Latest news with #NationalPublicHousingMuseum
USA Today
30-05-2025
- General
- USA Today
Public housing failed miserably in Chicago. Why is the city now opening a housing museum?
Public housing failed miserably in Chicago. Why is the city now opening a housing museum? The National Museum of Public Housing puts visitors in the shoes of former tenants through recreated apartments. Residents hope people see there's more to life in the projects than the news shows. Show Caption Hide Caption Jen Hampton named among USA TODAY's Women of the Year for North Carolina Following Hurricane Helene, Jen Hampton visited each of Asheville's public housing communities to ensure residents knew how to get help. She's one of USA TODAY's Women of the Year. CHICAGO – A 7-year-old boy walking to school dies under sniper fire. A 13-year-old girl taking the elevator is assaulted when a man slips in behind her. Conditions in hallways are hardly fit for rats. Public housing in the U.S. invokes images so horrible it begs the question why Chicago – where America's grand housing experiment arguably went more wrong than anywhere else – built the country's first museum of public housing and turned a spotlight on a past many people would prefer to forget. Chicago's National Public Housing Museum opened in April in the last remaining building of a public housing complex, located some two miles from the city's iconic downtown. The opening comes decades after former residents called for a museum in response to the city destroying much of Chicago's public housing in the early 2000s. America had soured on public housing then and was on a nationwide demolition derby, blowing up decrepit high rises from Philadelphia to San Francisco. Museum leaders say the questions the exhibits ask are more urgent than ever as President Donald Trump enacts sweeping cuts to Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that handles public housing. Budget cuts are already expected to result in the loss of 32,000 housing vouchers. 'Ultimately, the big question the museum asks is what is the responsibility of government to its people,' museum Executive Director Lisa Yun Lee told USA TODAY. And about public housing, 'what were the successes that got drowned out by its loudest failures?' The institution is the first public housing museum of its kind, experts told USA TODAY. General admission is free. Admission to the historic apartments costs up to $25. The over $16 million museum was built with public and private funding, including $4.5 million from a city Community Development Grant. Federal officials began building public housing in the 1930s. Over the course of a century, 10 million people lived in public developments, according to the museum. They became synonymous with urban life. TV shows including Good Times celebrated residents striving for a better life but the image that endures in series like The Wire show people caught instead in an American nightmare. Chicago's new museum aims to broaden the debate through guided tours of three apartments: one belonging to a Jewish family in the 1930s, a Polish and an Italian family in the '50s and a Black family in the '60s. Visitors can take a gefilte fish recipe from the Turovitz apartment or see the apartment that a Chicago pastor credits for his development into a prominent voice for peace in the city. Other exhibitions highlight everyday objects from former public housing residents, including Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor; historic government posters that promoted public housing; and the impact of public housing residents on American music. Stars from Elvis Presley to Jimi Hendrix and Barbra Streisand all lived in public housing. But the uncelebrated life of everyday people is at the heart of the museum. For them, the museum stands as a witness to the stories of resilience and community that filled their days. 'These housing developments were not always bad,' The Reverend Marshall Hatch told USA TODAY. Hatch is the prominent West Side pastor who grew up in the Jane Addams Homes complex, where the museum is today. 'Even in the worst of times, people had community, had love, they had friendship, they had celebration, they were thoroughly human.' 'New, different and demonstratively better': Early public housing Public housing in America has always been for the nation's poor and working class. The earliest projects date back to the Great Depression and the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who declared in horror during his second inaugural address in 1937: 'I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.' Already the progressive icon was building public housing projects around the country. Laborers lived in slums then and federal 'planned housing' was pitched as a panacea for everything from diseases associated with unsanitary conditions to juvenile delinquency and deaths from house fires, according to federal promotional posters at the museum in Chicago. 