Affordable Housing Analysis
Affordable housing became one of the main focuses of public and domestic policy in the aftermath of WWII. Various housing acts were passed to make up for the lack of available housing including large housing development projects particularly in large urban centers. Architecture served as a response to public policy and to push social reform in the area of low-income housing. These housing projects had varying degrees of failure or success that were influenced by a number of factors including location, support, public perception, social integration, and design. The surrounding conditions and design aspects of these projects serve to inform the process of developing future affordable housing. The large housing shortage after WWII, particularly
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for returning veterans, led the federal government to address the issue through many laws including the Housing Act of 1949. The U.S. Housing Act of 1949 was a large-scale program that allocated federal resources for “slum clearance, low-rent public housing, and farm home improvement.” These funds were given to local governments towards developing new housing, purchasing and clearing land, subsidizing rents, and loans. On top of standard building codes, the program increased further regulations to maintain a level of health and safety in low-cost buildings. The law restructured cost limitations for housing projects by removing limits on units and shifting the cost limit to being per room. Subsequent housing laws increased regulation, rules and guidelines. The guidelines provided information regarding subjects such as the sizing of different spaces and location of openings. The guidelines and regulations addressed health and safety but had trouble addressing the subjective issue of design. Additionally, the scale of the shortage had an impact on the approach taken towards public housing as the growing number of projects had cost constraints in an attempt to reduce cost to the federal government and families.
Within the Housing Act of 1949, Title III of the law allocated 1.5 billion dollars in funds for the construction of 810,000 affordable units over a period of six years to address the housing shortage. Unfortunately the start of the Korean War, which caused a shortage in materials and economic inflation, forced cuts to the program’s projected 135,000 units to be built annually. The scale was greatly reduced to only an average of 30,000 housing units and funding was also cut in half for certain initiatives offered by the Federal Housing Authority for building which crippled the newly created program.
The issues that arose from the aforementioned policies and time period impacted the construction of many affordable housing projects. One of the most high-profile housing projects affected was the Pruitt-Igoe development in St. Louis, Missouri. For many, the project represented the failures of affordable housing particularly high-rise developments. Critics of the project faulted the design, blaming architect Minoru Yamasaki for not addressing the needs of residents in his series of uniform high-rise buildings. Although design flaws were not the only factor in the project’s deterioration, the project did lack in many areas such as the size and use of spaces, functionality, and durability. At the time, there was an emphasis on economic efficiency in order to keep costs down to maintain the construction budget and create a large quantity of housing units to move lower income families. In Pruitt-Igoe, the architect Minoru Yamasaki, designed relatively small units in order to put focus on communal spaces on certain floors (1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th) and large outdoor green spaces. One of the major problems with these spaces was the proliferation of crime. This could be attributed to the lack of defensible space, a term that refers to different elements that serve to create a safe, clean environment. The communal spaces which was open to all residents in the building, became an area for crime due to its heavy usage and lack of visibility from other areas of the building. The issue of visibility was also present in the outside spaces of the project; the system of pathways and placement of buildings looking inward created further opportunities for crime. As for the green spaces and play areas, there was the problem of accessibility and observability. Pruitt-Igoe complex site plan (left) and skip-stop elevator diagram (right).
The beginning of the Korean War also had an impact on the development and completion of the Pruitt-Igoe complex. The increasing pressure from the Public Housing Administration to reduce costs and limited federal funding led the initial design proposal of high-rise, mid-rise, and walk-up buildings to become a set of uniform 11-story towers. Additionally, a shortage in materials, due to the war-effort, and inflation resulted in poor construction quality due to the use of the cheapest materials.
“The quality of the hardware was so poor that doorknobs and locks were broken on initial use. …Windowpanes were blown from inadequate frames by wind pressure. In the kitchens, cabinets were made of the thinnest plywood possible.” The complex was designed to be a segregated housing project with half of the buildings for whites (as the Igoe Apartments) and the other half for black residents (as the Pruitt Homes).
