What is going on everyone? Let's talk about the housing projects american history and urban lore
are filled with stories that came out of the projects every major city has or still
has some form of public housing during the great depression the united states started looking into
housing projects as a solution to the slums and the economic troubles the united states was facing
at the time one misconception was that they were designed and built for minorities and the poor
not originally the middle class was getting battered during the depression and the government
decided to step in the government-funded housing projects all began with the mission to end slums
provide affordable safe housing options and save families from ending up on the streets
it didn't always end up that way since the 1970s some of the worst have been taken down
and replaced by better types of public housing you see at some point we realized that huge towers
with a whole bunch of people that were struggling was a nightmare you had ten percent of the
residents being criminals and ninety percent were decent families living in fear of that ten percent
they became out of control and the only good thing that really ever came out of them was i don't
know great crime movies great crime tv great rap and hip-hop normally rapping about great crimes
there is a great video about the history of those projects from a channel called city beautiful i'll
leave a link below today's video is about 10 of the most notorious public housing projects
in the united states both past and present they're no particular order i'm just going
to tell you 10 of the worst i mean really how can you tell which one is the absolute worst just by
reputation if that doesn't really seem right so we're just going to list all 10. all right
let's take a look at the worst united states housing projects of all time
number 10 the magnolia projects new orleans when you hear or see things about new orleans it
always seems to be about the saints a hurricane bourbon street or mardi gras the big easy is
so much more it has cajun food jazz and some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country
new orleans always seems to be a medalist in the homicide olympics we have here in the
united states the magnolia projects aka cj pete projects definitely saw their fair share of death
and violence over the years the magnolia projects were the epicenter for gang activity through most
of the 70s 80s and 90s it was so bad in 1990 the new orleans police department had to put
a police station in the projects when hurricane katrina hit in 2005 magnolia was evacuated and the
projects were abandoned except for the homeless that had wandered in after everyone left in 2008
the last magnolia buildings were demolished and it was replaced by a new housing development
called harmony oaks that sounds so nice and pleasant harmony oaks sounds like a resort
number nine pruitt igo st louis missouri pruitt igo started off on a good note it was designed by
the same guy who designed the world trade center so that's kind of cool prudigo started moving
people in in 1954 even though the whole thing wasn't completed till two years later in 1956 it
was originally designed to be a segregated public housing yeah really keep in mind this was missouri
in the 1950s and that was sort of normal for this part of the country back then this was a failure
not too long after opening a lot of it had to do with the elevators and the design of the buildings
the original design by the architect yamasaki was for various types of buildings walk-ups high-rises
low-rises mid-rises all of it it was all designed really nice with parks all that good stuff and
then the government got involved the housing authority came in and made all kinds of changes
including a uniform 11 story building so they were all these 11 story buildings the elevators
only went up three floors each building yeah so it went up three floors you would have to get
out walk to the other end of the building and go up another three floors walk to the other end of
the building again go up another three floors if you lived on let's say the 10th or 11th floor yeah
that sucks some people would just take the stairs all this moving around and people going different
ways led to a big problem people are being mugged on the regular in the stairwells in the corridors
it became a nightmare the crime was insane and the buildings were falling apart in 1971 pruitt
igo only had 600 people living in 17 of the original 33 buildings that same year federal
authorities agreed to demolish part of prudaigo by 1976 the whole thing was a pile of debris
number eight queensbridge houses queens new york queensbridge has been such a mess over
the years that you could actually take a walking tour now sort of like one of those
historic battlefield things an organization known as jane's walk organizes public walking
tours through the queens bridge complex the tours last about two hours and it covers
projects violent history as well as rappers and nba stars that lived here at one point i mean i
don't think you lived there once you played in the nba queensbridge is located in long island
city and is the country's largest government housing project with over 3 000 units and just
under 7 000 residents it's still open today in 2005 a gang known as the dream team was arrested
in the queens bridge complex they were making ten thousand dollars a week in pharmaceutical sales in
march 2015 a public elementary school which most of the students there live in queensbridge had a
tutoring session led by a group of teenagers well they decided to set up a fight club pitting first
graders against each other while they watched and placed bets yeah quality education there
number seven marcy house's brooklyn if you ever want to learn about marcy houses just listen to
the music of its most famous past resident jay-z yeah this is where he grew up and where he got his
start he's pretty much covered the violence and the you know pharmaceutical trade of this place
quite a bit marcy house's or marcy projects is in the bed-stuy neighborhood of brooklyn
it has 1700 apartments with more than thousand two hundred residents marcy houses is known for
being dangerous run down and overcrowded don't go here i know there's wonderful people living there
but there are some scary people and some scary things going on there that should probably be
avoided the good news is just kidding there is no good news about this place
number 6 jordan downs los angeles california our first stop to the los angeles area is the
projects of jordan downs constructed in the watts neighborhood of los angeles as temporary housing
for workers during world war ii but converted to public housing in the early 1950s we had a lot of
people coming in after the war to the los angeles area everyone was heading west looking for work
and you know better life that meant a lot of the inner cities were kind of clearing out in chicago
new york st louis places like that and they all headed west and a lot of them ended up in los
