Inexpensive housing, commonly referred to as projects, has been a major part of New York City for the last eighty years. Although presently attributed to poor residential areas, projects were first designed and constructed during the 1930s in order to house a significant middle class population of New York City. However, as with most government and social institutions of the time, projects immediately adopted a racial apartheid similar to that of Little Italy and Chinatown.

Originally constructed following the Great Depression, projects were first built in order to avoid societal unrest and public discontent. Peter Marcuse’s “The Beginnings of Public Housing in New York” describes how “the activities of the multitudes left unemployed, impoverished, and often homeless led to those in power to adopt programs both of employment and housing designed to heed off any great outbursts of protest of revolt.” A perfect example of public discontent can be found in our previous readings about the Harlem Riots. Essentially, those in power incredibly feared, and therefore, wanted to prevent such events, like the Harlem Riots, from ever occurring again.

Once again, society and the government find their own solution to the problem – public housing and further segregation. Similarly to our previous case of Chinatown, where the Chinese and white population were separated by distinct invisible borders, the New York City projects and neighborhoods in Harlem were segregated into two separate groups: white and black. Rather than integrating the various races, public housing officials decide to construct two separate housing complexes for the whites and blacks in Williamsburg and Harlem, respectively. Thereby, public housing officials insure that the blacks do not threaten nearby white communities. (Similar to the case of Chinatown) Furthermore, the black population’s public housing qualifications are evaluated under certain “important” characteristics, such as “social desirability.”

Essentially and ironically throughout the decades, the American Dream has been attainable to various new immigrants, other than America’s own native black population. Over the decades, America purposely hindered and feared the black population. It restricted their rights, segregated them from society, and, as in the case of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Black Panthers, ceased the movements, which unified them and prevented civil unrest. Ultimately, America would learn that public housing would not prevent race riots; it certainly did not prevent the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles, which were extremely similar to the Harlem Riots. Inevitably, America finally realized that segregation was no solution to the problem.