude of the tenants...massive entitlement complex and complete lack of responsibility.
@@pietervoogt I agree. And some very wealthy people, have incredible greedy selfish sociopathic tendencies as well. It's easier to look down on the poorer people--but some very incredibly fortunate people have left real chaos and boondoggles that taxpayers have had to pay for, too.
@@mattt198654321 this is best explained by iq averages and differences between differing demographics being real and unignorable. That is how you get poor countries that cant seem to “modernize” without extreme foreign intervention.
@@ae2948 - I lived just south of there. There is only so much maintenance money. When the occupants destroy the units faster than they repair, there is NOTHING the city can do. It got bad, quick.
Is this not the legacy of FDR democrats? Federal Housing Authority making massive sweeping decisions about how Americans would live. All the alphabet soup agencies come from FDR’s New Deal. Thrte warning voices but those are drowned out by the newspaper owners - who were in on this whole thing. The interstate freeway project was also total B.S. The RAND corporation pushed it in democratically through the pentagon as a strategic defense investment - as if they would use freeways to deploy tanks and B.M.P.s against invading soviet armies on our shores! Ha ha good one guys. Those things have always been moved by rail and war with the Soviet Union was always expected to be strategic nuclear bombers. The freeways opened up lots of land for cheap new suburbs, which were popular with folks who saw where the cities were going- gangs, bullies, racial Intimidation. The rapid decay of this housing project in the 60s reflects the democrats electoral conquest of American cities during the LBJ administration. They only wanted their votes. All the money to maintain these ^congo Hilton’s * was stolen by corrupt democrat fixers and recently unionized city employees. Oh man, the 60s was bad for America, but hood for the oligarchy. Look at their overseas empire NOW! Like the republic of Venice
I'm from the Saint Louis area and participated in a symposium on Pruitt-Igoe some years ago. From what I remember the problems started nearly immediately. The public housing was originally for middle class whites and blacks in the city. Although initially segregated, whites refused to move into their part of the housing project due to the close proximity of black residents and chose to move into suburbs outside the city. For a time Pruitt-Igoe ran at half capacity because of this. Then as whites continued to move out of the city housing stock became available to middle class blacks. Those blacks started to move out of the housing project and settled in different parts of the city. The people who ended up living there were low income blacks. At first this wasn't a problem because there was a public subsidy that covered the maintenance of the building (originally tenant rent was to cover building maintenance and repair) but congress cut that program. After that the building systems fell in disrepair. Due its design the residents were isolated from the rest of the city. Criminals then took over and held the residents virtually hostage until the government finally decided to demolish the project. Bijlmeer in Amsterdam shared a similar fate.
Most of the urban population of Eastern European countries was (and still is) housed in this type of block houses. In the East-European country I was born, the most common were the 4-storey and 10-storey towers. The ground floor was occupied by commercial space.They were perfectly safe, everybody knew everybody, kids made friends with neighbors' kids. Despite shortages of everything and poverty, typical for East-European socialist economies, people were helping each other to go by. For me, who grew up in such a 10-storey tower, it's hard to understand how Pruit-Igoe and Cabrini-Green failed. After all, they were much better built and more comfortable than the East-European block houses.
Because you only had poor eastern European people living there, all sharing the same hardships but still having respect for yourselves and the people living around you. Quite unlike those living in these American block houses who care about nothing.
The key word here is 'ghettoization'. In the former Eastern Block, apartment blocks were typically meant for ordinary people, not social/subsidized flats for poverty-stricken. There has not been social stigma related with them, in a fact, here where I live (Poland), they remain competetive due to attractive locations, upgrades been done and spacing allowing large amount of greenery (which cannot be said about capitalist-era, tightly packed apartment blocks). They ain't cheap to buy, and fees for administrations are high enough to cover maintenance, upgrades, gardeners etc.
Eastern Europeans mostly have a fantastic 'it is what it is' mentality, they're grateful for what they've got (even if in some places it's a tiny timber cottage and a Lada!) and most importantly they wouldn't dream of destroying where they/their neighbours live out of moronic aimless frustration in life. Sadly, can't the same for a lot of western Europe or America.
@@helenezinszner2561 It was both. The design of the buildings, the lack of funding, sparse policing, and gangs permitted to rule the place, all contributed to the downfall of this housing complex. Don’t forget gangs form because of deficient culture and unhealthy mindset. We do get to decide how we want to respond to life’s challenges regardless of economic status. Just because a person is poor doesn’t mean they have to steal. I was poor growing up.
@@spooderdoggyThat’s still doesn’t make the fault the residents lol. If I live in a crime riddles area because I’m poor and a gang takes over the building and destroys the property there’s not much I and the other tenants can do.
Not really like that at all. Keeping black people impoverished is the type of 'wokeness' that annoys white folks like you. It triggers you into trolling school board meetings.
@@peterd9940 Despite the reason it's broken, it needs to be fixed either way. The video mentioned these housed many families who were just trying to make it. They deserve the safety of the light, even if the thugs living beside them keep breaking the bulb. It's a safety issue .
@@kvm1992 So ripping out the copper plumbing to trade would be OK? How about if people just don’t act like animals, regardless of the economic structure?
@@AsagaoSTL It's not that simple to say don't act like animals and they'll end up doing just that. No, desperate times calls for desperate measures. Only when the economic system of choice has failed to the point of delivery where such people would do that which they normally wouldn't want to do. Can't really blame them. Even animals need necessities and people will always find creative means to ensure their survival. What you see now is just the tip of the iceberg. For what's to come don't really have to be. We can change that future if we simply overthrow our current economic model of monetary capitalism and in favor of an new honorable meritary capitalism where there wouldn't be a reason to steal, trade or simply greedy.
The vast majority of residents were probably great tenants who worked if they could and took great care of their families. That being said, only takes a small percentage of criminals to ruin it for everybody. My neighborhood is 90 to 95% working families, but that 5 to 10 % hurts everyone. No security and no maintenance it was doomed to fail.
The vast majority were lackadaisical losers who felt entitled to what they were given and incessantly bellyached about it, causing an uncultured environment that ruined it for the FEW good families that resided there.
@@ossoduro7794 That's not true. The first tennants were proud to live there but with the first cost cuts on maintenance and lots of people starting to move out, the gang members and drug dealers moved in and then the downfall began. Try to watch the documentary about it.
I took a systems design class in my doctoral program that introduced thinking of systems both in terms of society and technology. One of the reasons these projects went so wrong, so quickly, is that they were seen as single events - let's build housing. All the other aspects of housing - family structure, income, transportation, segregation, nearby shopping, etc. were mostly ignored. The problem with policy planning is that the money doesn't last. So when the shiny new project starts to show its age, there's little to no money, nor political willingness, to revisit the project as often as necessary in order to maintain it. btw - Who doesn't plan for elevators to stop at each floor? I've never heard of such nonsense. When I became a professor and taught management and policy, I used Cabrini Green as my 'Pruitt-Igoe' example. People want to do good. They just don't want to do it for too long or for too much money.
I grew up in Indianapolis. They built small apartment projects on the bus line close to shopping areas. They ended the same way. It is not the planning -- it is the people. Those people came from the ghetto, and they brought the ghetto with them.
This reminds me of a scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan": *Khan Noonien Singh:* ADMIRAL Kirk sent seventy of us into exile in this barren sandheap, with only the contents of these cargo bays to sustain us. *Pavel Chekov:* You lie! On Ceti Alpha V, there was life! A fair chance! *Khan Noonien Singh:* THIS IS CETI ALPHA V!!! Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet, and everything was laid waste. "Admiral" Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.
My parents grew up in such a complex of about 80.000 people in the G.D.R. . They lived together with many poor neighbors as well but no gangs were formed, no shocking crimes took scene and many damages on the house were quickly fixed by the vouluntary facility managers. So, I think the city planers and architects had a good idea but it just didn't work for the US society back then.
You had parents. 2 parents. This is the key to a stable society and the Government forced the father out of the home. Those kids with a single Mom were doomed then and still are doomed today.
@robertm.6583 You're right! Single parenthood is still a big problem in the US today! You've >60% of black kids raised without their father. No wonder that afro-american boys joining criminal gangs where they find a father figure that they never had. So, we're both correct: The problem with such living complexes is, that they don't work in the US society.
@robertm.6583 You're right! Single parenthood is still a big problem in the US today! For example, you've >60% of black kids raised without their father. No wonder that afro-american boys joining criminal gangs where they find a father figure that they never had. So, we're both correct: The problem with such living complexes is, that they don't work in the US society.
@@abcdesholeif you ever lived there, you wouldn't say that. I agree in the gdr being a police state, but if you behaved like a decent human being, you wouldn't have noticed anything else but a decent life in peace.
What features of the building caused non-payment of rent, property damage, disrespect, criminal behavior and general bad behavior? Was it the floor tiles?
@hiker64 actually, maybe if someone held them accountable the behavior would change. Stop blaming everything else but the person(s) involved. The place became a shithole because no one held the shitheads accountable
I drove thur St. Louis once. There was a car on fire and people were gathered around it warming themselves. The fire department wasn’t coming as the car was just a burn barrel. Amazing. I’ve only seen that once in my life, and that’s my impression of St. Louis.
I visited St. Louis for the first time in 2018 for Independence Day. I was impressed with the city's cleanliness and the celebration in the park at the arch was a good time. I probably didn't see quite enough of the city to see what you saw. I went to East New York once or twice; THAT was how you described St. Louis.
St. Louis county and Stl City are like two different worlds. I am from west county, which is a high income area with million dollar homes and I would never dare go to the city. It’s dangerous and poor. Plus scary people 😅
The slums in the Philippines are much much worse off than this, but anybody even right now could walk through there and be greeted by happy smiling people they would be safe and will be greeted with warmth. it was the people in these that are lawless, ungrateful, and entitled
That's a fucking lie. The slums of Manila are scary dangerous. Obviously they're full of people just trying to raise their families, but they idea there is hardly any crime is ridiculous. Crime in the Philippines is some of the worst in Asia.
There are various kinds of slums in the Philippines and generally people are friendly as you have described them. Nevertheless they also have loads of domestic violence, recruitment into the sex trades, drug use and drug dealing, gang warfare, child neglect, alcoholism, burglary and even fires of hundreds of homes at a time. In the slum we are working in for over 20 years the security situation has improved, but for there are still risks at night. Also government sponsored death squads have pushed some of the crime out of our city towards Manila and other more unruly places. Unless you live in the place for a while, you may not know how safe or unsafe your particular slum is.
The initial mission of public housing, was to give low-income residents a temporary (less than 5 years) residence, to get financially independent and save for permanent housing. Instead, it became looong-term housing, with residents staying their entire lives, in units intended to be short-term.
And when you keep giving, you end up with multi generational welfare families. When you pay people for having children without fathers it becomes a part of culture.
It was successful...the ones who lived there, were there a short time and purchased houses...then others stayed and trashed it...but we're not allowed to tell that truth!
A free apartment is capitalism? That's crazy. Maybe the fathers should have gone to work, raised their children, instead of a life of crime and drugs. There is nothing racist about that idea.
We had a similar situation in the UK. Due to the big population surge after the war, town planners started building upwards - it sounds logical in theory, but some were so badly designed and thrown together that there were stories of homes so damp that water was literally running down the walls, and windows that would shatter in strong winds. One of them, Ronan Point, actually fell down a few years after it was built and there was a big public outcry about poor planning and building methods as a result, and very tall blocks quickly went out of fashion and developed a reputation for being dirty and unsafe. A lot have been cleaned up and modernised in recent years, but even that can be problematic - 7 years ago, Grenfell Tower caught fire and the building was very quickly engulfed in flames with residents trapped inside, largely because of the cladding that had been put on the outside to smarten it up.