The housing project was completed when a Supreme Court ruling banned discriminatory and racially-biased housing and the complex became desegregated. This also happened to occur during the period of ‘white flight’ when white, middle class residents moved from the perceived overcrowding and crime of the city for the safety and homogeny of suburban communities. Furthermore, the federal housing agency limited income requirements, essentially removing stable, middle-class residents from the pool of possible tenants. The housing development charged residents based on income and a situation where renters were almost entierly low-income, financially unstable families. Also, a portion of rent payments went towards maintenance of the buildings and facilities, and with lower funds, it became difficult to keep the complex functional due to poor build quality and equipment. The Pruitt-Igoe complex highlighted issues with public policy and the approach of architectural design. Proper federal funding would have allowed for better construction quality and maintenance. Opening up housing units to more middle class residents would lead to more social unity rather than concentrating poverty. Additionally, a shift from the quantity over quality approach would have led to better planning; identifying and addressing …show more content…
the needs and preferences of the intended residents would be a better approach to the design process rather than relying on guidelines and concepts. While there were issues with high-rise housing developments, there was already the perception of them as far less desirable than single-family houses. The implementation of track houses and access to home loans partially funded by the federal government further pushed for this. This stigma would prove an obstacle as designers would need to create a form that rejected this view. Additionally, while houses were seen as distinct, individual spaces in a larger community, housing complexes overall took a more collective, communal approach where there was little distinction between units and contained shared facilities and open spaces. The communal approach was less favorable due to the fact that “the detached house is an obsession, and…an essential piece of the American Dream.” To combat this, the Pruitt-Igoe complex incorporated amenities in the open spaces to mimic (to an extent) that of communities of single-family homes but the units failed to mimic the sense of privacy and separation from the overall community. In terms of context, public housing projects needed to be integrated with the surrounding urban environment, taking into account factors such as layout, scale, and materials. Part of the failure with the Pruitt-Igoe complex, was the stark contrast between the high-rise housing building and the dense low-rise structures in the area. This attributed to the perception of public housing as enclaves, separate from the rest of the area and seen as a concentration of poverty and crime. The view also stigmatized residents, who were not seen as socially integrated with the middle class single-family residents. The failure of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project and the intense criticism following its demolition would damage the image of high-rise buildings, which like many public housing projects had their shortcomings. Eventually, public housing turned to other approaches such as low-rise and scattered site housing. As previously mentioned, ‘white flight’ was occurring across the country and was most evident in major U.S. cities. During the same period, the African-American ‘great migration’ was occurring where blacks from the South moved west or northward. Those who moved into cities like San Francisco, were able to find jobs in the booming shipbuilding industry. Unfortunately, widespread discrimination and racially restrictive covenants forced African-American residents to live in overcrowded, poorly funded areas such as Fillmore. The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), one of the first racially integrated unions and progressive groups, sought to address the issue by establishing affordable housing in the poor, racially segregated neighborhood of Fillmore. The ILWU used newly established federal housing programs to fund and subsidize rent for the project which was named St. Francis Square Cooperative. The cooperative structure allowed low- to medium-income people to purchase a unit for much lower than standard rent. Additionally, the affordability not only allowed for adequate housing for ILWU members but to have a racially integrated and diverse community.
Louis Goldblatt, the ILWU secretary–treasurer who became president of the ILWU Longshoremen’s Redevelopment Corporation and was primarily responsible for steering the project’s development, also noted the early importance of racial integration: ‘‘One thing we had as a very specific objective was that this was going to be integrated housing; we wanted integrated housing, low-income housing, in the heart of San Francisco in as clear a demonstration as could be done that the people who worked for their living didn’t have to be driven out of town.’’ The St.