'It was built to be new, different and demonstratively better,' said Lawrence Vale, a scholar of public housing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the projects weren't for everyone. Entry requirements were so strict, applicants had a better chance of getting into Harvard, according to Vale. Early projects accepted people who could cover rent; lived in tight nuclear families instead of large extended families; and had the 'right racial composition for the neighborhood' which usually meant being White, Vale said. Getting accepted for them was a sure step towards achieving the American dream. 'If you got a spot in public housing it was like a seal of approval of your prospects,' said Vale. Growth of public housing Federal housing programs became popular and soon cities and towns around the nation had started housing authorities aimed at helping more Americans enjoy a better life. In Chicago they sprang up with names that matched their utopian visions, including Jane Addams, the social reformer known for launching a movement in the U.S. to improve the lives of the poor, and Ida B. Wells, the Black journalist born into slavery whose reporting on lynching propelled the Civil Rights Movement. A total of nearly 1.4 million public housing units were built nationwide. Decades of demolitions have reduced the number to 877,000 units but still federal maps of public housing show towns from Glasgow, Montana, – population 3,000 – to Itta Bena, Mississippi, – population 1,700 – have agencies overseeing public housing. They even exist in U.S. territories. According to federal data, there are over 300 public housing developments in Puerto Rico alone, the largest of any single housing authority, although New York City has more total units at 180,000 to the island's 54,000. The vast majority of sites are low-rise complexes, according to experts. 1.6 million people live in public housing and 2.3 million households use housing vouchers, according to federal data. 'Grandest place to live,' says former resident Public housing aims to give people a chance at the American dream, according to Crystal Palmer, a former public housing resident in Chicago who works for the city's housing agency. Palmer, who is Black, moved into Chicago's Henry Horner Homes – a sprawling network of high-rises once located near the stadium where the Chicago Bulls play – in 1968 when she was nine years old. The high rises were destroyed by 2008. The complex was among several built in the '50s and '60s when Chicago's Black population was booming, growing from 230,000 people in 1930 to 810,000 in 1960. Martin Luther King Jr. blasted the slums that Black migrants were confined to before the Civil Rights era. King moved into a tenement in solidarity with residents in 1966 and told the Chicago Tribune: "We don't have wall-to-wall carpeting, but we have wall-to-wall rats and roaches." Palmer's family then was among Black West Siders taken from slums into the city's newest housing projects. It felt like no less a seal of approval. 'It was the grandest place to live,' said Palmer, adding there was green grass, fences around the yards and flower beds as well as a ballfield and candy stand. The buildings represented a chance to go from a house that often had problems with water and electricity and where rodents had the run of the place to instead a 'decent, safe, sanitary environment,' she said. Pleasant conditions gave way to years when the building fell into disrepair, gangs took over and police were afraid to come or brutalized people if they did, according to Palmer. But 'The Hornets,' as they became known, still offered her a place to fall back upon and save to become the homeowner she is today. 'I know what it is to leave home when I could and come back when I really needed it,' she said. 'It's important because it gives people a leg up to do better, it gives their family an opportunity to do better.' 'Most notorious' housing project in the nation Public housing around Chicago and the nation fell into despair in the '80s and '90s when federal funding dropped precipitously. The country went from funding the federal public housing agency with $83 billion in 1978 to just $18 billion in 1983, as measured in 2004 dollars. Buildings became exactly what they were built to replace — slums. And the decline was perhaps most horrific of all in Chicago. A USA TODAY cover story from Oct. 21, 1992, titled 'Life, death in 'Little Hell'' called one Chicago housing project – the Cabrini-Green Homes – 'arguably the nation's most-notorious.' The complex was located just blocks away from Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, one of the ritziest in the nation, but it stood a world apart. The story was written in response to the death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis who died by sniper fire while walking to school with his mother. 'No name invokes a grimmer image of urban blight, violence and poverty than this 70-acre, 7,000 person 'city' of isolation and dead-end despair,' the paper reported. 