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Well in my West End example, upscale high rises were built in the place. A large hospital (largest in New England) is also on the site, but that was built later. The residents were happy with where they were living. I don't know what condition the housing in the West End was, and as I said earlier, the adjacent neighborhood had done well and is much more pleasant to walk through than the renewed West End. I think in that case, calling the demolished neighborhood "substandard" was a value judgement.
A property value judgment, certainly! Property values were the primary consideration when assessing blight--single-family housing is "obsolete housing," multi-family housing is "substandard housing," mixed-use housing is "incompatible housing," nonwhite housing is "blighted." High-end high-rise housing, generally unavailable to those displaced, was nearly optimal--commercial development, with 100% displacement of the neighborhood, was best of all!
Still, with stuff that bad, there are limits. Construction size and style are more the issues than build quality.
''You can always squeeze another couple of decades of life out of the shell,'' he said, ''but optimally you shouldn't have that quality of housing around this long.''
One apartment mentioned in the article was 11.5 feet wide and 55 feet deep.
I know what he means. I grew up in a house built circa 1900 and now live in one built about 1948. The 1900 house while better built defiantly would have shown its age by the 40ies.
They are both roughly the same size in fact the newer one slightly smaller. However the 40ies house much better fits modern life than the older one. Compared to the 40ies house, the older one had smaller bedrooms, large bathroom without shower or linen closet, outsized living room/ dining room, outsized kitchen and outsized pantry and annoyingly the closets were deep not wide(great for storing stuff not good for hanging clothing). I guess in 40 years a lot had changed and the older house was proportioned for a different time. (i.e. That pantry would be great for canning but by the 40ies you could just get the stuff from the store. Not to mention the galley kitchen was not invented till the 20ies!)
The 1900 house is still used and functional, but if it had to compete with newer housing it would lose and there was lots of newer housing in the late 40ies and 50ies. It survived because of a lack of investment in that area (a city ghetto). It isn’t really bad construction just an inefficient use of space that is its problem.
OK, I knew it! I saw the post below this morning, and didn't have a chance to answer it till now. Several others have posted since. However. . . .
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
That sort of thing was pretty common: some of the buildings demolished as "blighted and substandard" where I live were 10-20 years old. The local papers carried out a multi-year smear campain of "exposes" to make the neighborhood look bad, but the Chamber of Commerce backed public bond measures still lost two public votes. Tax-increment financing replaced the need for a public bond, the large nonwhite population got the boot from downtown and Chamber of Commerce construction firms and businesses cleaned up in more way than one!
I am going to quote another passage from that book I discussed some posts up. (The one about the high school basketball team in Omaha).
P. 49: " Marquiss (the basketball coach) once deliverd clothes and food to a player whose house had a dirt floor covered by cardboard. When he went home that evening he told his sons, "You don't know how lucky you've got it." "
The meme these days is that those homes that were demolished were grand old buildings, and that it was the value judegement of the politicians and other "do-gooders" that this housing was substandard.
I have been in many homes in the ghetto/slums/low-income areas of several cities as a public health and visiting nurse. I'd be willing to bet I'm one of the very few on this forum who has had that experience. I have seen more homes as described in that book than I have ever seen "old but serviceable housing". Now I'll grant you I never saw a house with a dirt floor, but I have heard of them. I've seen a house where the residents said the mice came out of a hole in the wall for a telephone jack. I've seen public housing and private non-profit low-income housing. I've seen section 8 apartments. Just when I thought I'd seen everything, I'd see something else. My mom also was a visiting nurse; she told me of a patient she had who lived in a house where the source of water was a pipe directly into the Ohio River just north of Pittsburgh.
Why some people refuse to believe these first-hand accounts and cling to the belief that all this wonderful housing was destroyed is something I simply do not understand.
I suppose suburbanites worried about being ejected from their homes and into substandard high-rise housing has some precedent--that's exactly what happened in urban downtowns in the Fifties in some cities--neighborhood demolished and replaced with public housing, but that housing wasn't adequately maintained, and the economic basis of the neighborhoods (the businesses and workplaces destroyed by demolition along with the housing) was gone, which meant many in this new housing were stuck without employment alternatives nearby. While many of these projects were new and shiny, they were often horribly badly designed--like elevators that only stopped once every seven floors, or towers designed with "green space" that nobody used because of poor pedestrian design because the complex was designed to be seen from the air, not walked around on the ground.
