Points on a larger trajectory: Pruitt-Igoe and the Coronavirus pandemic

According to theorist Charles Jencks, the death of modern architecture can be traced to a specific date in time: July 15, 1972. On this day, Pruitt-Igoe, a public housing development in the Desoto-Carr neighborhood of St. Louis, was publicly broadcast as three of its 33 buildings were razed to the ground. The remainder of the development would eventually become rubble by 1976, and would be the first public housing project to be destroyed. 

The video footage of the demolition is haunting. Concrete structures come crashing down, collapsing in on themselves and releasing dust into the surrounding air, as if confirming ambiguity in which there was once clarity. 

Pruitt-Igoe, originally built between 1954 and 1956, was an ambitious public housing project financed under the Housing Act of 1949. Originally conceptualized as a segregated housing development, in which the Pruitt side was for black residents only, and the Igoe side for white residents. However, in 1954, with the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board, Pruitt-Igoe became an integrated development.

Initially, Pruitt-Igoe was positively received by tenants, and original advertisements show green spaces and clean facilities where neighbors interacted with one another and formed almost a community of individuals cohabitating this development. In a way, Pruitt-Igoe shortly after its construction represented some of the utopian ideals of the 1950s. 

However, the already prevalent wave of ‘white flight’ to suburbs in St. Louis very quickly began to pose problems for Pruitt-Igoe. According to The Guardian, while, “Its 2,870 units reached a peak of 91% occupancy in 1957, a figure that would plummet below 35% by 1971, when just 600 people remained in the 17 of the complex’s buildings that were not yet boarded up.” 

While the development had been constructed under the premise of providing partially subsidized housing to low-income individuals in Desoto Carr, its occupancy and demographics changed rapidly. According to Black Past, “Pruitt-Igoe by 1960 had become an overwhelmingly black project occupied by many of the city’s poorest families.”

As Pruitt-Igoe faced increasing vacancies, it also faced an increasing loss of its source for funds to cover maintenance of the buildings. While the government paid for the construction of the complex, the cost of maintenance fees came from the tenant’s rent, and as the buildings had fewer and fewer tenants, fewer funds were available to cover the cost of maintenance. Eventually, the buildings fell into disrepair, with heaters, air conditioning, elevators, sewage systems all malfunctioning. Along with the lack of maintenance came crime, including vandalism, robberies, and violence that perpetuated the housing project. 

“By the early 1970s, Pruitt-Igoe had come to symbolize municipal indifference to African American poverty, budget constraints for affordable housing, and cutbacks in social programs and education that service African American communities.” according to Black Past. 

The eventual bulldozing of the complex was a culmination of failures on various fronts. It was a failure on the part of both St. Louis and national housing policy to account for the increasing vacancies in the complex and offer assistance to cover maintenance costs. It was a failure of the utopian ideals that the complex was originally built upon but had now crumbled. More importantly, it was a failure of the public housing and governmental agencies that had constructed this complex and had also constructed this nation, that had willfully ignored the needs of Pruitt-Igoe residents.

Many would go on to blame the tenants themselves for the failure of the complex, citing that they were the ones who allowed it to fall into disrepair and incited crime. But, the collapse of the Pruitt-Igoe project was a massive physical manifestation of structural inequality that had come to its breaking point, revealing the cracks in institutions and in the concept of modernity. 

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the Pruitt-Igoe development and the subsequent documentation of its demise. As the mind searches for familiarity in uncertain times, perhaps even comparison, I can’t help but think of the dust clouds that emerged from the rubble in Desoto-Carr. 

Our current state of affairs seems to be exposing the cracks in our foundations, our institutions, not unlike the cracks that led to the failure of Pruitt-Igoe. 

Most obviously, we have seen how the American healthcare system is straining under the massive influx of Covid-19 related hospitalizations. There are simply not enough facilities, PPE equipment, healthcare workers, and other supplies to deal with the exponential increase in hospitalizations. According to the Boston Globe, large healthcare facilities are planning to or have already cut 30 to 50 % of ‘non-emergency’ procedures, leaving people with chronic conditions without or with limited access to the care that they need. 

This brings forward another issue, the fact that chronic conditions such as diabetes are more prevalent in Native American, African American and Hispanic individuals than whites according to the National Institute of Health. Chronic conditions tend to make individuals more susceptible to Covid-19.

It has become evident that Covid-19 is disproportionately affecting minorities in the United States. According to the CDC, 33% of individuals hospitalized for Covid-19 symptoms are African American and according to Johns Hopkins University, 34% of Covid-19 related deaths are African American individuals, compared to 13%, the proportion of the national population that is African American. 

In an interview with NPR, Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League said, “Every major crisis or catastrophe hits the most vulnerable communities the hardest.” 

He attributes the disproportionate effect on minorities on the prevalence of chronic conditions, as well as lack of access to healthcare facilities and also the fact that many of these individuals work in essential industries that prevents them from working from home. Additionally, issues such as stress contribute to the development of chronic issues and the ability to fight disease, and according to the Pew Research Institute, African Americans and Hispanics report being much more stressed about Covid-19 than white respondents. 

Yet, while these mounting issues show evidence of structural inequalities that are now being highlighted more than ever, these issues have been present in this country long before this pandemic arrived. Still, people continue to blame minority communities for having higher occurrences of chronic illness and Covid-19 related complications.

In reference to low-income communities often having limited access to healthy food options, Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative said: “If people wanted fresh vegetables and salads and tofu, stores would provide them.” Arguments like these have been applied to justify why minorities face higher risks of illness, are more likely to live in low-income areas and countless other consequences of institutional discrimination. 

It is opinions like these that put the blame on minority communities that are the subject of persistent income gap disparities, public health disparities, housing bias, discrimination, and countless other forms of both institutional and non-institutional racism. These persistent racist ideas show that the cracks in our institutions and society today may not be so different than those that affected Pruitt-Igoe. 

This signals both the presence of underlying racism that was present prior to the coronavirus outbreak but also shows the speed at which many in this country will turn to hate and pointing the blame at minority communities in times of crisis. 

The world may be undergoing a crisis we have never experienced before, but considering Pruitt-Igoe as a moment in the larger trajectory of U.S. history, the ways in which hardship comes to disproportionately affect minority communities is not new. At this moment when it seems as though we have reached the end of modernity, where it seems as though we may collapse as those project buildings did, there is an urgent need for a reevaluation of the foundations of our institutions and our society. 

I come from a place of privilege, where I never had to face the issues that African Americans have faced and continue to face today. For those who think that the disproportionate effects that the Covid-19 pandemic has on African Americans is coincidental, the centuries of institutional discrimination prove that racism is systematic, and continues to this day, proves otherwise. Pruitt-Igoe and Covid-19 are points in a larger narrative of injustice, and when those of us who are privileged understand that this is not a passive process, but rather an active one that stems from oppressive forces, we move towards a more just society.