National Public Housing Museum

 

National Public Housing Museum, 919 S. Ada St., Chicago

Of all the wicked problems facing western countries these days, housing may be the wickedest. The latest report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies shows (1) rental and owner-occupied housing prices at record highs, (2) unprecedented levels of homelessness, and (3) record amounts of claims from natural disasters (McCue 2025). Even in places where housing prices are in retreat, writes Strong Towns' Charles Marohn (2025), the result has not been great joy, but widespread pulling back by builders and financial institutions. 

In other words, the new National Public Housing Museum could not have opened at a better time. Located in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, near the University of Illinois Chicago campus, it exists on land once occupied by the Jane Addams Houses, the first public housing constructed in the United States (in 1938). Four residences from various decades of the Jane Addams Houses are recreated in part of the museum.

Admission to the museum is free.

Public housing brochures from around the country

Some possessions of public housing residents

There are a number of exhibits still under construction...

...but you can see the activism room, highlighting organized efforts of residents to improve conditions and/or prevent eviction...

Activism room

...and the music room, a library of recordings by former public housing residents. These include Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Kenny Rogers, and Barbra Streisand.

Music room

The heart and soul of the museum, however, is found on the tours of recreated public housing residences. These cost $25 (lower for seniors and students), and require reservations on the museum's website. There seem to be three tours, and I can't remember whether mine was "A," "B," or "C;" anyhow, your tour may have different content. (That's also the case at the Tenement Museum in New York.)

1940s: entrance to the Turovitz apartment

Turovitz family living room

Turovitz family kitchen

Displays are enhanced with oral histories; members of two of the families were present for the museum's grand opening earlier this year.

In the 1950s recreations, we saw a shadow play that included a crisp explanation of how housing policy, both public and private. through much of this period worked for whites and against blacks.

1950s: anti-integration protests

1960s: record player and 45s

living room TV console showing test pattern
(both the Sears Tower and the station's call letters are from the 1970s)

The biggest message of the Public Housing Museum experience was to humanize public housing residents. We meet real people, who have to deal with school and work and love and child-rearing just like everyone else, except more precariously. This is something worth remembering as government programs are mauled by the Trump administration gang, and as we collectively struggle with housing policy.

As seen above, the museum doesn't ignore public policy, but as a policy guy, I could have used a lot more. Public housing has gone through historical phases, from the early mid-rises to the infamous high rises to Section 8 vouchers, but the museum says very little about this history. It begs rather than addresses the question: Could public housing be the answer to some of the housing problems we face today?

It is bad form to critique any work based on what you wish it did, rather than what it does. Yet here I am, doing just that. I hope I've communicated that what the museum does, it does exceptionally well. It may be that future exhibits address policy more; that's an important part of the story, too.

MUSEUM WEBSITE: Welcome to the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago

RELATED POSTS:

"Everything is Connected, Including Housing Issues," 14 November 2024

"Metro Housing Update," 7 February 2024

SEE ALSO:

Charles Marohn, "What Happens When Housing Prices Go Down? (Because They Are)," Strong Towns, 21 July 2025

Daniel McCue, "A Year for the Record Books: The State of the Nation's Housing in Perspective," Joint Center for Housing Studies, 9 July 2025

"Supportive Housing Offers High-Impact, Cost-Effective Response to Homelessness and Opioid Use," Stanford Report, 27 June 2025

Everything is connected, including housing issues

 

Panel (from L): Kennedy Moehrs Gardner, Sheila Sutton,
Meleah Geertsma, Cyatherine Alias

In Cahokia Heights (formerly Centreville), Illinois, there is a crisis that illustrates the gaps in the silos that inform our local policy discussions. As discussed by the "Housing, Water and Flooding" panel at the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago this week, there is an ongoing problem there with houses flooding during and after any measurable rain, including overflowing sewers. It's a multidimensional catastrophe that defies neat assignment of responsibility:

• As an ongoing situation, it's not a big storm that would call in the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency
• it's exacerbated by climate change that brings more severe weather events, but it predates the current emergency
• the Clean Water Act of 1972 is focused on water quality, not the quality of life of people nearby
• addressing its impact on the community is complicated by our characteristic view of housing as an individual concern
• the situation was exacerbated or at least complicated by the 1980 routing of I-255 through town
• the low property values (FEMA could offer $20,000 per house) as well as the perilous finances of both town and sanitary district (neither of which can afford the $70 million cost of sewer repairs) are a legacy of decades of racial discrimination.  

Flooded area in Centreville IL
(Flickr photo by Anstr Davidson)

The panel included representatives of agencies focused on housing or climate change: Kennedy Moehrs Gardner is an attorney for Equity Legal Services in southern Illinois; Meleah Geertsma is a policy analyst-advocate for the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance; and Sheila Sutton, formerly with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is an attorney for Alliance for the Great Lakes. The panel was moderated by Cyatherine Alias for CNT, ably so in what she said was her first moderating experience.