angeles they needed houses and a lot of these temporary housing units that we put together
for world war ii the shipbuilders or whatever this was also one of the key places for the
watts riots back in 1965 and throughout the 1980s and 90s it was just a place for gangs growing up
in southern california you knew this was not a place you needed to be at night or during the
day the homicide rate in and around jordan downs is consistently one of the highest in the state
and in the nation sometimes this is also a really interesting thing it's one of the only places
that's named after long-time residents david star jordan and samuel elliott downes were two the
area's oldest residents so they named the projects after them i wonder how they feel about it now
they're not alive in case you were wondering so i'm sure they're not feeling much about it
number five nickerson gardens staying in the los angeles area not too far from jordan downs
we have nickerson gardens and it's one thousand public housing units nickerson garden consists
of 156 town house style buildings made up of single bedroom units and it was completed in
1955 nickerson gardens is the largest public housing development west of the mississippi
river yeah pretty big the complex occupies the blocks of imperial highway and central avenue
and southwest of 111th street and compton avenue it is on the border of both watts and willowbrook
all those words that i just said describing the place to anyone from los angeles they're almost
like danger warnings imperial highway compton avenue watts and willowbrook
those are four words you never want to hear it's almost like me saying that is a skunk porcupine
with rabies and a switchblade you should stay away from both of them the complex was one of the many
locations featured in the action thriller film to live and die in los angeles i've been in this one
i was in the military for the 1990s riots in los angeles rodney king thing and we had to do patrols
and a couple of the different ones i've been in this one it the people seemed nice you know at
the time they didn't appreciate us being there but they were pleasant it's still a pretty scary thing
and it's a dangerous place it's gotten better over the years but it's still pretty scary
number four robert taylor homes chicago robert taylor homes opened in 1962 with
16 high rises and about 27 000 occupants at its capacity over 70 percent were children
90 percent of the units were single parent households it was only about five years after
completion that chicago realized this place was a really bad idea the chicago housing authority
called portions of these projects the worst slum area in the united states yeah they actually
said that chicago's crime rate hit its peak in the 1990s robert taylor homes were a nightmare for the
people that lived there and the city of chicago they poured a lot of resources into this place
and eventually they couldn't take it anymore in 1993 it was estimated that the likelihood of you
being a victim of a violent crime in the taylor projects was 1 in 14. that is just violent crime
that's not all crime you know some of the worst cities right now are like 1 in 30 for violent
crime the demolition of the robert taylor homes began in 2002 these days just grass fields
number 3 john de shields homes east st louis illinois a st louis is one of the worst cities
in the united states when it comes to violence and john de shields projects are the worst in
east st louis from 2000 to 2018 there was almost 500 homicides in east st louis and over one-fifth
were within one block of these projects the two housing projects in this area john de shields
and john robinson have the most shots fired any other place in st louis or east st louis john
de shields homes had almost double the amount of homicides than any other project in east st louis
in 2018 and 2019. this place is so dangerous they put a turnaround on the off ramp of the freeway
yeah if you get off the freeway by mistake and you realize where you're
heading there's a quick turnaround so you can get right back on the freeway
number two techwood homes atlanta techwood homes was the nation's oldest housing project and it
was built to replace a shanty town known as tanyard bottom or tech flats it was completed
on august 15 1936 one past resident said it didn't have to be as bad as it was said it
was horrible people were living in overcrowded run down buildings like animals graffiti trash
and gang violence was part of life in techwood except for a few historic buildings techwood
homes was demolished in 1996 right before the 1996 summer olympics it is now a mixed-use area
called centennial place the first phase opened in 1996 right before the centennial olympics
in atlanta see that's where they got the name centennial place centennial olympics moving on
and number one cabrini green chicago illinois this one is probably the worst while researching this
one i read about some truly horrible crimes that went down in this place cabrini green comprised of
several sections built over a 20-year period starting with the francis cabrini row houses
which was 586 units built in 1942 cabrini homes extension with almost 2 000 units and 15 buildings
was built in 1957 and then finally in 1962 the william green homes which were a little over a
thousand units were built in total cabrini green covered 70 acres and was located in the city's
north side not too long after its construction problems started to develop in the complex poverty
was just horrible here gang violence was just everywhere it was horrible that's just the gang
violence there was normal violence with just weirdos in this place like i said i did far
too much research on this one but in 1981 then mayor jane byrne and her husband decided to move
into the cabrini green projects to display her solidarity with the residents she lasted
three weeks before moving out the violence that plagued these projects was horrible the residents
were fearful of leaving their homes in addition besides the everyday violence in cabrini green
it was also the setting for the 1992 horror film candyman the director said that he chose
the location to film because it was a place of such palpable fear yeah that's always nice when
a director directing a scary movie says where you live is just so scary it's fitting that's
great demolition of karini green began in the late 90s with the final high-rise portion of the failed
housing project coming down in 2011 late 1990s to 2011. took them a while take those ones down
all right that's the video i hope you guys enjoyed it hope you got some information
out of it do yourself a favor don't look up any of the crimes that went down on
some of these ones they're really really bad and yeah they were kind of upsetting
when i read them but if you've ever lived in one of these i would love to hear about it
anyway don't forget all the links below give the video a big thumbs up
leave a comment subscribe if you haven't everybody have a great day be nice to each other
you