Francis Square project contained ‘garden apartments’ that organized around courtyards that focused inward. The 299-units in the project consisted of three-story buildings over three blocks that grouped around three courtyards that connected the outdoors areas together. The scale of the dense, low-rise buildings remained consistent with the context of the area; architect and city planner Oscar Newman noted this in Defensible Spaces stating, “the architects have been able to capture the feeling of a spacious but well-scaled single family row-house development.” Additionally, the position of units which were either pushed back or pushed forward helped make distinctions between individual units that could be individually
identifiable. St. Francis Square Cooperative site plan (left) and multi-family unit plan (right)
Like some issues with the Pruitt-Igoe project, St. Francis Square faced issues with funding which required making certain adjustments. This included the fact that the plot where the project was to be built was zoned for medium-density housing and developing single-family homes would not be economical. Within the units, cost were reduced by limiting the size of certain rooms like separate dining rooms or laundry spaces. Additionally, the initial design was for concrete construction but was instead constructed of wood and stucco to further keep costs down. The success of the St. Francis Square cooperative can be attributed to many factors including racial and social integration, the ‘garden apartment’ design, and its ownership structure. The ILWU worked with local institutions, word-of-mouth, and newspaper advertisements to establish diversity among residents. The cooperative structure and use of federal subsidies kept monthly payments down which ranged from $84 to $140 at the time; these payments not only covered mortgages but utilities, taxes, and building maintenance. The results from these housing developments, Pruitt-Igoe and St. Francis Square, served as precedent and case studies for future development of affordable housing. In terms of design, housing projects would need to respond effectively to their context. The response could be present in the scale and massing of a building, which could fit comfortably within the site without being clearly identifiable as a housing project. When designing, identifying what groups the project will serve assists in addressing their needs and the necessary spaces; units can serve different groups such as the elderly and homeless and doesn’t necessarily have to focus on families. In terms of federal housing policy, policies put in place to protect low-income residents and not disrupt higher-income areas along with social circumstances reduced the perception of public housing to that of a last resort. The continued practice of placing projects in poor, often ethnically homogenous areas with higher rates of crime, lower-quality schools and other institutions also led many who qualified for public housing to look elsewhere. Additionally cuts and reductions in funding to housing programs limited the design and lowered the quality of construction. Subsidized funding combined with private funding, or entirely funded by the private sector, proved more successful in developing public housing such as in the case of the St. Francis Square Cooperative.
for returning veterans, led the federal government to address the issue through many laws including the Housing Act of 1949. The U.S. Housing Act of 1949 was a large-scale program that allocated federal resources for “slum clearance, low-rent public housing, and farm home improvement.” These funds were given to local governments towards developing new housing, purchasing and clearing land, subsidizing rents, and loans. On top of standard building codes, the program increased further regulations to maintain a level of health and safety in low-cost buildings. The law restructured cost limitations for housing projects by removing limits on units and shifting the cost limit to being per room. Subsequent housing laws increased regulation, rules and guidelines. The guidelines provided information regarding subjects such as the sizing of different spaces and location of openings. The guidelines and regulations addressed health and safety but had trouble addressing the subjective issue of design. Additionally, the scale of the shortage had an impact on the approach taken towards public housing as the growing number of projects had cost constraints in an attempt to reduce cost to the federal government and families.
Within the Housing Act of 1949, Title III of the law allocated 1.5 billion dollars in funds for the construction of 810,000 affordable units over a period of six years to address the housing shortage. Unfortunately the start of the Korean War, which caused a shortage in materials and economic inflation, forced cuts to the program’s projected 135,000 units to be built annually. The scale was greatly reduced to only an average of 30,000 housing units and funding was also cut in half for certain initiatives offered by the Federal Housing Authority for building which crippled the newly created program.
