#housing projects

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the province is putting $1.6 billion more toward funds for municipalities to help them get housing built. Ford told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference Monday in Ottawa that the government has already put $2.3 billion toward its Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program, which goes toward housing-enabling infrastructure. Municipalities apply through four streams, including one for building roads and bridges, and another for building water and wastewater systems.

Continue reading

📸 Hood view : The Northester Houses, NYCHA Housing projects.

When looking at where the Black sides are, we could start by considering where they are not.

FHA and VA loans are credited with helping form the middle class of America by making homeownership available to a large portion of the population. Large housing complexes were developed, beginning with Levittown in Long Island, NY. Similar complexes sprung up in many major cities with one thing in common. No homes could be sold to Black people, with the federal government fully backing redlining, which made segregated housing the rule and not the exception. Black sides of town evolved where the whites elected not to go. There were housing complexes created for Black and Jewish people as well; these “projects” were definitely not intended for the middle class.

Near North Minneapolis, Starting All Over Again…and Again

The landmark Cisneros v. Hollman decision of 1995 determined that the public housing projects on the city’s north side perpetuated racial and low-income segregation. This decision led to the demolition of hundreds of housing units. While it remains controversial it undoubtedly resulted in a massive transformation of the near north side, which had, ironically, already been massively transformed by the construction of these housing and other projects from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The list of projects is long (pictured top to bottom above):

The development of the Minneapolis Municipal Market (C38101) and the demolition of houses in the Oak Lake Park neighborhood (C10100)

The construction of the Olson Memorial Highway and the demolition of old 6th Avenue North and all of the surrounding houses and businesses in the 1930s and 40s (C34135)

The temporary Veterans Housing Project on land cleared by the Olson Highway project (C38980)

The Glenwood Homes (C14933), the Olson Homes (C17896), and the Lyndale Homes (C33782)public housing projects of the 1950s which cleared away many of the remaining houses and buildings in the Sumner-Glenwood Neighborhood, including the final destruction of the Oak Lake Park Neighborhood.

The housing project buildings are all gone now and even the Municipal Market (now the Farmer’s Market) is much reduced in the size. Olson Memorial Highway is still there, but it too is now under reconsideration.