How HUD Destroyed Baltimore

Professor Thomas DiLorenzo reports:

James Bovard explains some of the disastrous effects of housing socialism in Baltimore as administered by the U.S. Politburo of Housing and Urban Development. Add to that the state’s war on drugs, its destruction of the work ethic (and the family structure) with welfare, and its awful, fraudulent “education” system, and there you have it

James Bovard has a history lesson:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was created in 1965, and Baltimore received massive subsidies to build housing projects in the following years. Baltimore's projects, like those in many other cities, became cornucopias of crime. One 202-unit sprawling Baltimore subsidized housing project (recently slated for razing) is known as "Murder Mall." A 1979 HUD report noted that the robbery rate in one Baltimore public housing project was almost 20 times higher than the national average. The area in and around public housing often becomes "the territory of those who do not have to be afraid — the criminals," the report said. Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke in 1993 blamed maintenance problems at one public housing projects on drug dealers who refused to let city workers enter the buildings.


In the 1990s, the Baltimore Housing Authority began collecting lavish HUD subsidies to demolish publish housing projects. But critics complained that HUD was merely replacing "vertical ghettos with horizontal ones." Baltimore was among the first cities targeted for using Section 8 vouchers to disperse public housing residents.

Blue America update.