The Demographics of the First Public Housing Developments and Their Surrounding Neighborhoods

David Van Riper, Minnesota Population Center
Ryan Allen, University of Minnesota

Between 1936 and 1940, the US federal government built and leased over 30,000 units of public housing in 71 developments throughout the country. Site selection for the developments was highly contested, pitting those in favor of slum locations against those in favor of vacant spaces. Leveraging a new data set of public housing residents in the 1940 complete count census and the geographic locations of public housing developments, this paper compares the demographics of public housing residents with residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. It then stratifies the analysis by the type of site (slum vs. vacant) and by the race of the development. This paper will highlight the impact of major housing developments on their surrounding neighborhoods and discuss how these impacts vary by site type and race.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 159. Housing, Real Estate, and the State