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“The history of public housing is consumed by stereotypes and misconceptions. The facts are twisted. The nuance is lost. Real-life accounts of residents are reduced to tropes of exceptionalism or tragedy—or forgotten altogether.
Adi Talwar
The Hope Gardens NYCHA complex in Bushwick.
Many people believe they understand public housing in America. Most of them are massively wrong.
This is because the history of public housing is consumed by stereotypes and misconceptions. The facts are twisted. The nuance is lost. The narratives of real-life residents are reduced to tropes of exceptionalism or tragedy—or forgotten altogether.
The prevailing cultural narrative is that public housing is and was only for poor people of color, specifically black people. There are also reasons for this narrative. Public housing became predominantly occupied by blacks in the United States mainly due to the long-lasting economic and social impact of the injustices of slavery, racist federal housing policies that redirected segregation, downsizing and unfair banking practices, and Jim Crow policies. In fact, more than 10 million US residents of various racial and ethnic backgrounds have lived in public housing over the past century. And now they are retreating.
Current and former residents of public housing come together to tell their own stories, in their own words, through the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago. Although NPHM is based in the Midwest, it features stories of public housing residents from across the country, including several voices from New York. NPHM is the first cultural institution in the United States dedicated to interpreting and contextualizing the American experience in public housing.
Using oral histories, art and artifacts, the museum will archive and share stories of hope and personal achievement from public housing, as well as stories of resistance and resilience. The aim is to dispel perennial lies and change the narrative about public housing, while promoting a deeper understanding of who this housing serves and why it matters.
Harnessing the power of oral history
Oral storytelling is an ancient art, but its power has not diminished. Stories move us, evoke empathy, admiration and understanding. Stories build bridges between people.
NPHM Oral history archive and corpus consists of a set of interviews with people across the country who lived in public housing, recorded by a diverse group of oral historians. Several interviews were conducted with residents of public housing in New York and Chicago. The NPHM archive currently contains approximately 150 records of public housing experiences dating back to 2007. The museum’s digital archives will open to the public this summer. A permanent oral history exhibit is planned as part of the interactive design of the museum’s new home, once completed, in the last remaining building of the now-vacant Jane Addams Homes, a former public housing site located in Chicago.
One powerful oral history features Dafani Rose Sanchez, a native New Yorker, third-generation NYCHA resident, and energy equity advocate. Her words illustrate the critical importance of public housing residents giving voice to their own stories to debunk stereotypes. “There is this misconception that people [who live in public housing] are lazy and people don’t want to work and don’t want to do all these things. But all this has no basis. These are just things that people have heard and they accept that these are facts,” Sanchez said in a 2021 interview.
She added: “I’m fed up. I’m sick of people treating people as meaningless just because of where they live. It’s like… your level of humanity is tied to the four walls you decide to make your bed in. No, it’s, it’s… that doesn’t even make sense when you hear it! doesn’t it Makes no sense at all.”
Elevating personal stories through everyday objects
Dozens of prominent public figures spent their early years in public housing, from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who grew up in the Bronx, to Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, who lives with his family in the Bayview housing projects in Canarsie, New York.
President Jimmy Carter was also a former public housing resident, as were musicians Elvis Presley, Thelonious Monk, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Jay-Z. The list goes on and on.
While these people have remarkable, dazzling careers, it’s important to pay attention to the stories of everyday public housing residents. Their voices and memories also carry enormous weight. NPHM’s main gallery contains a permanent exhibit showing everyday objects used by ordinary people living in public housing. These simple artefacts are full of meaning and are displayed alongside emotional captions written by residents explaining the significance of the objects.
Take, for example, the desk donated by Sunny Fischer, who as a child lived with her family in the Eastchester Projects in the Bronx. The desk, which was her father’s, “gave him an aura of importance and busyness, a respite from his work as a mailman,” wrote Fischer, who chairs the NPHM board of directors. “The drawers held index cards with notes and to-do lists for his volunteer engagements and negatives of photographs he wanted to develop – his other life. It’s the one piece of furniture he always kept, and the only thing I asked for when I died.
Another item on display is a wooden bowl by Jack Meador, whose mother and father lived in Jane Addams’ Chicago home but met years later. “Generations have used this chopping bowl to make gefilte fish for the Jewish holidays,” said Medor, who inherited the bowl from his mother, Ines. She, in turn, got it from her own mother, who moved to the US from Belarus.
Objects can be full of emotional resonance and family lore. By displaying these objects, the National Museum of Public Housing offers a new, more nuanced way of looking at personal and collective history—and a new way of seeing each other.
Replacing the ‘single floor’ with a stable image of public housing
In 2009 TED talk, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned of the danger of a single narrative about people or places. “It is impossible to properly engage with a place or a person without engaging with all the stories of that place and that person,” said Ngozi Adichie. “The consequence of a single story is this: it robs people of their dignity. This makes it difficult for us to recognize our equal humanity. It emphasizes how different we are, not how similar we are.’
Public housing residents participating in NPHM are breaking down stereotypical narratives and telling their own authentic, multi-layered stories, prompting us all to question how we see the past and how we imagine a more just future.
Lisa Lee is the executive director of National Public Housing Museum.
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