(relaxing music)
- I'm Eugenia Harvey, and I'm the Executive Producer
of "Chasing the Dream, Poverty and Opportunity in America."
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"Chasing the Dream" covers the stories
that chronicle the humanness of a gigantic issue.
"A Dream Deferred" is about the broken promises
of New York City Public Housing.
NYCHA, or the New York City Public Housing Authority,
officially houses about 600,000 residents
throughout New York City.
"A Dream Deferred" is told through the eyes
and the words of the people who actually live there.
- How long you been living here, Miss Diane?
- 50 years.
- 50 years, Miss Diane been living in New York City housing.
- When I came here, the place was beautiful.
Over the years, it's gone down so bad,
and it's been so neglected.
- It is a story of humanity.
It is a story of commonality.
It is a story that has made the news on many occasion,
and a lot of statistics get tossed around.
What you've never really heard from
on any kind of granular level is the people
who actually live there.
(water rushing)
- The last couple of days here have been literally hell.
Nothing is marked or tagged.
No one knows where the shut off valve is or isn't,
and it became a catastrophe.
- When we met, for example, Shelavia Pierson,
who arguably is the star of the film (laughs),
she's pretty amazing.
She's a mother of a child.
- [Shelavia] I knew that I was ingesting a lot of the mold
and the mildew while I was pregnant.
And she was born at seven months, opposed to nine months.
I believe that housing did contribute to that a great deal.
- This is a woman who is ambitious,
and she has every dream, every goal, every aspiration
for herself, as well as her child.
In that regard, she's sort of every mom.
- Because if I wasn't a strong individual,
I would have been destroyed.
- We also meet Sylvia Arrington and Yvonne Davis,
who have been in New York City public housing
since it opened.
Sylvia Arrington is a sweet lady
who's raised five children there, and she's the flower lady.
And she goes out, and she plants flowers on the first floor
of her apartment building.
And people know her as this really sweet person.
- I've had people tell me, "The reason we come this way
"to go to work is to admire your flowers."
I wanna be a part of something beautiful.
- You've got Yvonne Davis and her husband,
who are elderly now, very soft spoken,
but powerful people who are fighting respiratory illnesses,
simply because they live in a building
that the ceilings are open.
And pipes are exposed,
and water is leaking into their apartment.
- To sleep in a bedroom with plastic
to the windows will guarantee us respiratory problems.
It's a health concern.
Enough is enough.
- "A Dream Deferred" is a local story,
but it's a national story.
I mean, if you look at any state, any city,
any major city, even smaller towns that have public housing,
they're going through the same things.
Affordable housing is an issue.
- Many of these buildings are over 60 and 70 years old.
If you ignore a building for that many years,
sooner or later, it crosses the threshold
into a condemned property.
- We don't see nothing being done.
And the same situation's still going on.
I don't know what they gonna do.
I don't know
when they gonna start fixing up our neighborhood.
- [Man] Bandaids can no longer become our solutions.
We need permanent fixes.
- The very basic, number-one need of anyone is shelter.
Just because you're not wealthy doesn't mean
that you don't deserve to have a roof over your head.
When a place is home, you want it to be wonderful.
You want it to be a safe haven.
You want it to be a place where you can raise your family
and you can entertain.
- Your complaints will be heard.
They will be addressed, and I will make sure of it.
- So this is a big smokescreen that we did, this big meeting
with NYCHA to show that we gonna do improvement.
That's not gonna happen.
- What do we need to do
about public housing, is the question.
All we can do is, the journalist telling the stories
of New York City housing is to say, "Here's what they want.
"Here's what the residents are telling us
"that they want to do, based on who they are."
- [Woman] The property is falling apart,
not the mentality of the people.
- [Man] We actually are live, vital, thriving communities
that deserve the amount of investment
as any other community.
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