And yet, here in Central Europe, almost half of the population lives well in the Commie blocks. The problem is not the buildings as such. The technology and building style is well proven. Many countries, both East and West, did similar projects to solve the housing crisis, but the results were vastly different even within the same country. Despite the relative success of the Commie blocks in most places around my country, we also have examples of failure, where for example an attempt to settle nomadic Gypsies into these led to utter desolation. P.S.: Writing this from my modest commie block appartment in Czechia.
My friend lives in a decent commie block in Poland, and her daughter lives in an even bigger commie block in the same city. They are modest but decent places to live.
I was born in commie block, moved to another commie block and bought my first apartment in a commie block. All of them modest but clean, maintained and somehow cozy. Of course, all modernizations are paid by tennants money and guess what? Everyone is happy. It's always about the people who live there, not about "cApItAliSm and rIcH people". Even in 90s, when we were extremely poor we managed to maintain our commie buildings and everything was ok
Poverty doesn't mean you need to destroy housing that taxpayers had paid for. People who can't keep their houses clean and don't work or contribute are a disaster in any society. A nightmare.
It's never about the building, it's always about who's living in. We've got a several of such housing projects in East-Berlin und basically no problems with them. It's different in West-Berlin.
@@gaiuszeno1331 In Canada we opted mostly for 2-3 stories buildings with lots of parks and it worked. It's easier for us - we have space and fewer people.
No, the city promised to pay for maintenance. The occupants were low income living on the outskirts of the city and were targeted to be onboarded into living there. Then the city went back on their agreement and let the building decay. The story of Pruitt Igoe is a story of a city lying to its occupants to allow the white suburbs to be built.
Interestingly (and depressingly), the complex architect also designed the Twin Towers, meaning that he had two of his buildings shown falling on live TV.
@DewdArenasits Did you know that the twin towers did not fall from controlled demolition, in fact they fell because two planes that were hijacked flew into them.
I worked for my state’s welfare agency from 1972-1980. I wanted to help people. I tell you, it changed my mind about the poor. It wasn’t uncommon for landlords to complain that the clients would “trash” their apartments or homes they rented as they moved out.
@@pippa212 Interesting question. I can't say for sure because the answer is likely very nuanced. But I had a housemate who was very low income- he got us evicted by not paying rent, and before we had to move out, he wanted to trash the place. I think it must have stemmed from a feeling of neglect. When we moved in, the apartment was dirty and moldy, and the landlord was very distrustful of him. To my housemate, who had suffered many bad housing situations including being on a several year waitlist for foster care as a child, it probably seemed like the landlord and the government couldn't care less about him, so he probably felt no obligation to show any decency to them.
@ that makes sense. I would guess when you are poor and see how many others have what you can’t get, it must build up anger and resentment. I grew up very modestly, but have no idea what it’s like to be poor.
It's crazy that the two large building complexes Minoru Yamazaki is known for designing, that being Pruitt-Igoe and the original WTC, were both destroyed in widely televised events.
Poor management coupled with people who don't give half a shit about the place they live, exacerbated by government entitlement programs,...what could go wrong?
The building wasn't really destroyed by the residents. The buildings were largely vacant because it wasn't maintained and basically taken over by squatters. People abandoned the building because of the poor maintenance and squatters, rent went down, maintenance went down and more squatters moved in.
When they began demolition of Pruett-Igoe in the mid-late 70's, they needed to find government assisted housing housing for the tenants. The solution-North County. There had been dozens of apartment complexes and buildings built, starting about 10 years earlier to meet the housing needs in particular of all the recent high school graduates of the baby boom era. Schools like Hazelwood, McCluer, Normandy and Riverview had huge classes and when they entered the work force or came back from college they needed a place to live. Many of these apartments went Section 8 with the government providing assistance for rent after Pruett-Igoe closed. In 10 years much of North County changed from being a collection of safe bedroom communities to a suburban slum. My aunt managed a large complex in Spanish Lake and finally took an early retirement-she couldn't deal with the problems caused.
@@marjoriemorris5849 i don't disagree with that statement. But again, regardless of how unappealing the aesthetic might be, not all groups will treat their conditions the same way and some groups would work to improve upon it. You can't possibly say that isn't true.
@@marjoriemorris5849 i don't disagree with that statement. But again, regardless of how unappealing the aesthetic might be, not all groups will treat their conditions the same way and some groups would work to improve upon it. You can't possibly say that isn't true.
This is exactly why people don’t rent to section 8. There was nothing wrong with these buildings. The problem lies exclusively with the residents, their attitudes and their unwillingness to take care of their apartments. The buildings don’t bust out their own windows and loot themselves
With rent as high as it is in 2024 it doesn't matter. Landlords think they're dodging a bullet when people with good credit will still squat in your property and drag you thru court. Only to leave the place trashed. I see it all the time and I'm so glad landlords are ultra picky. I ended up in a brand new luxury building because of it.
I work in the labor industry. Some of my coworkers make 120k+ a year, yet they are always broke. It's a problem with the person, not the amount of help/income a person gets. Lottery winners are a perfect example of this. If a person doesn't have the self discipline to make their lives work, no amount of money or outside help will do so.
I've heard Dr. Phil put it this way: "Money problems aren't solved by money. " It sounds ridiculous at first until you think about it for a minute it makes your exact point.
@@wyattmann8157 YOU are a FOOL !!! The buildings didn't destroy themselves, its' the idiots that lived in those bldgs. Ungrateful, lazy, stupid and fatherless tenants caused the problems big time here !! Where do you get off defending degenerates ???!! "Empathy", my ass !!!!
@@alanspagnolia9474they did when black started to to move their it was already declining before the blacks even lived their the whites had trash everywhere
It would work in america if you kept out the 13% thats bringing the country down to its knees. You have people who take pride in their home or you have people who feel they are entitled and want everything handed to them and done for them.
There are many housing projects like this in NYC that have been great successes. A few that come to mind: stuyvesant village, parkchester, LeFrak city, Peter Cooper village, two bridges.
It used to be that way for THOUSANDS of years. Then we had the bright idea that holding people accountable for their actions was bigoted and discriminatory.
The “man in the house rule” 4:40 is a significant problem in society. For the families to put welfare benefits above having a father figure present, it shows how wack the priorities were (and continue to be). Kicking the husband and father out just to have a government check is extremely inhumane.
They were trying to make sure daddy got his ass off the couch and went out and supported his family by making a living. Really not too much to ask. Unless your are of a certain "demographic".
If they made enough money, their wives would not have chosen the government check over their husbands (unless he was abusive, but they would not give up a good man for that check if he was providing for them and their kids).
It is changing in eastern Germany as we absorb millions of migrants from Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq......at least they claim they are from Afghanistan Iraq and Syria but a lot are not. They do not work. They collect government money and sell drugs just like the tenants in Pruitt Igoe in many cases. Multi Kulti does not work and as it spreads worldwide things will get worse.
It is the result of a part of a society accepting vandalism, mugging and other crime. It is accepting that some poeple doesn`t pay, leave their waste somewhere. As mentioned by other commentators such building complexes did work more or less in most of Eastern Europe. If these buildings were built in Switzerland they would look beautiful and very clean today. It would have been modernized and upgraded several times since. It is the poeple living in it and the management that tolerate such behavior.
LOL I don't disagree with you, Libertaro - although Brutalist style (popular in the Soviet States) and Modernist architectural styles are different, they are very similar. I had to go to my brother (an architect) to have him show me the subtle differences to try and figure out what they were!
The funniest part of this came from a documentary done by a journalist who lived there as a kid. “Single mothers were not allowed to let the fathers of their children live with them”.
It's true BUT ....if there was an able bodied Man in the home that could work and wasn't...goodbye! They ditched their Men for welfare checks, food stamps and free stuff...they could come on the weekends and knock them up ..but be gone by Monday morning or you'll get my Welfare check taken away!
Welfare destroyed families! The ruling that mothers could not receive assistance if there was a man in the house has had a devastating effect on families! There is no shortage of food in this country. If a family can show that they need a little help with food, they should not be forced to break up their home to receive it! And housing projects always fail!
We need to be honest. If a mother has a man in the house, it should be her husband, the father of her children. He should be the provider for his wife and kids, not the taxpayers. It's high time for personal accountability. People who can't afford basic necessities for their kids have no business bringing kids into this world. There's not one valid reason for doing so.
Or, hear me out, if there are adults in a household, they should have jobs and feed themselves and their kids? Government welfare should be an absolute last resort for people too old or disabled to work, not an automatic entitlement.
@@kmstins Well ...why I agree with most of what you said...God help you if you should fall on hard times...many had kids and while money was tight could afford to raise them...then job lay offs due to factories closing down etc and bam! No more income...so what now...they tell the kids to go find a home with an income...
Somehow the author dances around the basic problem : the residents. Their anti-social behavior is largely why they are poor. The apartments didn't destroy themselves or terrorize the neighborhood.
In general, the same types of people who drone on about how much they love science suddenly take on young-Earth-level fairy-tale positions when it comes to the rock-solid science of genetics, criminology, psychometrics, evolution, biology etc. As a result, almost the entirety of explanations of the form "entity x was destroyed for reason y" - e.g. "Detroit was destroyed because...", "Robert Taylor homes became a war zone because...", "all grocery stores left South Chicago because..." etc - are utterly worthless nonsense that provide zero explanatory or predictive value.
@@Liedaho that's an excuse. Racism made them destroy the place? Underfunded shares the blame, but residents destroying them is without a doubt the main cause of failure. The lack of responsibility of the problem only carries the failure forward to today.
The put 11000 poor people with few prospects inn one spot and no mention of police or security. My home town of 4000 had 12 officers. They can’t act surprised when bad things happened
There are many such buildings in places like Russia and Eastern Europe where the residents are or have been objectively poorer than any American single mother could dream of. Yet while some of those places have seen problems, you would have to search far and wide to find a _single_ _example_ that comes even remotely close to the *average* crime rates across all US housing projects. Why?
They should have had some form of security to start with that many residents. Keeping up on maintenance and dealing with crime as it happens would have keep the crime lower. Not doing anything lets the criminals build fear in the renters and keeps them from getting more poweful. You never eliminate crime but crime will usually go where it’s easiest to be done at
You could’ve given the tenants $100,000 a year and it still would’ve been raised to the ground with lawlessness. It wasn’t the architecture or being poor. It was the people in it.
The residents initially took pride in these places and tried to maintain them and keep them clean and pleasant. But when they can’t get everyone else in the project to get on board and contribute to the maintenance, Pruitt-Igoe becomes “Screw it, I’m gone.”
Let's be real, the reason this project failed was because of the ppl who resided there. Most residents did not take care of their homes and they were criminally inclined. Only certain ppl can create civil, stable societies. Most ppl destroy and undermine with some special groups of ppl actually being capable of producing and maintaining a functioning society. Those ppl were not abandoned... They were given thousands of units for housing, social gathering, proximity to jobs etc. you gave them a homes and they tore it apart from the inside. Thats not the fault of architectural planning or public housing, its the fault of the ppl we went out of our way to house.
What do you expect? When you give someone a house, they don't appreciate it. When you give someone welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc. it creares an entitlement mindset. They neglected and abused this property because they didn't have "skin in the game". They weren't invested in the property. It was a gift.
@@jimfinigan1681 I do not agree with this statement at all, it's completely fictional and completely misses the point. A basic standard of living should be guaranteed to all Americans. Full stop. Get on board, or get out. That being said, not all ppl are equal and certain groups are going to be less grateful and less productive due to a variety of factors including genetics. Some people are incapable of self-governance, however, other groups are.
For some reason black people are never held accountable for their own actions. It’s always, always someone else’s fault or responsibility. They always talk about “white flight “ as if it’s a bad, racist thing. Anybody who has the means are going to take their family and move on when crime, drugs and poverty start moving into their neighborhoods. Who wouldn’t?
