The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth attempts to dispel some of the myths about that infamous housing complex in St. Louis. In particular it targets the inaccurate public perception of why government housing projects fail, while at the same time taking into account how the residents themselves felt about what they called home. In order to tackle the complexity of the issue, the documentary is structured in a chronological way, starting in the 1940's and concluding at the destruction of the complex in the 1970's.

Pruitt-Igoe was commissioned to battle the lack of competent housing in St. Louis. To give a bit of background, St. Louis was a bustling industrial city for the first half of the 20th century. After a slump during the Great Depression, expectations were high for the growth of the city. The documentary emphasizes this idea of growth. It claims there was a culture of growth in St. Louis, with huge expectations of economic activity and population increases. Pruitt-Igoe was commissioned and built within this culture of growth. It was envisioned to replace the tenements that housed tens of thousands of poor residents throughout the city, and concentrate them within 33 high-rises on a large piece of urban land.

There was great faith in Pruitt-Igoe. It was essentially supposed to be a solve-all. By adding competent housing into the equation, planners thought that these poor people would have a solid base to move up the socio-economic ladder, since the expectation was that jobs would be available. However, no one was able to envision the terror that was to strike St. Louis; the growth that was expected within the city did not happen.

What occurred instead was the de-industrialization of the city. Though the causes of this de-industrialization are debatable, the documentary attributes it to a phenomenon called suburban sprawl. This storyline is not particular to St. Louis however, and similar effects were seen across the nation.

The new level of post-war prosperity allowed millions of whites across the nation to afford green lawns and quiet communities in newly built sub-divisions. Industries followed these blue-collar workers, and cities were devastated. St. Louis lost 20% of its population by 1970. Cities like Detroit and Cleveland lost closer to a third. The tax bases of these cities were destroyed. Pruitt-Igoe was built with federal funds but maintained by rent income and local taxes. When the money dried up, which it did right away, the complex was left on its own. The residents blamed the Housing Authority, the Housing Authority blamed the city of St. Louis, St. Louis blamed the federal government, and the documentary blames white-flight. So why exactly did whites move? Some, including myself, would argue it was simple economics, because cheaper land was available outside city limits and the automobile made it possible to live in the suburbs and commute to work. The emerging middle class no longer had to live near industrial zones. However, the documentary contends that it was racially based. One white middle aged woman, when asked why she moved to the suburbs, replied "because I wanted to live in a white community." She went on to say that though she did not believe blacks should be oppressed, she could not live next to them. Another white woman interviewed expressed her fear of plummeting property values and crime when blacks moved into adjacent neighborhoods. No doubt the makers of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth included these interviews to advance the claim that Pruitt-Igoe failed due to racism. Yet this opinion seems to be on the fringe of moderate consensus, because where one chooses to live does not directly affect the life of another. Blacks were just as poor when whites lived in the city. The only difference was that in the case of Pruitt-Igoe, they were living in un-maintained high-rises built by whites. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe actually resulted from the ignorance of planners who did not consider the longevity of a place filled with the poorest of the poor. There was no way that these people would be able to maintain the buildings without federal aid. The city of St. Louis, faced with a plummeting population and tax base, could not do so either. The thesis of the documentary is that the failure of Pruitt-Igoe, though a disaster in itself, does not reflect disaster in every federally funded housing project. Though the cause of defending federal housing projects is admirable, the documentary makes the too-obvious argument that Pruitt-Igoe failed due to white-negligence. This sort of finger pointing does nothing to advance the situation of blacks. Nor does it take into account the very racist and segregationist nature of America in the first place. The majority of white Americans, both before and after Pruitt-Igoe, preferred to live in white communities. This is a trend that we still see to this day. So as long as planners huddle poor people into certain areas and expect something magical to happen, basic economics will reign supreme and these people will remain poor.

This has to be a valuable insight into how certain people expect everything handed to them on a plate.

The documentary tries to blame the government and various social services for the failure of the project - In my opinion it fails! The blame for the failure lies squarely with the people who lived in the project.

Everyone of them interviewed tries to lay the blame on the government, did the government urinate in the lifts? Did the government burn their refuse in the corridors, did the government break all of the windows and light fittings? No one involved seems to even begin to think that it is themselves to blame for all of this.

Take a look at the project when it first opened, affordable clean housing, people wanted to live there.

Give them a few years and they completely destroyed it.