The issues that arose from the aforementioned policies and time period impacted the construction of many affordable housing projects. One of the most high-profile housing projects affected was the Pruitt-Igoe development in St. Louis, Missouri. For many, the project represented the failures of affordable housing particularly high-rise developments. Critics of the project faulted the design, blaming architect Minoru Yamasaki for not addressing the needs of residents in his series of uniform high-rise buildings. Although design flaws were not the only factor in the project’s deterioration, the project did lack in many areas such as the size and use of spaces, functionality, and durability. At the time, there was an emphasis on economic efficiency in order to keep costs down to maintain the construction budget and create a large quantity of housing units to move lower income families. In Pruitt-Igoe, the architect Minoru Yamasaki, designed relatively small units in order to put focus on communal spaces on certain floors (1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th) and large outdoor green spaces. One of the major problems with these spaces was the proliferation of crime. This could be attributed to the lack of defensible space, a term that refers to different elements that serve to create a safe, clean environment. The communal spaces which was open to all residents in the building, became an area for crime due to its heavy usage and lack of visibility from other areas of the building. The issue of visibility was also present in the outside spaces of the project; the system of pathways and placement of buildings looking inward created further opportunities for crime. As for the green spaces and play areas, there was the problem of accessibility and observability. Pruitt-Igoe complex site plan (left) and skip-stop elevator diagram (right).
The beginning of the Korean War also had an impact on the development and completion of the Pruitt-Igoe complex. The increasing pressure from the Public Housing Administration to reduce costs and limited federal funding led the initial design proposal of high-rise, mid-rise, and walk-up buildings to become a set of uniform 11-story towers. Additionally, a shortage in materials, due to the war-effort, and inflation resulted in poor construction quality due to the use of the cheapest materials.
“The quality of the hardware was so poor that doorknobs and locks were broken on initial use. …Windowpanes were blown from inadequate frames by wind pressure. In the kitchens, cabinets were made of the thinnest plywood possible.” The complex was designed to be a segregated housing project with half of the buildings for whites (as the Igoe Apartments) and the other half for black residents (as the Pruitt Homes).
The housing project was completed when a Supreme Court ruling banned discriminatory and racially-biased housing and the complex became desegregated. This also happened to occur during the period of ‘white flight’ when white, middle class residents moved from the perceived overcrowding and crime of the city for the safety and homogeny of suburban communities. Furthermore, the federal housing agency limited income requirements, essentially removing stable, middle-class residents from the pool of possible tenants. The housing development charged residents based on income and a situation where renters were almost entierly low-income, financially unstable families. Also, a portion of rent payments went towards maintenance of the buildings and facilities, and with lower funds, it became difficult to keep the complex functional due to poor build quality and equipment. The Pruitt-Igoe complex highlighted issues with public policy and the approach of architectural design. Proper federal funding would have allowed for better construction quality and maintenance. Opening up housing units to more middle class residents would lead to more social unity rather than concentrating poverty. Additionally, a shift from the quantity over quality approach would have led to better planning; identifying and addressing …show more content…
the needs and preferences of the intended residents would be a better approach to the design process rather than relying on guidelines and concepts. While there were issues with high-rise housing developments, there was already the perception of them as far less desirable than single-family houses. The implementation of track houses and access to home loans partially funded by the federal government further pushed for this. This stigma would prove an obstacle as designers would need to create a form that rejected this view. Additionally, while houses were seen as distinct, individual spaces in a larger community, housing complexes overall took a more collective, communal approach where there was little distinction between units and contained shared facilities and open spaces. The communal approach was less favorable due to the fact that “the detached house is an obsession, and…an essential piece of the American Dream.” To combat this, the Pruitt-Igoe complex incorporated amenities in the open spaces to mimic (to an extent) that of communities of single-family homes but the units failed to mimic the sense of privacy and separation from the overall community. In terms of context, public housing projects needed to be integrated with the surrounding urban environment, taking into account factors such as layout, scale, and materials. Part of the failure with the Pruitt-Igoe complex, was the stark contrast between the high-rise housing building and the dense low-rise structures in the area. This attributed to the perception of public housing as enclaves, separate from the rest of the area and seen as a concentration of poverty and crime. The view also stigmatized residents, who were not seen as socially integrated with the middle class single-family residents. The failure of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project and the intense criticism following its demolition would damage the image of high-rise buildings, which like many public housing projects had their shortcomings. Eventually, public housing turned to other approaches such as low-rise and scattered site housing. As previously mentioned, ‘white flight’ was occurring across the country and was most evident in major U.S. cities. During the same period, the African-American ‘great migration’ was occurring where blacks from the South moved west or northward. Those who moved into cities like San Francisco, were able to find jobs in the booming shipbuilding industry. Unfortunately, widespread discrimination and racially restrictive covenants forced African-American residents to live in overcrowded, poorly funded areas such as Fillmore. The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), one of the first racially integrated unions and progressive groups, sought to address the issue by establishing affordable housing in the poor, racially segregated neighborhood of Fillmore. The ILWU used newly established federal housing programs to fund and subsidize rent for the project which was named St. Francis Square Cooperative. The cooperative structure allowed low- to medium-income people to purchase a unit for much lower than standard rent. Additionally, the affordability not only allowed for adequate housing for ILWU members but to have a racially integrated and diverse community.
