The film “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” was much more interesting than I imagined it would be and it also had a much greater impact on me than I believed it would. I thought it would be pretty boring, just talking about the history of Pruitt-Igoe and why it went wrong, but it was more than that. Although the New York Times article had quotes from the interviews in it, it was different and more powerful when watching the people talk about living there and all the emotion that they felt and displayed.
The greatest and most touching part of the film for me was hearing the former residents talk about how it felt when they first moved into Pruitt-Igoe. There were descriptions about it as a hotel and a “poor man’s penthouse.” Another talked about how she came from a family of 12 and her mother actually had a room of her one with a door, after sleeping the in the kitchen. There were also stories about Christmas and how beautiful and fun it was. The most memorable for me was at the end of the film when the women teared up as she spoke about how she remembers it for the good and refuses to think that it was all bad. Hearing all the accounts of how the people felt first moving in and all the good makes me actually want to do something to work towards developing affordable housing for all so they can experience what it’s like to have a livable nice home. Of course a lot of people are trying to do this and it’s not easy, with Pruitt-Igoe being a prime example of what could go wrong.
Although there were many accounts of some of the good, there were also of course many about the bad. The worse one and the one that stuck with me was when the man spoke about how his brother got shot and his mother tried to put everything back in but couldn’t. This is just so shocking and scary to hear about, but I suppose this isn’t really uncommon, both in the past and today. When the film got to all the bad that happened and the film said that police wouldn’t come because they didn’t care, this just didn’t sound right. It probably was true, but the film also talked about how when the police did come, people threw firebombs outside wanting the police to leave. It’s like they wanted to be helped and everything to get better, but at the same time, they turned away outside help.
It seems like Pruitt-Igoe was destined to fail given the lack for funding for maintenance cost. With no government help to take care of the place and not enough from the resident’s income, its no surprise that the elevators didn’t work, or that it wasn’t taken care of and became really dirty. However, the lack of funding wasn’t the whole problem. I wonder why the residents didn’t do something when things first became bad. I know there was the discussion about the amount of children outnumbering the adults, but if I wonder if maybe there was something that could’ve been done if everyone worked together to really act like they cared about the place and make it better. There some socio and economic reason why it might not have worked, but I still think there could have been maybe some things that could’ve been done, even just little things like cleaning up hallways and not burning and throwing garbage there that could have prevented it from becoming as bad as it was.
Seeing a film like this makes me wonder about the public housing of today. Most of what I’ve read have been about public housing in the past, so I don’t really know what it’s like now. When I walk near or through a housing project, it does scare me a bit, I guess this is just from my own prejudgment. I wonder what the government has done differently, more money probably, but also if there are other things to prevent another Pruitt-Igoe. I wonder if government has done anything about the ratio of children to adults, which might be tricky and a bit difficult to do. The big question I have is if there is a way for the government and residents to do something to improve the conditions and quality of life and stereotypes that seem to preside in public housing.