As they discussed this case, and examples from Chicago, East St. Louis, Zanesville Ohio, and other places, it became clear that housing issues are inextricably connected to climate change, transportation planning, and even political dysfunction. All are "variations of the same (structural) problems" (Geertsma). The Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, Geertsma's organization, published a report, entitled A City Fragmented, that found City Council member prerogatives in Chicago decreased land available for multifamily housing between 1970 and 2016; when only 20 percent of land is available for multifamily housing, it drives up rents and reinforces historic inequities that began with redlining. Affordable housing tends to be in areas that are environmentally vulnerable (cf. Keenan and Bautista 2019). 

Climate change is already driving up the cost of homeowners insurance, which is an additional obstacle to affordability (Sutton). The South Side of Chicago has seen more house flooding since the reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway in 2006. Housing issues themselves include both "historic destruction of black homeowner wealth" and housing supply and construction. Since disaster aid is based on property values, it tends to make white communities whole while leaving black communities worse off (Geertsma).

The key to addressing complex problems is complex conversations. Moehrs Gardner noted that "the law can only do so much," but that "getting everyone to the table could drive solutions and funding" for repairing affected neighborhoods. These conversations could be supported by the national government, which funded remedial sewer projects across the country in 1986 (Geertsma), but need to be locally-driven; as Pete Saunders points out, housing needs differ across cities and metros, and so certainly do environmental issues and racial histories.

SEE ALSO:

"Seattle Considers More Design Review Changes That Could Cap Number of Meetings, Create Quicker, Cheaper Process, and Let More Buildings Go Without Review," Capitol Hill Seattle, 11 November 2024

David Wessel, "Where Do the Estimates of a 'Housing Shortage' Come From?" Brookings, 21 October 2024

Everybody there was there

Could 1st Avenue East be a Grand Boulevard?

Is the world ready for 1st Avenue E to look like this?
(Swiped from hdrinc.com; used without permission)

The closure this month of the 1st Avenue Hy-Vee and Via Sofia's Restaurant has drawn attention to the perennial low performance of this historic street that slices between the Mound View and Wellington Heights neighborhoods. Without these two anchors, 1st Avenue might now be said to be in a state of crisis.

1125: Via Sofia's has closed, but new tenants are coming, possibly soon

Perhaps co-incidentally, the City of Cedar Rapids is undertaking to create a plan for 1st Avenue East from 12th Street (location of Via Sofia's) to 17th Street (one block above Hy-Vee). The street was developed over a hundred years ago, and still bears the signs of being a neighborhood market street. Unfortunately, since then, the surrounding area has been emptied of population, especially below 14th Street, while 1st Avenue has been widened to a five-lane highway that carries 17,000 cars per day through this stretch. Auto-oriented development has not been good for a street built for walkable neighborhoods: The population within a walkable distance has declined, while the cars whizzing through have trouble finding places to park.

Here is an extreme but real example: The side of 2nd Avenue pictured below...

1246 2nd Ave SE: vacant church next to vacant lots

...had 71 people living on it between 12th and 13th Streets in 1953, according to Polk's City Directory. Today that number is zero. Extend that story over the whole area between 15th and 5th Streets SE and you can see what happened to neighborhood retail. 

1st Avenue near downtown is worth the city's attention. Even in its current forlorn state, it's outperforming the big box stores on the edge of town.

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE, 2020-24

(compare to NE side Wal-Mart taxable value $534,981/acre)

NAME	ADDRESS	ACR ES	TOTAL TAX VALUE 2020	VALUE PER ACRE 2020	TAXES EST  2020	TOTAL TAX VALUE 2024	VALUE PER ACRE 2024
Cafe Allez & 237	111 13th St SE	0.193	248,200	1,286,010	9,328	207,800	1,076,684
Via Sofia’s	1119 1st Av SE	0.193	398,500	2,064,767	14,977	413,200	2,140,933
Wendy’s	1314 1st Av NE	0.771	1,424,100	1,847,082	49,996	1,454,300	1,886,252
Poppa& Tommyz + apt	1323 1st Av SE	0.289	384,000	1,328,720	13,118	387,000	1,339,100
Arby’s	1417 1st Av SE	0.386	654,200	1,694,819	22,967	720,300	1,866,062
College Commons + apts	1420 1st Av NE	0.874	3,301,000	3,776,888	98,747	4,143,700	4,741,076
McDonalds (closed)	1530 1st Av NE	1.200	1,329,000	1,107,500	46,658	1,090,300	908,583

Finding a formula that works for 1st Avenue near downtown would definitely help sustain the adjacent neighborhoods; if it continues to deteriorate, it will drag them down and create a desolate zone in the core of the city.