'Three children dead in eight months, a rubble-strewn, graffiti covered war zone just blocks from some of the richest downtown real estate in the USA.' Davis' story created a lasting image for the complex. It came to national attention in the '70s as the setting of the popular sitcom Good Times. Cabrini-Green became a symbol of the failures of public housing nationwide even though it represented just .5% of the 3.8 million people living at that time in public housing nationwide. Data from the period shows public housing residents in New York City were even safer than other New Yorkers, according to USA TODAY reporting at the time. Stepping over bodies to get to school The failures were awful. Francine Washington survived a decades-long horror show at a high rise on the South Side she moved into in the mid-1970s. Washington lived through the police beat covering Stateway Gardens, the complex where she lived until they were demolished in 2006, becoming among the most dangerous in Chicago. People overdosed in the buildings, women Washington knew were raped and wayward bullets killed children in their apartments. Some flew into Washington's apartment, hitting where her husband usually sat. 'Ping, ping,' she said, recalling the sound to a USA TODAY reporter recently. 'The bullets came through the window, if he had still been there, he would have been dead.' In 1990, no city police beat saw more murders or sexual assaults than the 7,400 residents living at Stateway, the Chicago Tribune reported. The 20 homicides in the 16-block area were more than in Montana, Delaware, Alaska, New Hampshire, Maine, the Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming and Idaho, according to the Tribune. Washington was left to raise two sons under the conditions. One son wanted to skip school one day after finding a body in the hallway outside the apartment. 'Step over that damn body and get your ass to school,' she remembers telling him. A teacher called asking her how she could send her son to school after such a scare and Washington replied, 'he's gonna see that more than one time, he might as well get used to it.' Community despite odds Nearly 20 years after leaving the demolished high rise apartment building, Washington can recall terrible moments in detail but she also becomes sentimental in speaking about her neighbors. 'Even though we had all the problems and all the ills, it was still a community, everyone knew your name,' she says. 'You always had somewhere to go and somebody to visit. You weren't lonely.' Washington moved to another public housing site after her building was destroyed in 2006 but hasn't formed close relationships with her neighbors who aren't public housing residents. 'I do miss it because it was family,' she said of her old high rise. Faith in public housing shaken The buildings where Hatch, Palmer and Washington spent formative years were all destroyed as officials slammed high rise buildings themselves as the reason for the desperate conditions in public housing. They came down amid a wave of highly publicized demolitions that dated back to the razing of the 33 buildings of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis in the mid-70s. The complex of 11-story high rises designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect behind the original World Trade Center towers in New York City, was celebrated at its opening for its utopian vision. But that vision to landed on its face in less than 20 years. Famed American composer Philip Glass memorialized the rise and fall of the complex in 'Pruitt-Igoe,' a piece of music for an art film about the empty promises of modern life. Chicago officials called the policy of destroying high rises the 'Plan for Transformation.' Images celebrating the destruction of public housing came to typify how Americans felt about the project even as millions of people still relied on federal programs. 'It remains vivid in the public imagination because it is a major visible public failure,' said Akira Drake Rodriguez, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design. 'It's meant to say we solved the problem.' A litany of failures so bad that the sites had to be blown up left America's faith in public housing forever shaken. Chicago pastor aims to restore public housing village People who lived in the buildings officials destroyed or at uneventful public housing sites wish the rest of America knew there was more to the story. Hatch, the West Side pastor who grew up in the complex where the museum sits today, remembers a crowded, joyful household. The family moved in 1960 when he was 2 years old and stayed until he was 16. He slept on the couch so his parents could have a room and his seven sisters could have the other. And for him they were some of the best years of his life. 