A very interesting insight into social behaviour.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing projects are currently remembered as one of the worst disasters in federal housing history. There has been ample debate among academics as to why, ranging from architectural problems to poor planning to demographic shifts in the city of St. Louis. This new documentary mostly looks at the latter two ideas and does not interview architects but rather former residents of the projects. Their stories vary from uplifting to tragic and detail the many problems with Pruitt-Igoe. Mostly the film suggests that the depopulation of the city following the explosion of suburban society in the 1950s is to blame for the project's failure. With fewer people there was less of a need for the massive buildings and with a smaller tax base it was impossible to maintain the expensive structures. What the film does show is that most of the people who lived there were decent folks hoping to make a new life, and that it was mostly the outside world that undermined the projects. The director uses several excellent shots including the image of the collapsing towers (they were demolished in the 1970s). Overall he does a superb job of telling a very intriguing and moving story while stimulating a debate on the future of federal housing.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis is the focus of this film, but it could have just as soon been Cabrini-Green in Chicago or any one of a number of similar projects across the American big cities. It's an exploration as to why these huge public housing projects became hellish instead of the paradises they were originally envisioned. Fortunately, the filmmakers don't pick any one or two simple answers but talk about the multitude of issues that led to the projects failing...and ultimately being demolished. Among the problems discussed in the film were the lack of jobs as businesses and middle classes migrated to the suburbs, the increase of violence and vandalism, lack of maintenance, segregation as well as the insane notion that in order to get public assistance that fathers could not remain in the home!

This documentary is depressing and few folks would enjoy watching it. Now I am NOT saying it's bad and it's good for folks to become familiar with the issues that come up in the film. But it's just not the sort of thing most people would choose to watch and is probably more a film that educators might show to sociology or other such classes in order to explain the failures of these programs. Interesting and well made...despite it being such a terrible story.

Prof. Cordova UPP 101 October 24, 2014

In The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, director Chad Freidrichs, gives viewers an in-depth look at the Pruitt-Igoe project, one of St. Louis' failed attempts to urbanize the city. In this documentary, Freidrichs focuses on dispelling the myths that surround the project by interviewing past residents and establishing the real cause of why projects Pruitt-Igoe failed. In addition, this documentary sheds light on the bigger issue, of why housing projects in general fail in America.

The main argument of the film is built to dispel the myths about housing projects, that Pruitt-Igoe fueled. When most people think about housing project and why they fail, they blame violence, crime, drugs, and poverty. While these things are commonly found in housing projects, they are not to blame. To prove this, Friedrichs starts by discussing the beginning of urban renewal. In 1949 the Housing Act was passed. Legalized and funded, St. Louis started urban renewal by clearing the slums and building new public housing units, Pruitt Igoe. Pruitt-Igoe was conceived to replace the tenement homes of poor residents throughout the St. Louis. The idea was to replace the slums with new high-rises, and this would solve the issue of poor neighborhoods. However this would not work out in the end. As I previously mentioned when people think of housing projects they think of crime as the root of their problem. This was not the case for Pruitt Igoe. Friedrichs points to a lack of funding as the cause of Pruitt Igoes failure in the documentary. The documentary looks in-depth at how a lack of funding led to the deterioration of Pruitt Igoe. They say the project was doomed from the beginning because the city did not have a solid plan on how to continue to fund Pruitt Igoe. When the planning for the building started, the city wrote in the plans that the rent residents would pay would never increase. As the years went on funding dwindled and the buildings deteriorated. The documentary interviewed some past residents and they told stories of how the grounds keepers stopped taking care of the building, no repairs or updates were made to the buildings, and how basically their was no one to take care of Pruitt Igoe. Another argument the documentary made was that people who live in housing projects have a community there. Many of the interviews shown in the documentary support this. Everyone they interviewed had positive happy memories of living in Pruitt Igoe despite poor conditions toward the end. They boasted of growing up there as children and always having someone to play with. The apartment styled building made it so everyone knew each other. Friedrichs use of interviews took the focus off of Pruitt Igoe being a failure and focused on the community aspect.

Overall, this documentary dispels a lot of myths that surround housing projects. The documentary takes a look at a controversial aspect of urban planning over a course of decades in Pruitt Igoe. Many people put housing projects to the back of their mind or look at them as negatives blaming their problems on the residents that inhabit them. As a person who was grown and raised in St. Louis, I didn't even know that Pruitt Igoe existed as it has since been torn down. I would recommend this documentary, as I think it shows an important part of our history and portraits Pruitt Igoe in a positive light which it and its' residents deserve.