Of the tenants that moved into the aptly named First Houses project (Manhattan):
Of the 122 families selected [to live in the housing project], 81 had had no private toilets, and 20 had had some rooms with no windows. So they were properly grateful: "I never knew what color my furniture was before; I never saw it before except by electric light"... [today] Tenants now congregate in a protected courtyard with light and air so luxurious it makes some apartment houses on Park or Fifth Avenues look like, well, tenements.
First Houses were low rise (4-5 stories), later city projects were taller but many former tenenant residents found new project housing an improvement at the time they were built.
Quote:
All this was happening while new suburbs sprouted up all over, funded by highway construction projects, FHA and VA loans, rural electrification and water infrastructure funds, etcetera. But the folks displaced from downtowns generally couldn't buy there--most were racially restricted and thus unavailable to nonwhites, who also had a harder time getting VA or FHA loans too, even if they had jobs good enough to afford what was now within far easier reach of middle-class whites.
This varies by the city, but in many northern cities around 1950 the population living in center cities was mostly white. Poor, often. Yes, "white ethnic". But "white ethnics" didn't have trouble getting VA / FHA loans (I assume Levittown residents were "white ethnics" as well!) Some new city private apartment complexes also blocked non-whites.
OK, I knew it! I saw the post below this morning, and didn't have a chance to answer it till now. Several others have posted since. However. . . .
I am going to quote another passage from that book I discussed some posts up. (The one about the high school basketball team in Omaha).
P. 49: " Marquiss (the basketball coach) once deliverd clothes and food to a player whose house had a dirt floor covered by cardboard. When he went home that evening he told his sons, "You don't know how lucky you've got it." "
The meme these days is that those homes that were demolished were grand old buildings, and that it was the value judegement of the politicians and other "do-gooders" that this housing was substandard.
I have been in many homes in the ghetto/slums/low-income areas of several cities as a public health and visiting nurse. I'd be willing to bet I'm one of the very few on this forum who has had that experience. I have seen more homes as described in that book than I have ever seen "old but serviceable housing". Now I'll grant you I never saw a house with a dirt floor, but I have heard of them. I've seen a house where the residents said the mice came out of a hole in the wall for a telephone jack. I've seen public housing and private non-profit low-income housing. I've seen section 8 apartments. Just when I thought I'd seen everything, I'd see something else. My mom also was a visiting nurse; she told me of a patient she had who lived in a house where the source of water was a pipe directly into the Ohio River just north of Pittsburgh.
Why some people refuse to believe these first-hand accounts and cling to the belief that all this wonderful housing was destroyed is something I simply do not understand.
I don't think anyone was arguing that none of the housing deemed substandard really was substandard. But the existence of some truly substandard housing doesn't mean that all of the housing deemed substandard really was.
I don't think anyone was arguing that none of the housing deemed substandard really was substandard. But the existence of some truly substandard housing doesn't mean that all of the housing deemed substandard really was.
Perhaps yes, perhaps not. Then as like 1950ies burbs much of the housing was built at the
same time(new neigboorhoods usually are). I think a lot of it was substandard and that substandard housing was being rented to the poor because it was what they could afford. This also would have been the cheapest housing in terms of money for the owners to acquire for demolition.
In addition the great depression and WWII interfered with the building and to some degree renovation of housing. The depression through lack of money and WWII through lack of material. You would have had a lot of houses built before modern appliances (the 1900 house originally had stoves for heat and gas light—no central furnace, no electricity). There might have been houses that had not received much in the way of an update in 20 years! And those updates require that the structure of the house be compaitable with them. Like space for the furnace or ceiling hieght for electrical lights (the gas lights were much lower). Or even enough electrical service(ran into that problem in the 80ies) when we got a microwave.
