have they built new homes and repopulated with most of the cabrini residents, you would still have that sense of community that cabrini had. most people would still be familiar with the area and familiar with one another. when you drop them in an area like inglewood, people are put into an area that they have no connection with. and it s they re just forced to fend for themselves with no support system whatsoever. i want to go to dr. popkin now. you spent years following people in public housing. do you think people should have kept cabrini green in place, the people there? and should the city have tried to rehabilitation what was already there? i think it really wasn t feasible to rehabilitation what was there. certainly not to keep the buildings as they were. they really were quite decrepit and very dangerous. as you showed in your first segment, places where kids were
most people would still be familiar with the area and familiar with one another. when you drop them in an area like inglewood, people are put into an area that they have no connection with. and it s they re just forced to fend for themselves with no support system whatsoever. i want to go to dr. popkin now. you spent years following people in public housing. do you think people should have kept cabrini green in place, the people there? and should the city have tried to rehabilitation what was already there? i think it really wasn t feasible to rehabilitation what was there. certainly not to keep the buildings as they were. they really were quite decrepit and very dangerous. as you showed in your first segment, places where kids were in danger and kids were being killed and the concentration of poverty was really harming the people who lived there. and in the studies that we ve done, i think mr. pratt is right, it was hard for people to leave, it was scary, certainly
housing projects. we re moving to the completion point. but it started in about 1992, moving towards the 1996 olympic games. so it has taken this long. but i think when you look at 25% or more reduction in crime in communities where you used to have very high rates of violent crime and you look at the income mixes and the stable communities that are being built, i think that we can make a case that we ve made significant progress. here in atlanta, you can go to detroit, philadelphia, new york city, and as well as chicago, it has been a nationwide problem. the trend has been to scatter the low income among people who make varying incomes. has this worked at all nationwide, dr. popkin? has it worked in what sense? we have now, as we just saw in atlanta, a number of mixed income communities around the country that have been open for a few years and are attracting higher-income tenants and are doing okay.
in danger and kids were being killed and the concentration of poverty was really harming the people who lived there. and in the studies that we ve done, i think mr. pratt is right, it was hard for people to leave, it was scary, certainly people didn t want to go. but we have followed people for almost ten years now, and most of them feel that they are living in better housing, in safer neighborhoods. and their mental health has improved and generally they are doing they aren t in wonderful shape. but they are better off than they were when they were living in public housing. dr. popkin, stick around. i want to talk much more about this. the problem goes further than chicago, really all across the country. when we come back, we re going to take you beyond chicago to talk about the growing trend of getting rid of public houses across the nation and whether it is working.
families, the kids. what we ll have in 20 years is a less visible public housing program where people won t really know where the public housing residents are in terms of the built environment, in terms of the apartment that is they see. this day for me, it s a sad day. why? because it s the last of cabrini and all the cabrini families it s like spread out. we know it s cabrini. the last residents of cabrini-green have a tremendous sense of community. they ve been through an awful lot in the last ten years. a lot of uncertainty, is their building going to be torn down? where are they going to go? it s a sad feeling. now a public housing postscript, what happens to people who are forced out of projects like chicago s cabrini-green? dr. susan popkin researches just that question for the urban institute.