If you listen to the whole video, you will know that it failed because they tried solving a social problem with architecture. Job left the area, then rents began pluming, then they cut on maintenance, then they incentivized for fathers to leave their homes. All these things made it worse for the worst who could not afford to go anywhere to stay. Concentrating the bad apples into one place.
@@carlosazpurua6231 Half of what you point out was a direct consequence of the residents behavior. Also, it's funny how other ethnicities don't need any babysitting.
The inhabitants were told it was subsidized rent, with the city paying for maintenance. Then the city didn’t do any of that. Something tells me though that you don’t care to do basic level research though.
Such architecture is very popular in Poland, people are satisfied with living conditions, and take care of buildings. In USA buildings were occupied by special care people, this is the reason for social disaster. Simply some people demand the best accomodation without working on it, and saving money. They live, so they are like a babies, they want what other hard working people have, but without working. Frankly I regret, that at the moment USA government didn't ask families from Poland to replace fatal inhabitant of such a beautiful buildings. There is a sayin in Polish, describing such a lazy inhabitants, Poles say "something got twisted in their asses"
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals..
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals.
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals.
These housing projects would still be standing today if only the government had hired guards to keep the project dwellers from causing trouble. After all, guards are how prisons keep their populations of LITERAL CRIMINALS under control.
@@tylerhiggins3522 No they wouldn't, have you ever seen the banlieue in France? Or the slums in Eastern Europe? Everyone tried the same thing in the mid 20th century, to empty the shanty towns and put everyone into ugly apartment blocks.
Yes but...deferred maintenance does not directly cause drug dealing, graffiti, and vandalism of a generous gift given to you by the taxpayer. Entitlement attitude combined with a lack of responsibility causes that. Same story everywhere. Edit: I worked for several years rehabbing public housing units in Milwaukee after the previous tenants were evicted for drug dealing/prostitution/etc. Every unit was looted, vandalized, and destroyed in various creative ways as the occupant was leaving. These are people with massive entitlement mentalities...full stop.
@@mattt198654321 lack of social supports, lack of mental-health care and healthcare in general, lack of quality education. Its not Entitlement bro, its the system that has systemically shit on an entire race for hundreds of years. Oh yea and don't forget the really really stupid idea of skip-stop elevators, failed attempt to "Make America Healthy"
When you create high density concentrations of desperate low income people with maintenance run by bean counters leads to disaster. It has happened in every major city.
the only "inequality" i see is the differences in intelligence between the people who stayed and ruined it and the ones who left or tried to maintain it.
@TOM-op2cp TOM, I know what you're saying, and you're right. The human psyche will throw the most unexpected knuckleballs, at the most irrational of times. There are odd exceptions. My family was living in war-torn Yugoslavia, barely alive. SOME southern Baptist charity found us a FREE house in Atlanta Georgia (US). It was the jump start, that our family needed. My parents still proudly live there, and we are all grown and independent. The US is marvelous.
In 1982 a film called Koyaanisqatsi showcased Pruitt-Igoe buildings as well as a music piece by that same name by Philip Glass. That same music was later also used in a video game trailer that used a tag line, "Things Will Be Different" in its title and became very popular. The game was Grand Theft Auto IV. Pruitt-Igoe might be gone but still lives.
One of my favorite songs on gta4. When i first heard it on the movie, watchmen, it made me think of batman. Honestly, that song would fit perfectly with batman.
Interestingly enough, there’s a trailer park tucked in the suburbs of St. Charles, Missouri. The residents are 98% non-black. I highly doubt that the 2% is trashing that trailer park. People love to ASSume with their tired, ray-cyst rhetoric.
@@neojazzgospel There are trailer parks everywhere, dolt. What’s that got to do with this story? And it’s interesting you are claiming a random trailer park in MO as “98% non black” as a fact or something. 🙄 Nowhere in my initial comment did I mention anything about what color anybody was in that housing project. Are YOU assuming they were all black? Why are YOU the only one discussing race here? And sorry to hurt your little race baiting feelings, but the FACT is, nobody is trashing the housing project, the residents already did that.
@@neojazzgospel 😂 Oh Lort…there are trailer parks everywhere, what does a random one in MO have to do with anything? 98% non black? 😂 ok. Nobody here has to trash the housing project in this story, the residents already did it. And interestingly enough, YOU are the only one here who is mentioning race. You go with your Rayce baiting self, dolt.
@@sitdowndogbreath When they killed him off the show, it was b/c he and JJ Waller had issues...He felt JJ got more attention and set time than he did. So...he left the show..it was that simple...no virtual signaling at all.
Give a group of people an area which they can develop and make their home and watch what they make of it. You'll get a pretty good idea of the level on which those people operate. Some turn it into a slum or even a war zone while others make the area flourish and develop to become a place where everyone would love to live..
It is simple The good tenants deserved a new clean place and the bad tenants ruined it for them, as usual. The same thing that has happened to Dt. Louis in general. But that simple answer didn't allow room for you to virtue signal. The housing program had good intentions.
While Minoru's design was applauded and new infrastructure welcomed, it must be remembered that planner's designs were constrained by reality. Originally the towers were to be spread around the city at different sites. But the existing communities rejected them, so the whole project had to be shoehorned into one site, far from downtown. One look at those aerial photos shows the absurdity of the plan. Also, operating funds were so constrained that from day one there was not enough staff to clean and do repairs. High rise housing for low income people works in many places around the world. Takashima Daira in Tokyo is one example - every apartment house in Moscow is another (I had a homestay in one which you can see in my Moscow Metro 2000 video). I recently visited the 1960s Wutzkyalee (U-Bahn Line 7) in Berlin. They just refurbished it and it is an urban paradise with quality shopping, restaurants, planting gardens, schools. The failure of PI is a stain on the urban history of America and few lessons of that failure have been learned and or applied.
Representative Patrick Daniel Moynihan wrote a sociology report in 1965. He sounded the alarm that black families had 25% of homes without a father. Now, it’s around 70%. The other sociologists were pissed at Moynihan and accused him of “punching down”.
@@jamesdellaneve9005 That's true, the percentage is actually alarming, I saw a video about it a while ago and it really made me think about the consequences of that, I think most people just never even take that into consideration, its legit impossible to sustain a household with kids on your own today, and it makes the cycle go on and on
These were placed far from downtown in a place with lackluster public transportation. No shops, stores, schools or supermarkets. Just set up to fail so they could blame the residents.
it is very very easy to explain, but a lot of people do not like to hear the reason. if you give a free or easily affordable housing to a demographic that has the tendency to steal copper and throw garbage from windows, they will raze it to a ground in a decade. that is all that is to it. in my country, we have a lot of these and most are perfectly nice and safe neighbourhoods, the houses are well kept, well mantained and the units are often owned by people who live in them. and we have some that were overrun by people who are not, well, slavic, and that houses and neighbourhoods decays.
It's the tragedy of the commons. When people are given something, they tend not to treat it very well. Putting effort towards something (human labor being essentialy what gives money it's value) is essential for making a project like this work. They never should have let free renters in. The ne'er do wells took it over and ruined it.
I disagree, when people are given something good, they tend to want to keep it that way. These buildings looked more like institutions than homes, and a lot of the anger directed towards them was because of shoddy maintenance.
When I was young - early sixties - St. Louis was considered an economic force, with a great future. The Arch, along with the revolving restaurant/hotel, were new. We had McDonnel-Douglas, Southwestern Bell, First National Bank-Bankmark-then Centierre, Corvette, Brown Shoe, Purina, and more, with Purina being the little guy in the mix. Now, we get to say we have "Purina" as a claim to fame.....
@ it’s the American African. You have obviously lived it. I believe it’s the chronic bastardization victimhood syndrome of a smashed culture Raised being told and believing in the fact that it is a victim by all around it, telling it, it is a victim Ingrained in its every fiber of being. Victimized continuously, on a daily basis, a victim. It does not have any personal responsibility, however It can easily look at the facts on the CDC, FBI, ATF website, factual statistics And yes, they break down crime by demographic There you can see exactly who in America is committing what crimes And all of this ……. While wearing a wig.
@@YeshuaKingMessiah OK DON lemon Could it possibly be the chronic victimhood bastardization syndrome of a smashed culture? While wearing wigs? I cannot tell you how happy I am that the vast majority of this country disagrees with your opinion
Actually not true! Public Housing in rural communities mainly white communities seem to flourish ..it's so successful there are years long waiting lists...where in cities with different types of residents..not so much!
Unless you hydroplane and spin out into the median while driving in a thunderstorm on interstate 40 halfway between OKC and Amarillo. I was washing red mud from the undercarriage for a good half hour 😂
Those “skip stop” elevators, designed to “reduce congestion” and “forcing” residents, some of whom were elderly, to walk up to their apartments on the 11th floor is just one of the terrible ideas of this development, but NOTHING was as bad as only allowing single mothers and the “no man” rule. Typical thinking in that time, though, and look where it led us-fatherless children just dont do as well, PERIOD
the men weren't banned? they just weren't allowed access to welfare and food stamps. i.e they had to get a job but would rather just abandon their families to keep collecting welfare
First time I've heard about this "no man rule" I will definitely have to find out how true it is. It's absolutely a fact that not having a man or father in the family causes much dysfunction but it's always been caused by either the men being locked away because of crime or they just go around impregnating as many women as possible and never being responsible. Even Obama's didn't have much to do with him.
vod, you brought up the skip-stop elevators, yet forgot to include they were taken advantage of via street muggers who would venture into the igoe towers late night attacking/raping female tenants (beginning around 1965, up until may 3, 1974 when hud/slha closed them down and gradually began demolishing them -final tower in october 1976)
@@d9918 The gov't did NOT force women to become single mothers or men to abandon their families. Yes, married couples were disqualified from free housing. To me, the solution to that is simple, decline the free rent and other assistance and work instead. That's a complete no-brainer. I cannot imagine choosing section 8 and food stamps over my husband. And there is NO way my husband would be willing to sneak into his own house and hide his belongings so we could defraud the gov't and live on the dole. We love each other too much and anyway we're too proud.
The key difference between these housing projects and prisons is that prisons have guards, who are also known as correctional officers. This is why prisons, in spite of being full of literal criminals, largely remain under control. It's the guards, keeping the prisoners from causing trouble. These housing projects failed mainly because they had no guards of any sort. Without guards, crime and gang activities ran rampant in these places.
@@jeffzebert4982but who would want to live in a place that looks like a prison? Hell, if they’re going to have to live like that, might as well commit crimes, right?
No it absolutely was a failure of policy, planning, and politics. And the buildings were poorly designed and built. You do not know what you’re talking about, and the video is too short to get into the actual topic of this.
"With some cultures if you hand them rocks they will make them into buildings. With other cultures if you hand them buildings they will make them into rocks."
@@russell-di8js He quoted it... it's a saying.... it's these benighted responses that cause friction .... know what you are going to argue before you do. I posted what it means, and I'm not debating it.... it is what it is.,
This saying means that different cultures have vastly different levels of development and resourcefulness, where some societies with limited resources can take basic materials like rocks and build impressive structures, while others with readily available buildings might lack the skills or motivation to maintain them, essentially letting them deteriorate back to a "rock-like" state of disrepair.
I worked not far from there for over thirty years. Saw the last buildings come down. 30 years later it was an overgrown urban jungle where the police did dog training, including sweeps for dead bodies. It didn't change until the US government started building the new mapping center. They finally cleared part of the P-I site to use as a contractor staging yard.
last tower came down anywhere from october '76 to march '77, yet the electrical substation was still up until seven years ago when the corrupt hud slha sold the property to that megalomaniacal scumbag paul mckee, who then tore it down... prior to '76, did you ever get an oppurtunity to actually go inside any of the towers? or the recreation center building on dickson street? or the desoto community center (torn down in '83) next to st. sanislau church, across from the street from the vaughn senior tower? both centers had indoor basketball gymnasiums
Puitt-Igor's location will likely stay unbuilt, unless I missed something. St. Louis at the time the complex was built had 856,000 people. At the time of it's demolition, the city had 622,236 people, and it's population now is not even 300,000. The shrinkage means the lack of ability to build in the city, so in all likelihood, nothing will be built there.