My 1900 house was not substandard but it was defiantly lacking enough electrical outlets in the Kitchen (or frankly any electrical outlet at all along the countertop!). Imagine having only 3 outlets in the kitchen. One tied up with the stove and fridge, one on the floor and one for radio table. You need an extension cord to get to all 2 of 3 outlets to use or unplug the stove! I would hate to see the low class housing of 1900, because the one I lived in while not for the rich was definitely built for someone with some amount of money. How about no electrical outlet in the bathroom and maybe one per bedroom.
The basement was built so that it could be turned into a duplex if needed, but the ceiling height is low (in fact so low that it would be illegal to do so now) and the floor of the orginal basement was likely dirt. The owners of that house kept it updated but if you had a cheap skate living there for about 20-40 years it would be a mess.
A lot of the housing that was in rough shape was only "substandard" because redlining made it nearly impossible to get the financing needed to add things like bathrooms or otherwise modernize and rehab housing in other neighborhoods. And yes, "ethnic whites" were included in a lot of discrimination--not as bad as nonwhites, but many racial covenants prohibited sale to non-Protestants, locking out Catholic and Jewish residents, and ethnic white neighborhoods (and working-class white neighborhoods) were considered intermediary classifications, a higher credit risk than WASP neighborhoods.
In white neighborhoods, largely the same old building stock were considered "historic districts," sought after and reinvested, rehabbed, upgraded with modern electrical and plumbing systems. The only real difference was the color of the inhabitants. They weren't all grand old buildings--a lot were pretty dinky and dingy. But they provided housing that was often not replaced at all, on the assumption that a clean sidewalk was better housing than a dirty building.
Sure, there were places where slum clearance was necessary--but the overwhelming majority of it was not, and the negative consequences of slum clearance were enormous. You can find plenty of puff pieces about how places like Cabrini-Green or Pruitt-Igoe were portrayed as Heaven on Earth, at least until maintenance budgets ran out and predators moved in. I file them in the same category as breathless stories about how shiny, sleek new buses were going to replace those clanky old-fashioned trolley cars.
I was a social worker for 15 years. Worked in homeless shelters, transitional housing, downtown residential hotels, saw public housing and private nonprofit housing and tents on the river and illegal squats, places with rats and roaches and bedbugs and scabies, including one building where sewage occasionally squirted from the light fixtures due to defective plumbing. That place is just about to reopen after a complete rehab and remodel, converting the old building stock into efficiency apartments.
The house where I live right now didn't have electricity when it was built--it had gaslights, and several light fixtures were conversion kits for homeowners switching from gas to electric. When I moved in, the kitchen had one outlet, and one in the living room. I was able to pay an electrician to put in more outlets. I still have a dirt-floor basement--a lot of homes from that era have an elevated ground floor to provide storage on a small lot and provide ventilation via stack effect. It had plumbing (there are plumbing records from several years before the house was built) but plenty of my neighbors' homes were built without indoor toilets--they were added later.
A lot of the housing that was in rough shape was only "substandard" because redlining made it nearly impossible to get the financing needed to add things like bathrooms or otherwise modernize and rehab housing in other neighborhoods. And yes, "ethnic whites" were included in a lot of discrimination--not as bad as nonwhites, but many racial covenants prohibited sale to non-Protestants, locking out Catholic and Jewish residents, and ethnic white neighborhoods (and working-class white neighborhoods) were considered intermediary classifications, a higher credit risk than WASP neighborhoods.
“A lot of the housing that was in rough shape was only "substandard" because redlining made it nearly impossible to get the financing needed to add things like bathrooms or otherwise modernize and rehab housing in other neighborhoods. And yes, "ethnic whites" were included in a lot of discrimination--not as bad as nonwhites, but many racial covenants prohibited sale to non-Protestants, locking out Catholic and Jewish residents, and ethnic white neighborhoods (and working-class white neighborhoods) were considered intermediary classifications, a higher credit risk than WASP neighborhoods.”
Oh I don’t doubt that a lot of that is going on. However at the time a lot of people didn’t own their own house. They were dependant on a landlord to upgrade the place(and why do so? Rent won’t increase and depending on what needs to be done those upgrades could be costly). In addition racial tensions kept certain people in certain areas at least in Chicago at that time so leaving a substandard area for a better one was not so easy if you’re a minority. It also created some overcrowding in some areas.
