Urban Renewal, Urban Removal

Urban Renewal, Urban Removal. March Route for Fair Housing. 1936 , Slum clearance became another facial zoning Weapon. City health officials described. "Negro quarters” as the unsanitary source of diseases that threatened community health: Civic leaders used this reasoning to win millions in federal grants to remove substandard housing, which was almost always in Black neighborhoods. For some poor Blacks, dilapidated housing was all they had. They fought in vain to keep their property as the city bulldozed thousands of their apartments and houses in ways that radically changed entire neighborhoods: Slum clearance also made way for some of Birmingham's first public housing communities. , "I failed to understand the significance that housing revitalization means for a city." , Henry Cisneros , Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, 1993 – 1997., The Housing Authority of the Birmingham District (HABD) in 1935 used federal funds to build Smithfield Court for Negroes, one of the nation's first public housing projects, to improve life for its “colored citizens.” For most Blacks, the projects-with indoor plumbing and modern amenities-marked a vast housing improvement. Smithfield Court even attracted middle-class renters. It also housed the city's first Black kindergarten, a community center and a health clinic. In 1937, HABD constructed more public housing for Whites (Elyton Village and Central City) and for Blacks (Southtown). But in the late 1940s, projects in Avondale, Tuxedo and Titusville actually displaced thousands of poor Black residents without replacing all the housing they lost., Lesson H3: Think about the ideal neighborhood where you would want to live.