When we began watching the film Pruitt-Igoe I didn’t expect it to be such a clear concise production. The director really captivated both sides of the story and clearly explained the situation regarding public housing. By including personal narratives, the director brought out both pathos and ethos in his film. The main thing I got from this film was that the initial intentions of the public housing system in Pruitt-Igoe were for the good, but because of the low funding the system fell apart, forever changing the demographics of the city of St. Louis, Missouri.
Initially, the reactions of the people saying how living in Pruitt-Igoe were some of the best memories they ever had was surprising to me. The description of how remarkable Pruitt-Igoe was in comparison to the original slums was eye opening for me because in the reading, there was less emphasis on how the people loved these new facilities. Pruitt-Igoe was designed in such a way that every person got a room, and they were all fully furnished. In comparison to the reading about the housing done by Robert Moses in New York City, this housing system seem to be more respectable to live in. The specific narrative of the woman who was so happy that her mom finally had a room to sleep in versus the kitchen, was the most touching to me.
When the story of Pruitt-Igoe turned a 360 and became a negative, I was highly disappointed because I thought for once this would be a success story. When the department of public housing representative honestly stated that they just didn’t have the funding to keep this project going at the quality that it should have, this reminded me of the education problem that we have in America as well. Our public education system lacks sufficient funding to run at the quality level it should be, and this ties together the point that the government often doesn’t allocate its funding in necessary places. What also alarmed me was that unemployed males weren’t allowed to stay in Pruitt-Igoe with their families, especially when Pruitt-Igoe required their residents to pay housing. There wasn’t safety or sanitation, and the reasoning as to why the government had enough power to kick these male out doesn’t add up in my head.
Another point to consider was that of how the entire city dynamic changed because of the failure of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project. The city of St. Louis demographics completely switched, making the suburbs more ideal and of higher importance than the city center itself. The crime rate increased, and I was surprised to hear that Pruitt-Igoe became such a scary place that the cops wouldn’t even enter it. The descriptions of how people used to throw fire out the window in protests, and how there were countless robberies and gang violence was scary enough as a viewer of the film, so I cant imagine what it must have really been like.
Overall I really enjoyed this film because it put all of these articles and the museum trip into perspective. Public housing is something that most students at Baruch don’t face with or are never exposed to, so I think is an understudied topic and an interesting concept to explore. I never realized how much of an effect public housing has on the demographic of the cities. I hope that the mistakes from the past change the future plans the government makes of public housing.
