What went wrong with public housing in Chicago? A history of the Robert Taylor homes

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2001 by Hunt, D Bradford

Since the start of the public housing program in 1937, federal officials had kept a close eye on construction costs. The 1937 Housing Act included a statutory cost limit per unit - exclusive of land costs in response to perceived excesses in previous federal efforts. But the U.S. Housing Authority's first director, Nathan Straus (the public housers' choice to head the agency), deliberately wrote agency rules to insure that costs stayed well below the legally mandated limits.28 After the war, PHA Commissioner John Taylor Egan - a Truman appointee, architect, and public housing advocate - continued the concern with costs and imposed restrictive new standards which shrank room sizes and increased density. He rejected plans in several cities that exceeded arbitrary per-unit costs, including the cost of slum clearance.29 Local officials accused Egan of operating with a "fear psychosis," but he functioned in a fragile political climate, as ideological opposition in Congress continued to threaten the program's existence.30 Egan's successor, Charles Slusser, a former Mayor of Akron, realtor, and lukewarm public housing supporter, set a total cost limit of $17,000 per unit in 1957, including land costs - a level roughly on a par with the purchase price of new single-family housing built in suburban areas.31 Significantly, Egan and Slusser's concern with total per-unit costs was not required by law, which excluded land costs from statutory cost limits. But the potentially damaging comparison with private sector housing drove federal policy.

As a result of these policies, the CHA in the 1950s had little choice but to build high-density elevator buildings. Higher densities could reduce total per-unit costs by diluting land acquisition and slum clearance expenses across a greater number of units. Further, the marginal cost of each additional floor of a high-rise building was relatively low. Even without these restrictions, the CHA's leadership in the early 1950s was attracted to high-rise forms. Influenced by French architect Le Corbusier's "City in the Park" ideas, with apartment towers surrounded by open space, Elizabeth Wood voluntarily "experimented," in her words, with elevator buildings for a set of projects funded with city and state money (and thus exempt from federal regulation).32 But in 1951, under criticism from friend and public houser Catherine Bauer, she admitted her unease with the handful of recently completed CHA high rises. "I wish we had had enough experiences with high-rise buildings so that I could make any kind of a judgment."33

By 1955 CHA administrators had sufficient experience to recognize the livability problems associated with elevator buildings. High-density living, discipline difficulties, and elevator breakdowns created major strains on both families and management. Years before Jane Jacobs and others criticized high-rises, the CHA in 1955 sought to stop building multi-story elevator buildings and instead find a way to develop low-rise, walkup buildings.34 Kean's planners came up with a four-story "row-on-row" concept for future CHA projects. This walk-up design envisioned one layer of two-story row houses on top of an identical layer of row houses. In late 1955, the PHA approved the new approach.35 Two months later, however, the PHA changed its mind, objecting to inefficiencies in the row-on-row concept.36 Following two years of slow negotiations, the PHA relented in July 1957 and agreed to the CHA proposal, provided that the CHA could meet the $17,000 cost ceiling.37 But by this time construction costs had risen, and the CHA knew it could not build its design on slum land within $17,000. The PHA held firm and told the CHA to redesign its projects. After further debate and delay, the CHA capitulated in February 1959, having no choice but to increase density and use high-rise designs in order to meet the PHA's cost demands.38