The National Public Housing Museum broke ground on Chicago's Near West Side at the site of the former Jane Addams Homes Tuesday.
"Addressing the history of injustice is one of the primary reasons that we exist as a museum," said Lisa Lee, NPHM executive director.
"It was decent housing and it was a place for people who weren't wealthy or didn't have a lot of money to live," said Allen Schwartz, former Jane Addams Homes resident. Almost everyone involved in the project, including board member Sunny Fischer, has lived in public housing either in Chicago or somewhere else.Public housing communities sprang up in major cities after Congress passed the Housing Act of 1937. Originally built for white families, they eventually became home to poor minority populations.
The issue of violence and crime in public housing grabbed headlines in the spring of 1981 when then-Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne temporarily moved into an apartment in the infamous Cabrini Green Housing Projects following 10 gang-related murders there in three months.
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