Urban
Renewal and Low-Income Neighborhoods
Throughout the 1950s,
city planners and other actors pushed for middle-class
redevelopment of working-class districts (slums).
Postwar changes in the U.S. Housing Act allowed for
higher uses of cleared slum land other than the
building of new low-income housing. Most important
was the Title I provision of the 1949 Housing Act
which allowed for new developments geared toward middle-class
use, such as medium-rent housing, new office
buildings, parking areas, and transportation
improvements. During the 1950s, many older, working-class
neighborhoods were targeted for urban renewal. This
policy forced thousands of Puerto Rican and other
minority families to relocated from one poor
neighborhood to another or to the city’s public
housing units.
Links (click to follow)
Click here to read about
protests against declining rent control policy.
Click here to read about the
"rent wars" of the 1950s.
More housing challenges of the
1950s-1960s.
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The book upon which this
web site is based,
Selling
the Lower East Side,
is available
directly through 
or order through 
Site design © 2000:
Kurt
Reymers and Dan
Webb.
(University at Buffalo, Department of
Sociology)
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