Grand Boulevards

Peter Calthorpe (swiped from hdrinc.com)

Last month, at the Congress for the New Urbanism, keynote speaker Peter Calthorpe described his idea of grand boulevards, and this might be a solution for 1st Avenue. Grand boulevards are commercial corridors developed with multifamily residential units and served (at least eventually) by public transit. He pitched it as a solution to the housing shortage more than a solution to declining corridors, but it is reported we do need more housing, and anyhow implementation of grand boulevards requires a declining commercial corridor in which to implement them.

1530: Closed McDonald's by closed Hy-Vee

(Cedar Rapids residents will at least be familiar with Calthorpe's firm, HDR, which designed the trails on Mt. Trashmore near Czech Village.)

Calthorpe's presentation at CNU: more focused on housing shortage than under-performing streets

Calthorpe envisions mid-rise buildings with about 100 units, so fairly large, mostly market-rate with maybe 15 percent reserved for affordable prices. (Too high a percentage discourages developers.) As much as missing middle and accessory dwelling units are steps in the right direction, the grand boulevard concept is the only way to get a lot of buildings at scale with private financing. (Governments can't afford to subsidize all the housing that needs to be built, he says.)

Kingston Pointe, 515 2nd Av SW, has 18 units on half an acre, but we could go a good bit denser

Another model: Ashton Flats, 217 7th Av SW

The 1st Avenue Grand Boulevard

About 3250 feet worth of 1st Avenue is under study from 12th to 17th Streets, or a total of 30 acres on both sides of the street. If half of that territory is available for redevelopment, that would mean 900 or 1000 dwelling units (at 60+ per acre), which could be like, what, 2500-3000 residents? (Note that I'm not counting potential properties on A and 2nd Avenues, or farther up 1st.)

1225: long-vacant office building on lonely block across from Coe College campus

1344: Not picking on anyone's business, but this close to downtown?

2500-3000 new people living along 1st Avenue will generate more foot traffic for businesses.

1271: Opening of Cafe Allez has been attended by long frustrating delays

These people would need a lot of groceries, for one thing. Their presence on the street would reduce car speeds and crime while increasing liveliness (which can only help attract students to my former employer, Coe College). They would improve the current demand for public transit. "Once you've got a ribbon of development," says Calthorpe, "You can backfill transit along the way." 

Transit available to backfill includes the #5 bus along 1st Avenue, which already runs every 15 minutes, and could be extended to evening service; there could also be a north-south route, say an enhanced route #6, connecting Wellington Heights (and Oak Hill Jackson?) to the Coe and Mt. Mercy campuses up to commercial districts to the north.

Passengers wait for the #6 at Coe College bus shelter, November 2022:
the bus stop for the #5 on 1st Avenue is visible in the background
(Google Earth screenshot)

Constructing all these apartments creates questions about parking (where and how much?) and driveways (open to 1st Avenue or side streets?). I think these are important but resolvable questions. For the record, Calthorpe wants no minimum parking requirements, but that's not the same as no parking at all.  Anyway, the conversation should start with how we want to live, not where we are going to park.

1st Avenue is also a state highway (Business US 151 & SR 922), so civilizing the street itself to slow cars and encourage cycling and walking will require cooperation with the Iowa Department of Transportation. Alexandria, Virginia was able to work this out for King Street, and IDOT is trying to narrow highway right-of-ways through other towns, so I'm encouraged to hope they'll work with us.

SEE ALSO

"Crossing Cedar Rapids' Busiest Intersections: 1st Avenue," 8 August 2023

Martin Pedersen, "Peter Calthorpe Has a Plan for Building More Housing in California," Arch Daily, 7 April 2023

Robert Steuteville, "Grand Boulevards Would Solve the Housing Crisis, Peter Calthorpe Says," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 24 June 2024

Calthorpe's 2017 TED talk, "Seven Principles for Building Better Cities" (14:21)

Metro housing update

 

(L to R) Jennifer Pratt, Pat Parsley, Kim Downs, Drew Retz

My friend Eric Gutschmidt is fond of saying "You can't build a $100,000 house." That unpleasant reality underlay the lively discussion of housing issues Tuesday morning at the Gazette Business Breakfast in the Geonetric Building cafeteria. Various subjects fell into three major topic areas: supply, price, and neighborhood context.

Supply

Kim Downs, deputy city manager for the City of Marion, described slow progress on a variety of housing needs. She cited a need for multi- and single family housing at all price points, a need echoed by the other panelists. Pat Parsley, community development director for the City of Hiawatha, cited a 2020 housing study showing a particular shortage of rental housing, which has spurred development of 200 units built since then.