Correction. Some of the places in the USA. Depending on the type of people and culture that lives there. Like respectful and hard work class. Not criminals and low life.
I grew up in public housing and main problem wasn’t the residents in mines. Was people not living in the area trying to sell drugs and creating gangs. I didn’t realize it until I was grown what happened. I was shocked.
4:41 A disgusting rule that still stands today. There are many families that have both parents working and are still low income. No father/husband should be forced to leave simply because he and his family need government assistance.
Why on earth would you program the elevator to only serve certain floors? Why make people carry furniture and groceries and babies up/down extra floors of stairs for no reason? As someone with health problems this infuriates me.
There’s a documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that goes into much more detail about what caused the decline of this public housing-I would encourage you to check it out.
I remember Pruitt-Igoe and always felt sorry for the people living there. It seems like one of those government planed set ups to intentionally fail. I never understood that logic, Why are we (all shades of pigments or economic position) so willing to surrender to the gangs. Indeed an ongoing battle between wicked and honest. Good report, Ken.
These buildings would still be standing today if the residents didn’t destroy it. The same kind of buildings were built in other countries and they function still today but as soon as gangs and crime moves in they decay rapidly. You can see this happen to many similar 60s European public housing projects in the 00s.
Crazy projects in Alexandria, VA are extremely clean, no rodents, no insects. Free community recreation that has been renovated. Major retailers around, jobs for the people and teens. Most who grew up there grow up and are successful. This generation most of the young ones have Masters. The difference, they weren’t isolated and their properties were kept up by the housing authority AND the police were a constant presence.
Even if these buildings were better built and landscaping was in place, it would have still eventually failed given the demographics. Fast forward 50 years to today, and neighborhood demographics still play a major role in home prices and whether a neighborhood is desirable or not.
Socialism 101 these building do not represent architecture but rather the opposite. this may have worked out better if the buildings were spread out throughout the city with surrounding infrastructure, buisnesses and transportation. city planning
the disease, crime, and hopelessness reflected its' citizens. If a neighborhood is run down, dilapidated, with unpainted houses, unmowed yards, and litter everywhere, government can't fix it. All of those things reflect the culture of the inhabitants.
This is just another sad example of government NOT fixing the issue but making it worse in the process. Gee, i wonder why some people dont want anything to do with them and become upset at their presence.
It was not the residents. The gangs moved in/squatted and took over. The few residents who remained were basically prisoners. They were trapped because they could not afford to move.
That sounds to me like the only problem was the people who decided to destroy it and create crime. There wasn't anything wrong with the dream or the buildings. It was people choosing to be violent gangs and destroy their own home buildings and terrorize innocent people who were just trying to survive. And America still punishes families that are together - people who are on SSDI can't get married without losing their benefits (not me, but I hear it all the time)
There is absolutely no shame in being poor/low income. This does not go hand in hand with destroying your environment. It costs nothing to be clean and take care of your home.
Ah yes the good ole fallacy of composition is hard at work here.
Pruitt-Igoe was an institutional failure. It was designed to fail, because it comes from a system that was specifically designed to create 'ghettos'.
But sure, if everyone just picks up their trash I'm sure it would have been a smashing success! Oh wait the CIA was purposely poisoning people in that area!
Yes, there is daddy if you're an able-bodied man!
There is no shame in BEING poor. There's millions of decent, law abiding, hard working people who are low income. However, Being a thug, a vandal and a slob are the best ways to STAY poor.
They likely kept their apartments clean, but the skip stop elevators likely caused the trash to build up because disabled/elderly people were located to the wrong floor for them.
Removing trash can be difficult as can bringing in groceries. Large families certainly would hate having to tote stuff up and down stairs as they created proportionately more garbage...
Crime is rife in all poor communities. Same is said for the largely white population in places like West Va and other rural areas... poverty, crime and lack of employment opportunities. Those who aren't committing crime are all hostaged to it.
Whittier Alaska is doing just fine. 200 people living in one building in the middle of nowhere.
It is absolutely the culture, mindset, and economics that set up many of these projects to fail.
If you don't care, what is someone else supposed to do?
@@davidwright873 that's the "culture/mindset" part.
imo, well fare's job should be getting people off well fare. a lot of them have that mindset of "if i work/make too much i am going to lose my free home and healthcare" They want things given to them, they act like it is owed to them, and they don't want to work to take care of it.
St. Louis citizens are the worst. I can tell you, I live there.
@@davidwright873 it isn't just black people if that is what you are thinking. i am white and grew up in government apartments in a small town. a lot of the other poor white people thought the same way too. they just wanted enough money for their beer and cigarettes and paid in cash so they don't have to tell the gov how much they actually have... lot of drunk men with waitress wives that live on tips and odd jobs, with a suspiciously nice car for the home they live in.
when you get a whoooole lot of people like that together in one place it isn't going to end well and they teach their children to act the same too.
@@myu2k2shut up please 🙏
Problem was that these were for low income households, in a high crime area. If these were built in Tokyo, they would still be standing today with 95% occupancy.
* 99%
Nice racist username. You obviously don't even know what Zion even is/means. Stop getting your information from social media.
as a person who actually lived in a super-apartment high-rise in the Tokyo suburbs, (well over 100'000 residents within a few buildings) I can say that for Tokyoites the high-rise system works really well... the social dynamic is suited to that. however, even in Tokyo, a lot of the present human traits do become concentrated/sharpened when you put people in that sort of an environment... I would say, if your original society is a good one, it kind of will bring out some problems, but, generally, it will concentrate that vibrant nature your society possesses, however, if you have an already criminalized and violent society, you are basically turbocharging it's negative aspect... which was the case with high-rises in the US or in Russia.
It was 100% the residents that did it. Don't look at the demographics though, you'd be racist for that.
Japan is homogeneous and has a mono culture.
I worked for several years rehabbing public housing units in Milwaukee after the previous tenants were evicted from their FREE apartments for legitimate reasons. Every unit was looted, vandalized, and destroyed in various creative ways as the occupant was on their way out. We absolutely cannot overlook the culture and attitude of the tenants...massive entitlement complex and complete lack of responsibility.
That is not really a solution though. How do some people become responsible and others not? Just pointing out bad behavior doesn't change it.
@@pietervoogt I agree. And some very wealthy people, have incredible greedy selfish sociopathic tendencies as well. It's easier to look down on the poorer people--but some very incredibly fortunate people have left real chaos and boondoggles that taxpayers have had to pay for, too.
@@mattt198654321 this is best explained by iq averages and differences between differing demographics being real and unignorable. That is how you get poor countries that cant seem to “modernize” without extreme foreign intervention.
i worked with my brother in law as a painter in the 1970's in st. louis. we saw the same thing in section 8 housing.
@@pietervoogt The lack of fathers in the household is a major factor for the irresponsible behavior of tenets. There are many reasons for that.
These buildings did not destroy themselves.
Guns don't shoot themselves.
Free speech doesn't kill people...
The managers of the complex stopped performing normal maintenance.
@@ae2948 They had valid reasons. Too bad. Perfectly good housing gone to waste.
Blacks. They destroy everything
@@ae2948 - I lived just south of there. There is only so much maintenance money. When the occupants destroy the units faster than they repair, there is NOTHING the city can do. It got bad, quick.
It was hardly an isolated example of failure. You could have been telling the story of Chicago's Cabrini Green.
There are literally hundreds of such examples.
Is this not the legacy of FDR democrats? Federal Housing Authority making massive sweeping decisions about how Americans would live. All the alphabet soup agencies come from FDR’s New Deal. Thrte warning voices but those are drowned out by the newspaper owners - who were in on this whole thing. The interstate freeway project was also total B.S. The RAND corporation pushed it in democratically through the pentagon as a strategic defense investment - as if they would use freeways to deploy tanks and B.M.P.s against invading soviet armies on our shores! Ha ha good one guys. Those things have always been moved by rail and war with the Soviet Union was always expected to be strategic nuclear bombers. The freeways opened up lots of land for cheap new suburbs, which were popular with folks who saw where the cities were going- gangs, bullies, racial
Intimidation.
The rapid decay of this housing project in the 60s reflects the democrats electoral conquest of American cities during the LBJ administration.
They only wanted their votes. All the money to maintain these ^congo Hilton’s * was stolen by corrupt democrat fixers and recently unionized city employees.
Oh man, the 60s was bad for America, but hood for the oligarchy. Look at their overseas empire NOW! Like the republic of Venice
Or the Robert Taylor Housing on the South Side next to the Dan Ryan.
I would like to add an example from Germany: Gropiusstadt in Berlin
Candyman.
I'm from the Saint Louis area and participated in a symposium on Pruitt-Igoe some years ago. From what I remember the problems started nearly immediately. The public housing was originally for middle class whites and blacks in the city. Although initially segregated, whites refused to move into their part of the housing project due to the close proximity of black residents and chose to move into suburbs outside the city. For a time Pruitt-Igoe ran at half capacity because of this. Then as whites continued to move out of the city housing stock became available to middle class blacks. Those blacks started to move out of the housing project and settled in different parts of the city. The people who ended up living there were low income blacks. At first this wasn't a problem because there was a public subsidy that covered the maintenance of the building (originally tenant rent was to cover building maintenance and repair) but congress cut that program. After that the building systems fell in disrepair. Due its design the residents were isolated from the rest of the city. Criminals then took over and held the residents virtually hostage until the government finally decided to demolish the project. Bijlmeer in Amsterdam shared a similar fate.
@@DJAlisterCrane the Africans ruined it and less than 20 years. 33 buildings destroyed. 20 year times span.
Finally someone explains it rather than making racist comments
@ 20 years to destroy 33 buildings
That’s a nice clip
Thank you! So for the racists in the comments the answer is right in the mirror. People like you are the reason it failed.
@ nice wig.
It luuk guut on u.
U no wha I sayin
Ya feels me
Most of the urban population of Eastern European countries was (and still is) housed in this type of block houses. In the East-European country I was born, the most common were the 4-storey and 10-storey towers. The ground floor was occupied by commercial space.They were perfectly safe, everybody knew everybody, kids made friends with neighbors' kids. Despite shortages of everything and poverty, typical for East-European socialist economies, people were helping each other to go by.
For me, who grew up in such a 10-storey tower, it's hard to understand how Pruit-Igoe and Cabrini-Green failed. After all, they were much better built and more comfortable than the East-European block houses.
Were they filled with thousands of Australopithecus?
Because you only had poor eastern European people living there, all sharing the same hardships but still having respect for yourselves and the people living around you. Quite unlike those living in these American block houses who care about nothing.
The key word here is 'ghettoization'. In the former Eastern Block, apartment blocks were typically meant for ordinary people, not social/subsidized flats for poverty-stricken. There has not been social stigma related with them, in a fact, here where I live (Poland), they remain competetive due to attractive locations, upgrades been done and spacing allowing large amount of greenery (which cannot be said about capitalist-era, tightly packed apartment blocks). They ain't cheap to buy, and fees for administrations are high enough to cover maintenance, upgrades, gardeners etc.
The tenants can make an impacting difference on how the building survives. Rent to trash, get your building trashed.
Eastern Europeans mostly have a fantastic 'it is what it is' mentality, they're grateful for what they've got (even if in some places it's a tiny timber cottage and a Lada!) and most importantly they wouldn't dream of destroying where they/their neighbours live out of moronic aimless frustration in life.
Sadly, can't the same for a lot of western Europe or America.
Housing quality is not so much about physical structures but more about the residents who live there.