'During my childhood it was a beautiful little village,' said Hatch, 'almost like a dream.' The apartment was so crowded they spent their days outside with other children. Life was playing baseball in the complex courtyard where Art Deco statues of animals served as the basepath. It was about developing friendships that last a lifetime. And it was about developing pride in community that turned Hatch into a prominent voice for peace in a city often rocked by gun violence. Decades later, Hatch is still trying to recreate the feeling he had when he lived in public housing. The New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church pastor helps head a group that's aiming to build a similar community in West Side neighborhoods that have still never fully recovered from the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. They hope to transform the area into a 'walkable village' with grocery stores, a health care clinic, an art center and credit union — everyday things that are out of reach for many in Chicago. The group was awarded $10 million for the project in 2023. For Hatch, the inspiration lies in his experience of public housing and the figures the projects were named after to begin with, who offer a different vision of the nation. 'These social reformers had this incredible vision of America being a place of inclusion and being able to support these immigrant and migrant families with what I call 'family-friendly public policies,'' Hatch said. 'And once we get through this current season that is almost embarrassingly amoral, I think these social reformers will offer a sense of what a more positive and spiritual vision of America looks like.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mark Mobius says his funds hold 95% in cash on trade war risks
(Bloomberg) — Veteran emerging-markets investor Mark Mobius is keeping the bulk of his funds' holdings in cash as he waits out the trade-related uncertainty, which is likely to persist for up to six months. New York City Transit System Chips Away at Subway Fare Evasion NYC's Congestion Toll Raised $159 Million in the First Quarter The Last Thing US Transit Agencies Should Do Now At Bryn Mawr, a Monumental Plaza Traces the Steps of Black History At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home 'At this stage, cash is king. So 95% of my money in the funds are in cash,' Mobius said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. 'Right now, we've got to keep the cash and be ready to move when the time is right.' Mobius, who has been investing in developing markets for about three decades, said some emerging market countries such as India will do quite well in the current environment, 'but we have to wait until all of this evens out and we see a settling down of this uncertainty.' While many Wall Street managers and strategists have turned defensive in their equity allocation, Mobius's high levels of cash holdings still appear extreme. Investor sentiment on economic prospects is the most negative in three decades, a Bank of America Corp. (BAC) survey showed earlier this month. Investors will likely only be able to assess market opportunities once the trade negotiations take place over the next four to six months, Mobius said. He added he will not hold so much cash for 'more than three to four months' and will start to deploy some of the funds depending on where the opportunities are. 'If the market comes down further, of course we will put more money in,' said the co-founder of Mobius Capital Partners. Mobius had said in an interview with newspaper Economic Times in 2023 that he oversaw about $300 million in assets under management at the time. Investors hunkering down in US dollar cash instruments are missing out on an epic rest-of-world rally. The MSCI World Excluding United States Index, which is denominated in the US currency, is up about 10% so far this year after an unprecedented 15-day winning streak. Mobius expects India to benefit at the expense of China as Trump looks to reshape the global supply chains away from Asia's largest economy. 'The US is very eager to make an agreement with India, because that will be the alternative to China,' he said, adding that Indian stocks tied to software and electronics hardware are on his radar. On the other hand, 'I will become very bullish on China' if the government shows a sea-change in its attitude on trade and domestic consumption. Mobius also said he owns 'a little bit with S&P 500 (^GSPC) funds' to track the market and expects the gauge to rise from current levels by the end of the year as investor confidence returns to US investing. 'Trump doesn't want to see a big market crash, so he will be making adjustments and announcements, which will give a little bit more confidence for people in the market,' he said. (Updates with details on global stock index in eighth paragraph.) Made-in-USA Wheelbarrows Promoted by Trump Are Now Made in China As More Women Lift Weights, Gyms Might Never Be the Same Why US Men Think College Isn't Worth It Anymore Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers The Mastermind of the Yellowstone Universe Isn't Done Yet ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Old Wisdom of ‘Sell in May' Back in Focus as Stock Market Churns
