Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Historical Studies of Urban America)

ISBN: 0226360865

Author: Hunt, D. Bradford

Condition: New

Blueprint for Disaster traces public housings history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daleys Plan for Transformation. In the process, D. Bradford Hunt chronicles the Chicago Housing Authoritys own transformation from the citys most progressive government agency to its largest slumlord.Challenging explanations that attribute the projects decline primarily to racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions-ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts-also paved the road to failure. Moreover, administrators who fully understood the potential drawbacks did not try to halt such deeply flawed projects as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes. The resulting combination of fiscal crisis, managerial incompetence, and social unrest plunged the CHA into a quagmire from which it is still struggling to emerge. Blueprint for Disaster, then,is an urgent reminder of the havoc poorly conceived policy can wreak on our most vulnerable citizens.