A version of this article was first published in Next City.
Last summer, the House of Representatives passed the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion plan to upgrade the national infrastructure and combat climate change by reducing demand for fossil fuels. The bill incorporated a handful of amendments related to housing and homelessness offered by a group of Congressional Democrats.
One of those amendments, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), would have repealed the Faircloth Amendment, a 1990s-era rule that prevents the expansion of public housing in the United States. Repealing the amendment would remove a legal obstacle to a series of ambitioushousingplans that progressives have rallied behind in the last few years, which include calls to repair and expand existing public housing and build new social housing in American cities.
Buried beneath a weather report and an investigation into a regional planning commissioner, a brief news item appeared in The Times about the death on Jan. 23, 1980, of architect Paul Revere Williams at the age of 85.
Three days later, the paper ran an obituary. That report was a bit more complete. It featured a photograph of Williams and ran through a handful of his achievements: He was the first Black architect to be admitted into the ranks of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and a wildly prolific designer who’d had a hand in designing well-known commercial and civic buildings (such as the Los Angeles County Courthouse), as well as graceful homes for celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Barbara Stanwyck and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Yet his death was not treated as big news. The modest obituary ran on page 22.