This is not true in many cases. Here the failure was due to lack of maintenance and public access, not the residents
@@helenezinszner2561 It was both. The design of the buildings, the lack of funding, sparse policing, and gangs permitted to rule the place, all contributed to the downfall of this housing complex. Don’t forget gangs form because of deficient culture and unhealthy mindset.
We do get to decide how we want to respond to life’s challenges regardless of economic status. Just because a person is poor doesn’t mean they have to steal. I was poor growing up.
@@spooderdoggyThat’s still doesn’t make the fault the residents lol. If I live in a crime riddles area because I’m poor and a gang takes over the building and destroys the property there’s not much I and the other tenants can do.
Not to mention the CIA put drugs in the neighborhood and that's when it really started to collapse
Its like saying the light bulb was an invention that didn't work because the user kept smashing the bulb
And nobody fixing or replacing that lightbulb for months, maybe years, as stated in the video.
@@MrsDetroit622 maybe stop breaking the lightbulb first
Not really like that at all. Keeping black people impoverished is the type of 'wokeness' that annoys white folks like you. It triggers you into trolling school board meetings.
@@peterd9940 Despite the reason it's broken, it needs to be fixed either way. The video mentioned these housed many families who were just trying to make it. They deserve the safety of the light, even if the thugs living beside them keep breaking the bulb. It's a safety issue .
Seems like stuff a ♀️would aggressively scream in public loudly proclaiming patriarchy Pete was to blame.lol😂😂😂😂
No one told the residents to destroy the place. Add in maintenance that got ignored, and it's a disaster. Honestly, it's really no different now.
I'm sure much of the maintenance costs were due to residents who intentionally vandalized the buildings.
Agreed. They ripped out the copper plumbing to sell.
@@AsagaoSTL No money no problems. There will be nothing to sell if we became a no money society.
@@kvm1992 So ripping out the copper plumbing to trade would be OK? How about if people just don’t act like animals, regardless of the economic structure?
@@AsagaoSTL It's not that simple to say don't act like animals and they'll end up doing just that. No, desperate times calls for desperate measures. Only when the economic system of choice has failed to the point of delivery where such people would do that which they normally wouldn't want to do. Can't really blame them. Even animals need necessities and people will always find creative means to ensure their survival. What you see now is just the tip of the iceberg. For what's to come don't really have to be. We can change that future if we simply overthrow our current economic model of monetary capitalism and in favor of an new honorable meritary capitalism where there wouldn't be a reason to steal, trade or simply greedy.
The vast majority of residents were probably great tenants who worked if they could and took great care of their families. That being said, only takes a small percentage of criminals to ruin it for everybody. My neighborhood is 90 to 95% working families, but that 5 to 10 % hurts everyone. No security and no maintenance it was doomed to fail.
The vast majority were lackadaisical losers who felt entitled to what they were given and incessantly bellyached about it, causing an uncultured environment that ruined it for the FEW good families that resided there.
Single mothers have a greater chance of raising criminals, and welfare created many single mothers.
More than 1%, it is getting bad. 2% sure is!
@@ossoduro7794 That's not true. The first tennants were proud to live there but with the first cost cuts on maintenance and lots of people starting to move out, the gang members and drug dealers moved in and then the downfall began. Try to watch the documentary about it.
@@eily_b Okay; after that I'll use wikipedia.
Kimberly Gardner was the "first" African-American to head the Circuit Attorney's Office, too.
I took a systems design class in my doctoral program that introduced thinking of systems both in terms of society and technology. One of the reasons these projects went so wrong, so quickly, is that they were seen as single events - let's build housing. All the other aspects of housing - family structure, income, transportation, segregation, nearby shopping, etc. were mostly ignored. The problem with policy planning is that the money doesn't last. So when the shiny new project starts to show its age, there's little to no money, nor political willingness, to revisit the project as often as necessary in order to maintain it. btw - Who doesn't plan for elevators to stop at each floor? I've never heard of such nonsense.
When I became a professor and taught management and policy, I used Cabrini Green as my 'Pruitt-Igoe' example. People want to do good. They just don't want to do it for too long or for too much money.
Then let people handle their own affairs and quit meddling.
@@farmalmtalet quit subsidizing single motherhood
I grew up in Indianapolis. They built small apartment projects on the bus line close to shopping areas. They ended the same way. It is not the planning -- it is the people. Those people came from the ghetto, and they brought the ghetto with them.
What? @@farmalmta
This reminds me of a scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan":
*Khan Noonien Singh:* ADMIRAL Kirk sent seventy of us into exile in this barren sandheap, with only the contents of these cargo bays to sustain us.
*Pavel Chekov:* You lie! On Ceti Alpha V, there was life! A fair chance!
*Khan Noonien Singh:* THIS IS CETI ALPHA V!!! Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet, and everything was laid waste. "Admiral" Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.
My parents grew up in such a complex of about 80.000 people in the G.D.R. . They lived together with many poor neighbors as well but no gangs were formed, no shocking crimes took scene and many damages on the house were quickly fixed by the vouluntary facility managers.
So, I think the city planers and architects had a good idea but it just didn't work for the US society back then.
You had parents. 2 parents. This is the key to a stable society and the Government forced the father out of the home. Those kids with a single Mom were doomed then and still are doomed today.
@robertm.6583 You're right! Single parenthood is still a big problem in the US today! You've >60% of black kids raised without their father. No wonder that afro-american boys joining criminal gangs where they find a father figure that they never had.
So, we're both correct: The problem with such living complexes is, that they don't work in the US society.
@robertm.6583 You're right! Single parenthood is still a big problem in the US today! For example, you've >60% of black kids raised without their father. No wonder that afro-american boys joining criminal gangs where they find a father figure that they never had.
So, we're both correct: The problem with such living complexes is, that they don't work in the US society.
@@robertm.6583 not to mention the GDR was a police state.
@@abcdesholeif you ever lived there, you wouldn't say that. I agree in the gdr being a police state, but if you behaved like a decent human being, you wouldn't have noticed anything else but a decent life in peace.
What features of the building caused non-payment of rent, property damage, disrespect, criminal behavior and general bad behavior? Was it the floor tiles?
It's not as simple as blaming the poor, sorry. There were larger, more significant economic things going on.
@hiker64 no, I'm blaming their behavior. Nothing stopped them from caring for their surroundings or not being criminals.
@hiker64 actually, maybe if someone held them accountable the behavior would change. Stop blaming everything else but the person(s) involved. The place became a shithole because no one held the shitheads accountable
Impossible. You're asking the scorpion to stop stinging the frog mid way across the river. It can't be done. It's in their nature.
@@hiker64Im my country it's the exact same. Put certain ppl together and it's guaranteed to go to shiet.
I drove thur St. Louis once. There was a car on fire and people were gathered around it warming themselves. The fire department wasn’t coming as the car was just a burn barrel. Amazing. I’ve only seen that once in my life, and that’s my impression of St. Louis.
Seems pretty accurate
Apocalypse
I visited St. Louis for the first time in 2018 for Independence Day. I was impressed with the city's cleanliness and the celebration in the park at the arch was a good time.
I probably didn't see quite enough of the city to see what you saw.
I went to East New York once or twice; THAT was how you described St. Louis.
East St Louis?
St. Louis county and Stl City are like two different worlds. I am from west county, which is a high income area with million dollar homes and I would never dare go to the city. It’s dangerous and poor. Plus scary people 😅
The slums in the Philippines are much much worse off than this, but anybody even right now could walk through there and be greeted by happy smiling people they would be safe and will be greeted with warmth. it was the people in these that are lawless, ungrateful, and entitled
That's a fucking lie. The slums of Manila are scary dangerous. Obviously they're full of people just trying to raise their families, but they idea there is hardly any crime is ridiculous. Crime in the Philippines is some of the worst in Asia.
Sounds like you miss it...immigrant !!
@@davidmeeker7481sounds like you're an bully... Incel!
What a crock of crap.
There are various kinds of slums in the Philippines and generally people are friendly as you have described them.
Nevertheless they also have loads of domestic violence, recruitment into the sex trades, drug use and drug dealing, gang warfare, child neglect, alcoholism, burglary and even fires of hundreds of homes at a time. In the slum we are working in for over 20 years the security situation has improved, but for there are still risks at night. Also government sponsored death squads have pushed some of the crime out of our city towards Manila and other more unruly places. Unless you live in the place for a while, you may not know how safe or unsafe your particular slum is.
The initial mission of public housing, was to give low-income residents a temporary (less than 5 years) residence, to get financially independent and save for permanent housing. Instead, it became looong-term housing, with residents staying their entire lives, in units intended to be short-term.
And when you keep giving, you end up with multi generational welfare families. When you pay people for having children without fathers it becomes a part of culture.
It was successful...the ones who lived there, were there a short time and purchased houses...then others stayed and trashed it...but we're not allowed to tell that truth!
Give an inch let them take a mile
Capitalism and racism made this happen. Not poor people.
A free apartment is capitalism? That's crazy. Maybe the fathers should have gone to work, raised their children, instead of a life of crime and drugs. There is nothing racist about that idea.
We had a similar situation in the UK. Due to the big population surge after the war, town planners started building upwards - it sounds logical in theory, but some were so badly designed and thrown together that there were stories of homes so damp that water was literally running down the walls, and windows that would shatter in strong winds. One of them, Ronan Point, actually fell down a few years after it was built and there was a big public outcry about poor planning and building methods as a result, and very tall blocks quickly went out of fashion and developed a reputation for being dirty and unsafe.
A lot have been cleaned up and modernised in recent years, but even that can be problematic - 7 years ago, Grenfell Tower caught fire and the building was very quickly engulfed in flames with residents trapped inside, largely because of the cladding that had been put on the outside to smarten it up.
And yet, here in Central Europe, almost half of the population lives well in the Commie blocks. The problem is not the buildings as such. The technology and building style is well proven. Many countries, both East and West, did similar projects to solve the housing crisis, but the results were vastly different even within the same country. Despite the relative success of the Commie blocks in most places around my country, we also have examples of failure, where for example an attempt to settle nomadic Gypsies into these led to utter desolation.
P.S.: Writing this from my modest commie block appartment in Czechia.
Exactly. It's 100% the people. Americans are just foolish, same as Germans/French/Nord's. They'll be destroyed by this.
My friend lives in a decent commie block in Poland, and her daughter lives in an even bigger commie block in the same city. They are modest but decent places to live.
I was born in commie block, moved to another commie block and bought my first apartment in a commie block. All of them modest but clean, maintained and somehow cozy. Of course, all modernizations are paid by tennants money and guess what? Everyone is happy. It's always about the people who live there, not about "cApItAliSm and rIcH people". Even in 90s, when we were extremely poor we managed to maintain our commie buildings and everything was ok
Poverty doesn't mean you need to destroy housing that taxpayers had paid for. People who can't keep their houses clean and don't work or contribute are a disaster in any society. A nightmare.
It's never about the building, it's always about who's living in. We've got a several of such housing projects in East-Berlin und basically no problems with them. It's different in West-Berlin.
It's not the people - it's the planning and the social context.
In France they had the exact same problems while in Canada it worked.
Thats not completely true. Architecture style like any other art can invigorate or depress an individual.
@@gaiuszeno1331 In Canada we opted mostly for 2-3 stories buildings with lots of parks and it worked.
It's easier for us - we have space and fewer people.
I love your channel Ken
No, the city promised to pay for maintenance. The occupants were low income living on the outskirts of the city and were targeted to be onboarded into living there. Then the city went back on their agreement and let the building decay.
The story of Pruitt Igoe is a story of a city lying to its occupants to allow the white suburbs to be built.
Interestingly (and depressingly), the complex architect also designed the Twin Towers, meaning that he had two of his buildings shown falling on live TV.
