Pruitt-Igoe Failure

St. Louis, Missouri is where the Pruitt-Igoe urban housing complexes were built in the year of 1954. Originally the plan was that public housing would liberate people who were living in poor and dangerous slums. Little did they know that the Pruitt-Igoe would be just as bad, if not even worse. All considered, Pruitt-Igoe was a massive failure. Unfortunately, from the beginning segregation was included in the process of the building. As the Guardian states “Pruitt-Igoe became an economic and racial ghetto soon after it opened. The design, drawn up when Missouri law still mandated the segregation of public facilities, originally designated the Pruitt half of the complex (named after second world war fighter pilot Wendell O Pruitt) for black residents only, and the Igoe half (after former US Congressman William L Igoe) as white only.”
Next, the rules that people had to abide by were demeaning and unbelievable. Examples of a couple rules included televisions being prohibited along with phones as well as husbands not being allowed to live with their wives and children then they had to literally leave the state. Men not being allowed to live in the homes made the women depend

on money they got from the state and impacted the lives of the children for the worse because there was no longer the added income of another person in the family. Another issue with Pruitt-Igoe is that in order to have a lower cost for rent there must be a high number of residents. According to the Guardian “After the second world war many Americans who had the means believed they were escaping by moving out of cities. From the safety of their new, suburban communities, they looked upon central cities as too dirty, too crowded, too criminal – and, in many regions of the country, too black.” The people who could not afford to leave were stuck with raised rent, meaning they could no longer cover the cost of other necessities, which lead to professional maintenance workers being unaffordable. Since there were not enough people to cover the cost of skilled maintenance workers places such as elevators started to break, vandalism covered walls, people were constantly trying to break windows or lightbulbs and trash accumulated everywhere. Instead of people relying on the incinerators to take care of the trash they would set their own fires. While the government was making the suburbs more affordable for the middle-class, Pruitt-Igoe would end up raising rent 3 times in a year costing many of the residents more than half of a paycheck, if they were lucky enough to even find and keep a job.
Pruitt-Igoe shows how people cannot depend on the government to house residents in buildings with high density and overcrowding in mind, especially when at the same time the suburbs were becoming more affordable and attractive to buyers.

Not to mention that Americans at the time believed that public housing was “Un-American” and “Communist” in nature. Also Pruitt-Igoe can teach that while public housing might not be the answer, there still needs to be a solution to the housing issues connected with the poor and even the homeless. America should not overlook people on the streets that are struggling to afford shelter. In the end, while Pruitt-Igoe may have been a failure it is a reminder that people need help and America must learn how to create affordable housing for every person in the

country.