Louis Goldblatt, the ILWU secretary–treasurer who became president of the ILWU Longshoremen’s Redevelopment Corporation and was primarily responsible for steering the project’s development, also noted the early importance of racial integration: ‘‘One thing we had as a very specific objective was that this was going to be integrated housing; we wanted integrated housing, low-income housing, in the heart of San Francisco in as clear a demonstration as could be done that the people who worked for their living didn’t have to be driven out of town.’’ The St.
Francis Square project contained ‘garden apartments’ that organized around courtyards that focused inward. The 299-units in the project consisted of three-story buildings over three blocks that grouped around three courtyards that connected the outdoors areas together. The scale of the dense, low-rise buildings remained consistent with the context of the area; architect and city planner Oscar Newman noted this in Defensible Spaces stating, “the architects have been able to capture the feeling of a spacious but well-scaled single family row-house development.” Additionally, the position of units which were either pushed back or pushed forward helped make distinctions between individual units that could be individually
identifiable. St. Francis Square Cooperative site plan (left) and multi-family unit plan (right)
Like some issues with the Pruitt-Igoe project, St. Francis Square faced issues with funding which required making certain adjustments. This included the fact that the plot where the project was to be built was zoned for medium-density housing and developing single-family homes would not be economical. Within the units, cost were reduced by limiting the size of certain rooms like separate dining rooms or laundry spaces. Additionally, the initial design was for concrete construction but was instead constructed of wood and stucco to further keep costs down. The success of the St. Francis Square cooperative can be attributed to many factors including racial and social integration, the ‘garden apartment’ design, and its ownership structure. The ILWU worked with local institutions, word-of-mouth, and newspaper advertisements to establish diversity among residents. The cooperative structure and use of federal subsidies kept monthly payments down which ranged from $84 to $140 at the time; these payments not only covered mortgages but utilities, taxes, and building maintenance. The results from these housing developments, Pruitt-Igoe and St. Francis Square, served as precedent and case studies for future development of affordable housing. In terms of design, housing projects would need to respond effectively to their context. The response could be present in the scale and massing of a building, which could fit comfortably within the site without being clearly identifiable as a housing project. When designing, identifying what groups the project will serve assists in addressing their needs and the necessary spaces; units can serve different groups such as the elderly and homeless and doesn’t necessarily have to focus on families. In terms of federal housing policy, policies put in place to protect low-income residents and not disrupt higher-income areas along with social circumstances reduced the perception of public housing to that of a last resort. The continued practice of placing projects in poor, often ethnically homogenous areas with higher rates of crime, lower-quality schools and other institutions also led many who qualified for public housing to look elsewhere. Additionally cuts and reductions in funding to housing programs limited the design and lowered the quality of construction. Subsidized funding combined with private funding, or entirely funded by the private sector, proved more successful in developing public housing such as in the case of the St. Francis Square Cooperative.