The Housing Act of 1937 created federally funded public housing run by local housing authorities. Early projects were often segregated by policy, with separate buildings for Black and white tenants. Officials frequently placed housing for Black families in already segregated, poorer areas. In Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, a case filed in 1966, courts found that the Chicago Housing Authority had chosen sites to keep Black tenants out of white neighborhoods.
Over time, Congress cut funding for repairs and operations. Many high-rise projects declined, and some, like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, were demolished starting in 1972. The Faircloth Amendment of 1998 capped the number of public housing units each agency could operate. The national stock has fallen from about 1.4 million units in the 1990s to fewer than 1 million today.
Public housing still houses well over 1 million people, many of them Black, elderly or disabled. Its history matters because the failures blamed on residents were often the result of government decisions about siting, segregation and funding.