(Bloomberg) -- An age-old market maxim looms over the bounce in US stocks: Sell in May and go away. New York City Transit System Chips Away at Subway Fare Evasion NYC's Congestion Toll Raised $159 Million in the First Quarter The Last Thing US Transit Agencies Should Do Now At Bryn Mawr, a Monumental Plaza Traces the Steps of Black History At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home One of the best-known market trends, the 'sell in May' effect is backed by decades of historical performance: Investing in a fund that debuted in 1993 and tracks the S&P 500 during the May-October period yielded a cumulative return of 171%, compared to a 731% gain for November-April, an analysis from Bespoke Investment Group found. The pattern last held from November 2023 to October 2024. Seasonality is among a multitude of factors investors are crunching to get a read on how stocks might behave in coming weeks, even as their faith in many once-reliable indicators has been shaken by the unpredictability of President Donald Trump's tariff policies. Taken alone, the old adage would argue against hopping on a searing rebound that has seen the S&P 500 recover 12% from its lows of the month. The index is still down 5.5% year-to-date. 'The scales are tipped in favor of the 'May-Sellers' this year,' said Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research, adding that the risks are skewed toward the S&P 500 suffering another big decline next month. Meanwhile, a longer-term view illustrates the 'sell in May' concept even more starkly: Investing in the S&P 500 in the May-October span over the last 74 years has garnered a cumulative return of just 35%, compared with an 11,657% gain during the other half of the year, an analysis from the Stock Trader's Almanac showed. The bounce in stocks will run a gauntlet of earnings reports and market data this week, culminating in Friday's US employment report. Some indicators have been flashing buy signs, including a plunge in investor sentiment earlier this month and the S&P 500's close above the 5,500 level. That marks a 50% retracement of the index's peak-to-trough decline, which some chart-watchers say indicates that investors are back to buying the dip. Tough start Seasonality paints a more cautious picture. While the pattern isn't written in stone, the comparatively poor May-October performance of the S&P 500 has been more pronounced during years when stocks got off to a weak start. A fund tracking the S&P 500 averaged a decline of 0.4% in May-October during years when it started with negative returns through April, the Bespoke's data showed. The fund — SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust — is down 5.4% this year through Tuesday. Richey also noted that the seasonal pattern is especially relevant in years when market volatility is elevated going into May. Though the Cboe Volatility Index has eased from multiyear highs hit earlier this month, it is still hovering around 25, compared to its long-term average of about 20. One potential source of volatility could come around mid-year, as Trump's pause on tariffs applied to nearly all US trading partners outside of China is set to expire in July. While such an outcome could bolster the track record of the 'sell in May' trend, it would also offer further proof of how the twists of the global trade wars are likely the key driver for market moves. 'We are now in a tariff world. We are more held hostage to Washington and the tariff discussions than any seasonal trend,' said Jay Woods, chief global strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. At the same time, most market observers would argue that the average investor is better off staying the course for the long haul than trying to time market moves. Bespoke's analysis found that simply buying and holding the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust since 1993 would have yielded a 2,100% return. Made-in-USA Wheelbarrows Promoted by Trump Are Now Made in China As More Women Lift Weights, Gyms Might Never Be the Same Why US Men Think College Isn't Worth It Anymore Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers The Mastermind of the Yellowstone Universe Isn't Done Yet ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI reverses update that made ChatGPT fawning, disingenuous
(Bloomberg) — OpenAI ( rolled back a software update to ChatGPT that produced excessively fawning responses for some users, the latest hiccup for a startup embroiled in a heated AI contest. New York City Transit System Chips Away at Subway Fare Evasion NYC's Congestion Toll Raised $159 Million in the First Quarter The Last Thing US Transit Agencies Should Do Now At Bryn Mawr, a Monumental Plaza Traces the Steps of Black History At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home The chatbot's most recent GPT-4o model update leaned too heavily on short-term user feedback and 'skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous,' the company said in a blog post on Tuesday titled Sycophancy in GPT-4o. 'Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. We fell short and are working on getting it right,' the blog read. Co-founder Sam Altman earlier acknowledged in a post on X that the latest update had made the chatbot's personality 'too sycophant-y and annoying.' The rollback came days after users reported ChatGPT showering them with praise and agreeing with even problematic ideas and conspiracy theories. Some said they had their prompts to the bot praised as 'fantastic' or 'phenomenal'. The issues began when OpenAI attempted to make the AI's personality more supportive but, instead, ended up with one that prioritized flattery over honesty. OpenAI's task in subduing ChatGPT's wheedling and servility turns the spotlight on a broader, serious dilemma for AI model makers: how to craft chatbot personalities that are appealing to interact with without manipulating sentiment. 