And both were controlled demolition
@@DewtbArenatsizfalse
His granddaughter is drug addicted failed socialite walking around new york right now😂
@@DewtbArenatsizbest comment of the year 🙏🏻
@DewdArenasits Did you know that the twin towers did not fall from controlled demolition, in fact they fell because two planes that were hijacked flew into them.
I worked for my state’s welfare agency from 1972-1980. I wanted to help people. I tell you, it changed my mind about the poor. It wasn’t uncommon for landlords to complain that the clients would “trash” their apartments or homes they rented as they moved out.
Yup. Read that in Evicted. She (black couple) didn't want to even leave working appliances, as she's still get 2,800.
Unfortunately you are correct. That is why Section 8 continues to diminish.
Do you think it’s from being poor? I’m asking sincerely. What is the mindset of a poor person to do that? What do they gain?
@@pippa212 Interesting question. I can't say for sure because the answer is likely very nuanced. But I had a housemate who was very low income- he got us evicted by not paying rent, and before we had to move out, he wanted to trash the place. I think it must have stemmed from a feeling of neglect. When we moved in, the apartment was dirty and moldy, and the landlord was very distrustful of him. To my housemate, who had suffered many bad housing situations including being on a several year waitlist for foster care as a child, it probably seemed like the landlord and the government couldn't care less about him, so he probably felt no obligation to show any decency to them.
@ that makes sense. I would guess when you are poor and see how many others have what you can’t get, it must build up anger and resentment. I grew up very modestly, but have no idea what it’s like to be poor.
It's crazy that the two large building complexes Minoru Yamazaki is known for designing, that being Pruitt-Igoe and the original WTC, were both destroyed in widely televised events.
That is really weird
Yeah and both of those disasters were caused by ethnic diversity :D poor minoru man
No government investigation has yet proved how WTC 1 and 2 were destroyed.
If you understand physics, then you know the government narrative is B.S.
Poor management coupled with people who don't give half a shit about the place they live, exacerbated by government entitlement programs,...what could go wrong?
Another socialistic experiment down the tubes!
How can you blame management when there was no money available to do the managing?
@@MirzaAhmed89 People don't have to think anymore. All you have to do is shout slogans you hear in the racist news media.
The building wasn't really destroyed by the residents. The buildings were largely vacant because it wasn't maintained and basically taken over by squatters. People abandoned the building because of the poor maintenance and squatters, rent went down, maintenance went down and more squatters moved in.
The government is nothing but government entitlement programs. They are about to celebrate an entire holiday about it called Thanksgiving.
When they began demolition of Pruett-Igoe in the mid-late 70's, they needed to find government assisted housing housing for the tenants. The solution-North County. There had been dozens of apartment complexes and buildings built, starting about 10 years earlier to meet the housing needs in particular of all the recent high school graduates of the baby boom era. Schools like Hazelwood, McCluer, Normandy and Riverview had huge classes and when they entered the work force or came back from college they needed a place to live. Many of these apartments went Section 8 with the government providing assistance for rent after Pruett-Igoe closed. In 10 years much of North County changed from being a collection of safe bedroom communities to a suburban slum. My aunt managed a large complex in Spanish Lake and finally took an early retirement-she couldn't deal with the problems caused.
It's almost like it was the ppl and not the architecture that ruins neighborhoods.
Though obviously ugly architecture should not be forgiven.
@@RextheRebelugly architecture does not inspire its residents to take pride in it and care enough about it to try to maintain it.
@@marjoriemorris5849- Oh just stop it. You know what it is.
@@marjoriemorris5849 i don't disagree with that statement. But again, regardless of how unappealing the aesthetic might be, not all groups will treat their conditions the same way and some groups would work to improve upon it. You can't possibly say that isn't true.
@@marjoriemorris5849 i don't disagree with that statement. But again, regardless of how unappealing the aesthetic might be, not all groups will treat their conditions the same way and some groups would work to improve upon it. You can't possibly say that isn't true.
This is exactly why people don’t rent to section 8. There was nothing wrong with these buildings. The problem lies exclusively with the residents, their attitudes and their unwillingness to take care of their apartments. The buildings don’t bust out their own windows and loot themselves
Go to hell, you will meet your hero there Donald Trump.
Agree. Even black landlords in Evicted book said same.
With rent as high as it is in 2024 it doesn't matter. Landlords think they're dodging a bullet when people with good credit will still squat in your property and drag you thru court. Only to leave the place trashed. I see it all the time and I'm so glad landlords are ultra picky. I ended up in a brand new luxury building because of it.
See how they blame the architecture.
"Architecture"
@@suzannee6673
Should taxpayers pay for Georgian mansions only to be torn down 20 years later?
The architecture was rayciss!
13% of architecture causes over half the building failures in this country
@@suzannee6673 Put it on the list of euphemisms next to "lunchtime rowdies"
I work in the labor industry. Some of my coworkers make 120k+ a year, yet they are always broke. It's a problem with the person, not the amount of help/income a person gets. Lottery winners are a perfect example of this. If a person doesn't have the self discipline to make their lives work, no amount of money or outside help will do so.
So true.
I've heard Dr. Phil put it this way: "Money problems aren't solved by money. " It sounds ridiculous at first until you think about it for a minute it makes your exact point.
You could give people like that luxury homes and theyd still fuck it up 🙄
You have as much empathy as a piece is shit.
@@bicivelo Try using your empathy as a shield when reality slaps you in the face. Let us know how it works out...
@@wyattmann8157 YOU are a FOOL !!! The buildings didn't destroy themselves, its' the idiots that lived in those bldgs. Ungrateful, lazy, stupid and fatherless tenants caused the problems big time here !! Where do you get off defending degenerates ???!! "Empathy", my ass !!!!
@@alanspagnolia9474they did when black started to to move their it was already declining before the blacks even lived their the whites had trash everywhere
In Japan, this would work, in America not so much.
It has worked in many places, including Europe, Russia, China etc. Demography is destiny.
It would work in america if you kept out the 13% thats bringing the country down to its knees.
You have people who take pride in their home or you have people who feel they are entitled and want everything handed to them and done for them.
There are many housing projects like this in NYC that have been great successes. A few that come to mind: stuyvesant village, parkchester, LeFrak city, Peter Cooper village, two bridges.
@Lv-nq9qz ...sure they have...lol
@@A_Lion_In_The_Sun Would you live in those buildings
I think society needs to teach young people how to behave and their has to be consequences for bad behavior.
@@laurielaurie8280 it’s not happened yet and I don’t think it’s going to
@@Mike-tu7uw I agree. Its a me me me kind of world we live in now.
"Young People"
It used to be that way for THOUSANDS of years. Then we had the bright idea that holding people accountable for their actions was bigoted and discriminatory.
@@john1701q It’s called liberalism, which is indeed a disease of the mind.
The “man in the house rule” 4:40 is a significant problem in society. For the families to put welfare benefits above having a father figure present, it shows how wack the priorities were (and continue to be). Kicking the husband and father out just to have a government check is extremely inhumane.
They were trying to make sure daddy got his ass off the couch and went out and supported his family by making a living. Really not too much to ask. Unless your are of a certain "demographic".
@@marjoriemorris5849 Democrata and LBJ..
If they made enough money, their wives would not have chosen the government check over their husbands (unless he was abusive, but they would not give up a good man for that check if he was providing for them and their kids).
It's odd how in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe this type of development succeeded and is still a success for the most part.
Exactly! Those homes to this day are still well maintained and still highly sought after.
it is not odd. but you cannot talk about the reason, that would be racist.
Try committing crime in those commie countries. Not tolerated. Very strict
It is changing in eastern Germany as we absorb millions of migrants from Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq......at least they claim they are from Afghanistan Iraq and Syria but a lot are not. They do not work. They collect government money and sell drugs just like the tenants in Pruitt Igoe in many cases. Multi Kulti does not work and as it spreads worldwide things will get worse.
@@SuperTheTheresa yeah I’ve seen people here complain about it lol. But you can’t deny the obvious
It is the result of a part of a society accepting vandalism, mugging and other crime. It is accepting that some poeple doesn`t pay, leave their waste somewhere.
As mentioned by other commentators such building complexes did work more or less in most of Eastern Europe. If these buildings were built in Switzerland they would look beautiful and very clean today. It would have been modernized and upgraded several times since.
It is the poeple living in it and the management that tolerate such behavior.
They look like Soviet housing.
exactly !!!
Though soviets didnt vandalize their housings.
LOL I don't disagree with you, Libertaro - although Brutalist style (popular in the Soviet States) and Modernist architectural styles are different, they are very similar. I had to go to my brother (an architect) to have him show me the subtle differences to try and figure out what they were!
@@suprlite Must be because a ghetto like culture didn't exist in the Soviet Union l
Commie-blocks!
The funniest part of this came from a documentary done by a journalist who lived there as a kid. “Single mothers were not allowed to let the fathers of their children live with them”.
It's true BUT ....if there was an able bodied Man in the home that could work and wasn't...goodbye! They ditched their Men for welfare checks, food stamps and free stuff...they could come on the weekends and knock them up ..but be gone by Monday morning or you'll get my Welfare check taken away!
Deplorable
it doesn't do anybody any good to break up a family in this way. Total craziness.
@@nickorloff4601True but also a reason not to rely on government assistance.
The children could live there. You get more welfare money for each child. Your journalist is fake.
Welfare destroyed families! The ruling that mothers could not receive assistance if there was a man in the house has had a devastating effect on families! There is no shortage of food in this country. If a family can show that they need a little help with food, they should not be forced to break up their home to receive it! And housing projects always fail!
This is shocking, disturbing and saddening...and it explains so much.
All the way with LBJ! Now what was that infamous quote he said that had the 'N' word in it? Something about we'll have them voting Dëmócràt forever?
We need to be honest. If a mother has a man in the house, it should be her husband, the father of her children. He should be the provider for his wife and kids, not the taxpayers. It's high time for personal accountability. People who can't afford basic necessities for their kids have no business bringing kids into this world. There's not one valid reason for doing so.
Or, hear me out, if there are adults in a household, they should have jobs and feed themselves and their kids? Government welfare should be an absolute last resort for people too old or disabled to work, not an automatic entitlement.
@@kmstins Well ...why I agree with most of what you said...God help you if you should fall on hard times...many had kids and while money was tight could afford to raise them...then job lay offs due to factories closing down etc and bam! No more income...so what now...they tell the kids to go find a home with an income...
Somehow the author dances around the basic problem : the residents.
Their anti-social behavior is largely why they are poor.
The apartments didn't destroy themselves or terrorize the neighborhood.
In general, the same types of people who drone on about how much they love science suddenly take on young-Earth-level fairy-tale positions when it comes to the rock-solid science of genetics, criminology, psychometrics, evolution, biology etc.
As a result, almost the entirety of explanations of the form "entity x was destroyed for reason y" - e.g. "Detroit was destroyed because...", "Robert Taylor homes became a war zone because...", "all grocery stores left South Chicago because..." etc - are utterly worthless nonsense that provide zero explanatory or predictive value.
Rascism ruined the design and doomed the residents to poverty. St Louis is horrible.
@@Liedaho that's an excuse. Racism made them destroy the place? Underfunded shares the blame, but residents destroying them is without a doubt the main cause of failure. The lack of responsibility of the problem only carries the failure forward to today.
And neither did all those public schools in North St. Louis.
@@SuperiormotorsportBanning fathers from the premises is a recipe for fatherless behaviour
The put 11000 poor people with few prospects inn one spot and no mention of police or security. My home town of 4000 had 12 officers. They can’t act surprised when bad things happened
Many police refused to even go into the complex.
There are many such buildings in places like Russia and Eastern Europe where the residents are or have been objectively poorer than any American single mother could dream of. Yet while some of those places have seen problems, you would have to search far and wide to find a _single_ _example_ that comes even remotely close to the *average* crime rates across all US housing projects. Why?
You know why.
What would you suggest, without having to print up a ridiculous amount of cash for???
