The Myth Of Pruitt-Igoe Analysis

The demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project created an image of poverty stricken American that was to resonate loudly through out time and space. This image is built on the Pruitt-Igoe myth which is based on the believe that lower income residents have a deeply instilled penchant for criminality and neglect which inhibit their abilities to continue the maintenance of their communities and will ultimately led to physical structural deterioration and degradation of the social mores within the community. The Myth of Pruitt-Igoe seeks to shatter this myth by revealing the systematic nature of racism consisting of racist government housing policies and racist social constructs that ultimately doomed this project to fail. This film also reveals the larger social and economical trends of the U.S. between the end of World War Two and the 1970's, which include the mass migration of African Americans out of the south, white flight, the deindustrialization of American cities and the …show more content…
Housing policies indicative of this era were also to blame. Enemies of public housing made sure to stipulate that no federal money would go in to maintenance of public housing. Public policy also stipulated that families in public housing were not allowed to have able bodied men living in the facilities or risk eviction. Other stipulations stated that families were not allowed to have televisions or phones. Mortgage stipulation, housing rules and real estate companies further strengthened segregation in these cities.(Pruitt-Igoe Myth) In essence these low income housing projects became tools of segregation and control as it became public policy to move the poorest members of society in to these buildings and limiting the activities they believed were inducing immorality amongst