All three towns are actively building, with the assistance of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding as well as derecho recovery funds. Jennifer Pratt, community development director for the City of Cedar Rapids, reported five multifamily units underway, and previewed a program ("Roots 2.0") that will build 76 houses in the 2008 flood zone that will sell for $175,000; she also noted "growth corridors" in the northeast quadrant (mostly single-family) and to the south near the College Community School District megacampus. Hiawatha touted their first multifamily development in ten years and first senior living facility ever, to be located in their emerging Boyson Road complex. Marion mentioned the rehabilitation of the former First United Methodist Church downtown as well as an "aging-in-place" development east of Route 13 with options for all ages.

An audience member asked about the demand for all this new housing. Unfortunately, she drowned her own question in a sea of unrelated issues, so it never got properly answered. What is the occupancy rate of recently-constructed apartments? What is the evidence (besides the existence of regular housing surveys) that we are under-supplied? Drew Retz, vice president of Jerry's Homes, said that he knew anecdotally that some of their customers have moved from out of state to take jobs, and that their houses were occupied upon construction.

Price

Only two factors in housing inflation were considered: high interest rates and regulatory compliance costs. The Federal Reserve Board is maintaining the prime lending rate, from which all other interest rates derive, at a historically high 5.25-5.5 percent, at least for now (Lee and Heuer 2024). Rates were raised to combat inflation resulting from coronavirus pandemic disruptions to the economy, and thus represent a temporary if powerful factor in raising housing prices. Kim Downs said interest rates were driving potential homebuyers into the rental market, and inspiring homeowners to convert all or part of their houses to rent. To me that suggests these individuals are deferring their long-term purchases, rather than buying a smaller cheaper house now. When they come back into the market in the next few years, that will have an interesting effect on demand and hence on prices. 

Drew Retz cited an estimate, which no one contradicted, that 25 percent of the cost of new housing is due to government regulation, and that it thereby takes about 18 months to build anything, implying (probably accurately) that price reduction was within the power of the cities, should they choose to use it. The city people all said they were working on streamlining the approval process to make it faster and more predictable, but even Pat Parsley from "developer friendly" Hiawatha allowed they also had a duty to the public to make sure the streets, trees, and such were done for the benefit of the public. (Streets "wide enough?" If developers want to build 16 foot streets, let 'em, I say.)

Retz made another point that's worth considering; Houses are built and sold by private businesses that need/expect a return on their investment, one that exceeds the return on financial instruments that don't require strenuous physical work. If buyers expect "everything," and cities are both willing to add to the cost with regulation and to subsidize some of the cost with public funds, what winds up being the right price? We seem to have lost the market price signals that could answer that question. Why wouldn't I want a big house with a big yard on a wide tree-lined street, a street that is plowed quickly after a snowstorm, located at an insulating distance from the madding crowd, yet near enough to parks and schools, if I didn't recognize that all of these have costs that must be borne by someone if not me? That's what my parents had!

We have difficulty, in both the private and public realms, talking about who pays for social costs not borne by the buyer or seller (known in the biz as "market failures"). Spreading out as we have done for two or three generations creates financial burdens for communities as well as environmental strains and all the problems attendant to car dependency. More demand raises the price of anything--that's simple economics, but problematic if we also consider a good like housing to be a necessary human right. These are awkward and unpleasant subjects to be broached in most spaces, and they were not broached on Tuesday.

Neighborhood Context

Social subjects did sneak in when the panel discussed "neighborhoods." Jennifer Pratt said Cedar Rapids is looking for "complete neighborhoods" as described in the 2015 plan EnvisionCR and subsequent updates. The adjective "healthy" was also used with respect to this, leading an audience member to ask what was meant by a healthy neighborhood. Pat Parsley defined it as a diversity of housing options, mixing uses within a walkable area (a radius of about one mile); such nodes are being built in his town of Hiawatha. Jennifer Pratt added that the cities also need to be mindful of what the market is looking for, which might include single use subdivisions.

Dorothy DeSouza Guedes of the Oak Hill Jackson Neighborhood Association, which has seen a great deal of development since the 2008 flood wiped out a huge swath of it, asked if current residents could be engaged earlier in the development process. Consultation with the neighborhood is required by law, but large developers in particular have the reputation of doing the minimum so late that it's ineffective. Yet residents have reputations, too. They surely have an essential voice in development of their own neighborhood, but too often they have exercised or tried to exercise veto power over beneficial development. 

Neighborhood, in other words, is a slippery concept. I have no problem with people living in whatever type of neighborhood they wish, as long as they're willing to pay the social costs, and as long as there's room left for everybody else to live as well. This is maybe a more difficult discussion than we were ready for Tuesday.

The Gazette Business Breakfast series next moves to Iowa City in April for a discussion of state and local taxes.

SEE ALSO: "New Data on Housing Prices," 23 January 2024