They should have had some form of security to start with that many residents. Keeping up on maintenance and dealing with crime as it happens would have keep the crime lower. Not doing anything lets the criminals build fear in the renters and keeps them from getting more poweful. You never eliminate crime but crime will usually go where it’s easiest to be done at
You could’ve given the tenants $100,000 a year and it still would’ve been raised to the ground with lawlessness. It wasn’t the architecture or being poor. It was the people in it.
Yep
That's why the common areas were "taken over" by gangs...the residents dgaf.
The residents initially took pride in these places and tried to maintain them and keep them clean and pleasant. But when they can’t get everyone else in the project to get on board and contribute to the maintenance, Pruitt-Igoe becomes “Screw it, I’m gone.”
We do. And nothing improves.
*razed
Let's be real, the reason this project failed was because of the ppl who resided there. Most residents did not take care of their homes and they were criminally inclined. Only certain ppl can create civil, stable societies. Most ppl destroy and undermine with some special groups of ppl actually being capable of producing and maintaining a functioning society.
Those ppl were not abandoned... They were given thousands of units for housing, social gathering, proximity to jobs etc. you gave them a homes and they tore it apart from the inside. Thats not the fault of architectural planning or public housing, its the fault of the ppl we went out of our way to house.
If you have something to say, why not just say it? I can see the bush you’re beating around…
What do you expect? When you give someone a house, they don't appreciate it. When you give someone welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc. it creares an entitlement mindset. They neglected and abused this property because they didn't have "skin in the game". They weren't invested in the property. It was a gift.
@@jimfinigan1681 I do not agree with this statement at all, it's completely fictional and completely misses the point. A basic standard of living should be guaranteed to all Americans. Full stop. Get on board, or get out. That being said, not all ppl are equal and certain groups are going to be less grateful and less productive due to a variety of factors including genetics.
Some people are incapable of self-governance, however, other groups are.
@RextheRebel Who is going to pay for all that and where will the money come from when it runs out?
@@RextheRebel You may not agree but it doesn't make it any less true.
It was not a failure. It was a clean, beautiful and modern project. The residents are the failure.
For some reason black people are never held accountable for their own actions. It’s always, always someone else’s fault or responsibility. They always talk about “white flight “ as if it’s a bad, racist thing. Anybody who has the means are going to take their family and move on when crime, drugs and poverty start moving into their neighborhoods. Who wouldn’t?
Did you not watch the video? Dumbass.
Exactly!
If you listen to the whole video, you will know that it failed because they tried solving a social problem with architecture. Job left the area, then rents began pluming, then they cut on maintenance, then they incentivized for fathers to leave their homes. All these things made it worse for the worst who could not afford to go anywhere to stay. Concentrating the bad apples into one place.
@@carlosazpurua6231 Half of what you point out was a direct consequence of the residents behavior. Also, it's funny how other ethnicities don't need any babysitting.
"Give me EVERYTHING completely free, and I will destroy it. Why? I'm a victim. Just ask the media."
You were taught that, weren't you? Republicans.
?
It wasn’t free, they had to pay rent
Sums it up
The inhabitants were told it was subsidized rent, with the city paying for maintenance. Then the city didn’t do any of that. Something tells me though that you don’t care to do basic level research though.
Such architecture is very popular in Poland, people are satisfied with living conditions, and take care of buildings. In USA buildings were occupied by special care people, this is the reason for social disaster. Simply some people demand the best accomodation without working on it, and saving money. They live, so they are like a babies, they want what other hard working people have, but without working. Frankly I regret, that at the moment USA government didn't ask families from Poland to replace fatal inhabitant of such a beautiful buildings. There is a sayin in Polish, describing such a lazy inhabitants, Poles say "something got twisted in their asses"
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals..
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals.
Poverty is the reason, not the "type" of people or their skin color. Right now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the very "type" of people who you would least suspect are suddenly experiencing what true poverty is. Many of them lost their possessions and immediately became marauding gangs, robbing one another of whatever they can and behaving like animals.
Amen!
I lived in Poland in 1992 and it was the greatest experience of my life. I love their sayings. The common areas and buildings were very clean.
I can't imagine what it would be like for me and my family to "run the gauntlet" everyday entering and exiting our apartment..
It isn't poverty. It is an underlying culture of lawlessness. We used to be that way too.
Its race. Not culture
Who is “we”?
These housing projects would still be standing today if only the government had hired guards to keep the project dwellers from causing trouble. After all, guards are how prisons keep their populations of LITERAL CRIMINALS under control.
Who is 'we'???? OH wait, you mean white guys, right?
@@TaCC2 I wouldn't start to play the "racial propensity for violence" card if I were you.
It wasn't about the buildings, it was about the people.
💯
Correct. Have you ever seen the cities where they are more than 20%? It’s inhabitable. Not just a ‘few’ but all.
If those buildings were built in Europe (and dodged their current migrant nightmare) they'd be standing today
@@harry76n I know what you're implying. You've never been to Houston have you.
@@tylerhiggins3522 No they wouldn't, have you ever seen the banlieue in France? Or the slums in Eastern Europe?
Everyone tried the same thing in the mid 20th century, to empty the shanty towns and put everyone into ugly apartment blocks.
it wasNOT a failure of architecture!
Ah yes, public housing without public maintenance is doomed to fail.
Yes but...deferred maintenance does not directly cause drug dealing, graffiti, and vandalism of a generous gift given to you by the taxpayer. Entitlement attitude combined with a lack of responsibility causes that. Same story everywhere.
Edit: I worked for several years rehabbing public housing units in Milwaukee after the previous tenants were evicted for drug dealing/prostitution/etc. Every unit was looted, vandalized, and destroyed in various creative ways as the occupant was leaving. These are people with massive entitlement mentalities...full stop.
@@mattt198654321 lack of social supports, lack of mental-health care and healthcare in general, lack of quality education. Its not Entitlement bro, its the system that has systemically shit on an entire race for hundreds of years. Oh yea and don't forget the really really stupid idea of skip-stop elevators, failed attempt to "Make America Healthy"
Well… I don’t think lack of maintenance was solely to blame Pruitt-Igoe’s demise. It was crime. The lack of maintenance only exacerbated it.
Pay the ridiculously low rent so the building can be maintained. WTF do you want?
When you create high density concentrations of desperate low income people with maintenance run by bean counters leads to disaster. It has happened in every major city.
the only "inequality" i see is the differences in intelligence between the people who stayed and ruined it and the ones who left or tried to maintain it.
I agree. You can't fix stupid people.
@@laurielaurie8280 Yeah. Concentrating them all in one place is probably a bad idea. "Integration" is more than skin color.
It's so strange that humans seem unaware of human psychology.
Not so strange that politicians make decisions that ignore facts.
Absolutely
@TOM-op2cp TOM, I know what you're saying, and you're right. The human psyche will throw the most unexpected knuckleballs, at the most irrational of times. There are odd exceptions. My family was living in war-torn Yugoslavia, barely alive. SOME southern Baptist charity found us a FREE house in Atlanta Georgia (US). It was the jump start, that our family needed. My parents still proudly live there, and we are all grown and independent. The US is marvelous.
@@marvinbone1379 Good! Glad to hear it.
@@marvinbone1379 Oh wow. Same deal, but mine never left, so we went through poor-rich-poor-rich cycles many times.
In 1982 a film called Koyaanisqatsi showcased Pruitt-Igoe buildings as well as a music piece by that same name by Philip Glass.
That same music was later also used in a video game trailer that used a tag line, "Things Will Be Different" in its title and became very popular. The game was Grand Theft Auto IV.
Pruitt-Igoe might be gone but still lives.
I love Philip Glass and I love that movie!
Wow, good eye! Yes, I remember that movie, so strange at the time.
I saw that movie, very thought provoking
Had to scroll WAAAAY too far down to see Koyaanisqatsi mentioned!
One of my favorite songs on gta4. When i first heard it on the movie, watchmen, it made me think of batman. Honestly, that song would fit perfectly with batman.
Wait! You mean that people that don’t take of their property in one place don’t take care of their properties in another place? What a surprise!
Interestingly enough, there’s a trailer park tucked in the suburbs of St. Charles, Missouri. The residents are 98% non-black. I highly doubt that the 2% is trashing that trailer park. People love to ASSume with their tired, ray-cyst rhetoric.
@@neojazzgospel There are trailer parks everywhere, dolt. What’s that got to do with this story? And it’s interesting you are claiming a random trailer park in MO as “98% non black” as a fact or something. 🙄 Nowhere in my initial comment did I mention anything about what color anybody was in that housing project. Are YOU assuming they were all black? Why are YOU the only one discussing race here? And sorry to hurt your little race baiting feelings, but the FACT is, nobody is trashing the housing project, the residents already did that.
@@neojazzgospel 😂 Oh Lort…there are trailer parks everywhere, what does a random one in MO have to do with anything? 98% non black? 😂 ok. Nobody here has to trash the housing project in this story, the residents already did it. And interestingly enough, YOU are the only one here who is mentioning race. You go with your Rayce baiting self, dolt.
The Cabrini Green of St Louis!
Wasn't Cabrini Green recently destroyed as well?
@@mikenixon2401 it was!
Speaking of Cabrini Green, John Amos from Good Times just passed away!
@@stanleygoering4856when they killed him off That show That was virtual signaling to destroy the man of the house.
@@sitdowndogbreath When they killed him off the show, it was b/c he and JJ Waller had issues...He felt JJ got more attention and set time than he did. So...he left the show..it was that simple...no virtual signaling at all.
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The road to hell is paved with Harvard degrees
-Thomas Sowell
Good intentions, fast wimmen, and slow horses, as Dad would say.
William Blake
So the way to heaven leads through bad intentions?
@@Kiekschapp It's about what the road is paved with not the way there.
Give a group of people an area which they can develop and make their home and watch what they make of it. You'll get a pretty good idea of the level on which those people operate. Some turn it into a slum or even a war zone while others make the area flourish and develop to become a place where everyone would love to live..
It is simple
The good tenants deserved a new clean place and the bad tenants ruined it for them, as usual. The same thing that has happened to Dt. Louis in general. But that simple answer didn't allow room for you to virtue signal. The housing program had good intentions.
It’s a cultural thing nobody wants to talk about for fear of being labeled a racist.
Correct Sir!
Culture is genetic.
They refused to let the fathers stay in the home. That’s where it all went wrong.
@@paulraines9635 no it’s not.
@@laikanbarth yes, democrats sent them more money if fathers were not present. Still that way today.
While Minoru's design was applauded and new infrastructure welcomed, it must be remembered that planner's designs were constrained by reality. Originally the towers were to be spread around the city at different sites. But the existing communities rejected them, so the whole project had to be shoehorned into one site, far from downtown. One look at those aerial photos shows the absurdity of the plan. Also, operating funds were so constrained that from day one there was not enough staff to clean and do repairs. High rise housing for low income people works in many places around the world. Takashima Daira in Tokyo is one example - every apartment house in Moscow is another (I had a homestay in one which you can see in my Moscow Metro 2000 video). I recently visited the 1960s Wutzkyalee (U-Bahn Line 7) in Berlin. They just refurbished it and it is an urban paradise with quality shopping, restaurants, planting gardens, schools. The failure of PI is a stain on the urban history of America and few lessons of that failure have been learned and or applied.
They work in japan and Moscow because of inhabitants there belong to different culture
I found your comment regarding no Welfare cheques if the father lived in the home, proves to be the wreaking ball that destroyed this complex.
Representative Patrick Daniel Moynihan wrote a sociology report in 1965. He sounded the alarm that black families had 25% of homes without a father. Now, it’s around 70%. The other sociologists were pissed at Moynihan and accused him of “punching down”.