Also the problems you describe are problems solved by simple things like hiring an electrician, getting a plumber or hiring an eterminator. Even the Whitehouse got rebuilt about this era(It originally lacked closets!). I once saw an this old house remodel a 100 old apartment and that was not cheap or easy(i.e. knocking down walls ect.). They had a bedroom that could barely fit a cot!
I think there probably were a lot of changes in society and advancements in technology that may have made pre-1920ies housing especially obsolete then. For instance had the house I lived in lacked a basement there would have been no where to put the furnace and its duck work. Sure you can put in a kit in the gas light, but it would have been a single small fixture placed against the wall in a bad spot to light the whole room had someone not ran electrical lighting instead. Luckily the house always had a bathroom with a bathtub, but private bathrooms were a luxury even in the early 20th century. I would imagine there would have been a lot more pre-1920ies buildings standing in 1948 than now.
Most old houses in California lack basements--typically the ductwork for central A/C is done through the attic. The kits for gaslights in my house were used in ceiling fixtures, not wall sconces, the same place you'd hang a chandelier, and later fixtures were added between the 1920s and when I moved in a few years ago. The kits themselves are pretty rare these days--most of them were just ripped out and replaced when the houses were wired for electricity.
And yes, a lot of apartments were in rough shape because landlords didn't care much about reinvestment, especially in poor neighborhoods.
A lot of the housing that was in rough shape was only "substandard" because redlining made it nearly impossible to get the financing needed to add things like bathrooms or otherwise modernize and rehab housing in other neighborhoods. And yes, "ethnic whites" were included in a lot of discrimination--not as bad as nonwhites, but many racial covenants prohibited sale to non-Protestants, locking out Catholic and Jewish residents, and ethnic white neighborhoods (and working-class white neighborhoods) were considered intermediary classifications, a higher credit risk than WASP neighborhoods.
In white neighborhoods, largely the same old building stock were considered "historic districts," sought after and reinvested, rehabbed, upgraded with modern electrical and plumbing systems. The only real difference was the color of the inhabitants. They weren't all grand old buildings--a lot were pretty dinky and dingy. But they provided housing that was often not replaced at all, on the assumption that a clean sidewalk was better housing than a dirty building.
Sure, there were places where slum clearance was necessary--but the overwhelming majority of it was not, and the negative consequences of slum clearance were enormous. You can find plenty of puff pieces about how places like Cabrini-Green or Pruitt-Igoe were portrayed as Heaven on Earth, at least until maintenance budgets ran out and predators moved in. I file them in the same category as breathless stories about how shiny, sleek new buses were going to replace those clanky old-fashioned trolley cars.
I was a social worker for 15 years. Worked in homeless shelters, transitional housing, downtown residential hotels, saw public housing and private nonprofit housing and tents on the river and illegal squats, places with rats and roaches and bedbugs and scabies, including one building where sewage occasionally squirted from the light fixtures due to defective plumbing. That place is just about to reopen after a complete rehab and remodel, converting the old building stock into efficiency apartments.
The house where I live right now didn't have electricity when it was built--it had gaslights, and several light fixtures were conversion kits for homeowners switching from gas to electric. When I moved in, the kitchen had one outlet, and one in the living room. I was able to pay an electrician to put in more outlets. I still have a dirt-floor basement--a lot of homes from that era have an elevated ground floor to provide storage on a small lot and provide ventilation via stack effect. It had plumbing (there are plumbing records from several years before the house was built) but plenty of my neighbors' homes were built without indoor toilets--they were added later.
Most substandard housing is rental. The owners had/have no interest in rehabbing said buildings. The neighborhood I was talking about in Omaha was once a white area, a sort of "entry-level" neighborhood. The racism was on the part of the owners of the homes, not the bankers, though in some cases they may have been one and the same.
You are probably the only other person on this forum (besides me) who has actually been in some of these homes, to use the term loosely. I don't understand how someone in good conscience could rent a place like some that I have seen.
It's funny that housing projects are supposedly "bad", yet they are really nothing but apartment complexes, where we are all supposed to want to live!
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