Public Housing

When I began this work in the 1990s, the "South State Street corridor"-- a two-mile stretch of public housing dominated by the Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens--was said to be the single largest concentration of poverty in the nation. In 1999, the City launched its so-called Plan for Transformation. Over the next decade, demolition and forced relocation erased public housing throughout the city, leaving behind hundreds of acres of vacant land and setting in motion a largely invisible urban refugee crisis that continues to unfold.