@@jamesdellaneve9005 That's true, the percentage is actually alarming, I saw a video about it a while ago and it really made me think about the consequences of that, I think most people just never even take that into consideration, its legit impossible to sustain a household with kids on your own today, and it makes the cycle go on and on
Great documentary on this failure
Nothing wrong with buildings. Think what might be the real problem.....
This type of buildings worked well in Europe. They were surrounded wiyh supermatkets,kindergardens,schools , smaller shopd etc
Different demographic.
These were placed far from downtown in a place with lackluster public transportation. No shops, stores, schools or supermarkets. Just set up to fail so they could blame the residents.
it is very very easy to explain, but a lot of people do not like to hear the reason.
if you give a free or easily affordable housing to a demographic that has the tendency to steal copper and throw garbage from windows, they will raze it to a ground in a decade.
that is all that is to it. in my country, we have a lot of these and most are perfectly nice and safe neighbourhoods, the houses are well kept, well mantained and the units are often owned by people who live in them.
and we have some that were overrun by people who are not, well, slavic, and that houses and neighbourhoods decays.
Are you talking about Poland?
It's the tragedy of the commons.
When people are given something, they tend not to treat it very well. Putting effort towards something (human labor being essentialy what gives money it's value) is essential for making a project like this work. They never should have let free renters in. The ne'er do wells took it over and ruined it.
I disagree, when people are given something good, they tend to want to keep it that way. These buildings looked more like institutions than homes, and a lot of the anger directed towards them was because of shoddy maintenance.
Only thing wrong was who they let live there as they didn't care/know how to take care of things.
I had a student years ago who had grown up there. I really regret not talking to her about it more than I did.
Difficult to believe that St. Louis was a gorgeous place at one time.
When I was young - early sixties - St. Louis was considered an economic force, with a great future. The Arch, along with the revolving restaurant/hotel, were new. We had McDonnel-Douglas, Southwestern Bell, First National Bank-Bankmark-then Centierre, Corvette, Brown Shoe, Purina, and more, with Purina being the little guy in the mix.
Now, we get to say we have "Purina" as a claim to fame.....
@@painkillerjones6232 And Boeing. Although that it kind of more infamous now. Hahahaha.
There are still a number of architecturally significant buildings here, both public and private. You just have to seek them out.
@@davidcox3076 Don't seek out anything in North St. Louis, and watch your ass on the Southside.
Most American cities were very nice until redlining ended. Just look at the mayors.
Wonder what the common denominator is in all the worst, most dangerous areas in America?
🙈🙉🙊
This is a place for tender, subjective feelings
Please keep your objective facts to yourself
It’s poverty
You’ve never lived it
@ it’s the American African. You have obviously lived it.
I believe it’s the chronic bastardization victimhood syndrome of a smashed culture
Raised being told and believing in the fact that it is a victim by all around it, telling it, it is a victim
Ingrained in its every fiber of being. Victimized continuously, on a daily basis, a victim.
It does not have any personal responsibility, however
It can easily look at the facts on the CDC, FBI, ATF website, factual statistics
And yes, they break down crime by demographic
There you can see exactly who in America is committing what crimes
And all of this ……. While wearing a wig.
@@YeshuaKingMessiah OK DON lemon
Could it possibly be the chronic victimhood bastardization syndrome of a smashed culture?
While wearing wigs?
I cannot tell you how happy I am that the vast majority of this country disagrees with your opinion
No one washes a rental car.
Actually not true! Public Housing in rural communities mainly white communities seem to flourish ..it's so successful there are years long waiting lists...where in cities with different types of residents..not so much!
Unless you hydroplane and spin out into the median while driving in a thunderstorm on interstate 40 halfway between OKC and Amarillo. I was washing red mud from the undercarriage for a good half hour 😂
I guess I’m the exception
I would wash a rental car . . . but everyone is different . . .
I not only wash but also detail my rentals.
Then again, I'm a civilized human with self-respect and decency and not a filthy savage with no future.
Those “skip stop” elevators, designed to “reduce congestion” and “forcing” residents, some of whom were elderly, to walk up to their apartments on the 11th floor is just one of the terrible ideas of this development, but NOTHING was as bad as only allowing single mothers and the “no man” rule. Typical thinking in that time, though, and look where it led us-fatherless children just dont do as well, PERIOD
the men weren't banned? they just weren't allowed access to welfare and food stamps. i.e they had to get a job but would rather just abandon their families to keep collecting welfare
First time I've heard about this "no man rule" I will definitely have to find out how true it is. It's absolutely a fact that not having a man or father in the family causes much dysfunction but it's always been caused by either the men being locked away because of crime or they just go around impregnating as many women as possible and never being responsible. Even Obama's didn't have much to do with him.
Elevators every other floor at most one flight of stairs no different than a two story house.
vod, you brought up the skip-stop elevators, yet forgot to include they were taken advantage of via street muggers who would venture into the igoe towers late night attacking/raping female tenants (beginning around 1965, up until may 3, 1974 when hud/slha closed them down and gradually began demolishing them -final tower in october 1976)
@@d9918 The gov't did NOT force women to become single mothers or men to abandon their families. Yes, married couples were disqualified from free housing. To me, the solution to that is simple, decline the free rent and other assistance and work instead. That's a complete no-brainer. I cannot imagine choosing section 8 and food stamps over my husband. And there is NO way my husband would be willing to sneak into his own house and hide his belongings so we could defraud the gov't and live on the dole. We love each other too much and anyway we're too proud.
It wasn't a failure of architecture, policy, planning or politics. It was the collective failure of a certain demographic.
The key difference between these housing projects and prisons is that prisons have guards, who are also known as correctional officers. This is why prisons, in spite of being full of literal criminals, largely remain under control. It's the guards, keeping the prisoners from causing trouble. These housing projects failed mainly because they had no guards of any sort. Without guards, crime and gang activities ran rampant in these places.
@@jeffzebert4982but who would want to live in a place that looks like a prison? Hell, if they’re going to have to live like that, might as well commit crimes, right?
No it absolutely was a failure of policy, planning, and politics. And the buildings were poorly designed and built. You do not know what you’re talking about, and the video is too short to get into the actual topic of this.
It's hilarious how everyone here talks in code. I do it too. We all know who we're talking about. But the woke police won't let us say it.
"With some cultures if you hand them rocks they will make them into buildings. With other cultures if you hand them buildings they will make them into rocks."
What? Are you victim blaming? If not i'd consider making yourself better understood, "some cultures?" Sheeeet!!
Fly high Skyking
Too true.
@@russell-di8js He quoted it... it's a saying.... it's these benighted responses that cause friction .... know what you are going to argue before you do. I posted what it means, and I'm not debating it.... it is what it is.,
This saying means that different cultures have vastly different levels of development and resourcefulness, where some societies with limited resources can take basic materials like rocks and build impressive structures, while others with readily available buildings might lack the skills or motivation to maintain them, essentially letting them deteriorate back to a "rock-like" state of disrepair.
Just a little reminder, buildings don't do crime (obviously), people do crime. Now ask yourfelf who to blame.
Эх, уничтожили такую красоту. Конечно же, у них виновата архитектура, а не менталитет одной расы
I worked not far from there for over thirty years. Saw the last buildings come down. 30 years later it was an overgrown urban jungle where the police did dog training, including sweeps for dead bodies. It didn't change until the US government started building the new mapping center. They finally cleared part of the P-I site to use as a contractor staging yard.
last tower came down anywhere from october '76 to march '77, yet the electrical substation was still up until seven years ago when the corrupt hud slha sold the property to that megalomaniacal scumbag paul mckee, who then tore it down...
prior to '76, did you ever get an oppurtunity to actually go inside any of the towers?
or the recreation center building on dickson street?
or the desoto community center (torn down in '83) next to st. sanislau church, across from the street from the vaughn senior tower?
both centers had indoor basketball gymnasiums
A certain culture always shyts in their own nests.
I mean whites ??
Thomas sowell calls it cracker culture. It transcends race.
@@Stlouishoodhistoryweak
Your culture?
@@korlamb23 Not mine, hon. I'm too pale and my name isn't LaQueefa 😂
So, the people who lived there destroyed everything, again.
Puitt-Igor's location will likely stay unbuilt, unless I missed something. St. Louis at the time the complex was built had 856,000 people. At the time of it's demolition, the city had 622,236 people, and it's population now is not even 300,000. The shrinkage means the lack of ability to build in the city, so in all likelihood, nothing will be built there.
When White folks leave, they take their businesses and money with them. 😊
This happened in all of the cities in the USA.
Correction. Some of the places in the USA.
Depending on the type of people and culture that lives there. Like respectful and hard work class. Not criminals and low life.
I grew up in public housing and main problem wasn’t the residents in mines. Was people not living in the area trying to sell drugs and creating gangs. I didn’t realize it until I was grown what happened. I was shocked.
4:41
A disgusting rule that still stands today.
There are many families that have both parents working and are still low income.
No father/husband should be forced to leave simply because he and his family need government assistance.
They were not "forced" to leave. They made a choice.
@@Matthew_Loutner
HA!!! HA!!! HA !!!
K🤷♀️🤦♀️
If you keep kicking out people who cause trouble and letting ones who aren't stay eventually nobody living there is causing trouble.
Culture is king.
The Housing Projects unfortunately failed here in the United States, however they worked in Europe and many are still lived in today.
Why on earth would you program the elevator to only serve certain floors? Why make people carry furniture and groceries and babies up/down extra floors of stairs for no reason? As someone with health problems this infuriates me.
There’s a documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that goes into much more detail about what caused the decline of this public housing-I would encourage you to check it out.
Very informative documentary. I’ve seen it a couple of times.
I remember Pruitt-Igoe and always felt sorry for the people living there. It seems like one of those government planed set ups to intentionally fail. I never understood that logic, Why are we (all shades of pigments or economic position) so willing to surrender to the gangs. Indeed an ongoing battle between wicked and honest. Good report, Ken.
Most people that rely on govt handouts are that way due to their BEHAVIOR/CHOICES. Unwed mothers, drug use, lack of discipline, criminality.
These buildings would still be standing today if the residents didn’t destroy it. The same kind of buildings were built in other countries and they function still today but as soon as gangs and crime moves in they decay rapidly. You can see this happen to many similar 60s European public housing projects in the 00s.
Crazy projects in Alexandria, VA are extremely clean, no rodents, no insects. Free community recreation that has been renovated. Major retailers around, jobs for the people and teens. Most who grew up there grow up and are successful. This generation most of the young ones have Masters. The difference, they weren’t isolated and their properties were kept up by the housing authority AND the police were a constant presence.
It wasn't the buildings. It was the people. They always are.
Even if these buildings were better built and landscaping was in place, it would have still eventually failed given the demographics. Fast forward 50 years to today, and neighborhood demographics still play a major role in home prices and whether a neighborhood is desirable or not.
Socialism 101
these building do not represent architecture but rather the opposite.
this may have worked out better if the buildings were spread out throughout the city with surrounding infrastructure, buisnesses and transportation.
city planning
Everything I don’t like is socialism
the disease, crime, and hopelessness reflected its' citizens. If a neighborhood is run down, dilapidated, with unpainted houses, unmowed yards, and litter everywhere, government can't fix it. All of those things reflect the culture of the inhabitants.
This is just another sad example of government NOT fixing the issue but making it worse in the process. Gee, i wonder why some people dont want anything to do with them and become upset at their presence.
No one ever blames the residents who destroy these buildings 🙄
It was not the residents. The gangs moved in/squatted and took over. The few residents who remained were basically prisoners. They were trapped because they could not afford to move.
That sounds to me like the only problem was the people who decided to destroy it and create crime. There wasn't anything wrong with the dream or the buildings. It was people choosing to be violent gangs and destroy their own home buildings and terrorize innocent people who were just trying to survive. And America still punishes families that are together - people who are on SSDI can't get married without losing their benefits (not me, but I hear it all the time)