'We are actively testing new fixes to address the issue,' the San Francisco-based company said in its blog post, recognizing its impact on user experience and trust. 'We're revising how we collect and incorporate feedback to heavily weight long-term user satisfaction and we're introducing more personalization features, giving users greater control over how ChatGPT behaves.' The world's leading builder of AI models is refining its core training techniques and introducing guardrails to steer it away from deceitful behavior. OpenAI said it would expand evaluations and ongoing research to identify other issues, and it intends to give users a choice of default behavior by ChatGPT in the future. Roughly half a billion people around the world use the chatbot each week across multiple cultures and contexts, and a single default setting is unlikely to be optimal for all, OpenAI said. Made-in-USA Wheelbarrows Promoted by Trump Are Now Made in China As More Women Lift Weights, Gyms Might Never Be the Same Why US Men Think College Isn't Worth It Anymore Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers The Mastermind of the Yellowstone Universe Isn't Done Yet ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump flags trade talks with Australian PM as vote nears
(Bloomberg) — US President Donald Trump was open to a possible call with Australia's government to discuss tariffs he imposed on the ally, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there were 'opportunities' for his country arising from America's trade war. New York City Transit System Chips Away at Subway Fare Evasion NYC's Congestion Toll Raised $159 Million in the First Quarter The Last Thing US Transit Agencies Should Do Now At Bryn Mawr, a Monumental Plaza Traces the Steps of Black History At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home When asked by a reporter Tuesday whether he planned to hold talks with Albanese on the US import levies, Trump responded that Canberra had been requesting a meeting. The president spoke just days out from an Australian election. 'They are calling, and I will be talking to him, yes,' Trump told journalists. His comments are the first public indication of talks between Australia and the US in more than two months, with Trump and Albanese not having spoken since the American leader agreed to consider an exemption for Canberra from 25% steel and aluminum tariffs during a call in mid-February. No exemption was given and those tariffs were followed up with a broad 10% levy in early April that was applied to scores of countries. At the time, Albanese said the decision was 'not the act of a friend.' Appearing at the National Press Club on Wednesday ahead of the election on May 3, Albanese was asked whether Trump's tariffs meant Australia needed to diversify its trade and security ties away from the US. 'Out of some of these trade disruptions, what will emerge is, yes, some challenges, but also some opportunities for us, and that is what I'm optimistic about,' Albanese said, pointing to the potential for growing agricultural trade with major economies such as China. There is no indication at this stage on when a call between Albanese and Trump would take place. When asked Wednesday morning, the Australian prime minister said there would be a discussion 'after Saturday' if he was elected. 'I'm not staying up at night trying to ring anyone at the moment. I'm in the election campaign,' Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Polls suggest Albanese will hold onto power either by a slim majority or with the support of minor parties and independent lawmakers in Saturday's vote. Trump has heavily overshadowed the election campaign, with center-right opposition leader Peter Dutton working to play down comparisons between himself and the US leader, who is deeply unpopular in Australia. In contrast, Albanese has frequently stoked public perceptions of Dutton being similar to Trump, implying that the opposition Liberal-National Coalition has lifted some of its policies from the Republican president. Made-in-USA Wheelbarrows Promoted by Trump Are Now Made in China As More Women Lift Weights, Gyms Might Never Be the Same Why US Men Think College Isn't Worth It Anymore Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers The Mastermind of the Yellowstone Universe Isn't Done Yet ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy
