Doomed Almost From the Start

So Taylor was built. And every dire prediction came true.

"You can blame Mayor Daley but he didn't do it alone. He had the backing of city government and HUD," says Susan Popkin, a co-author of "The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago."

Popkin also says the bungled concept for public housing extended to the design: no showers, outdoor elevators vulnerable to Chicago winters, pipes that were frequently vandalized and caused flooding. "You couldn't have built those things any more clearly to say, 'You don't matter,' " she says.

But early on, Taylor -- named after the first black housing authority chairman -- did seem a welcome change. Its large apartments and new appliances had replaced cold-water flats and slums.

"Growing up was good," says David Wilson, who was literally born in Taylor 38 years ago. "Three bedrooms -- sheesh, man, you thought you was in heaven. At night it was beautiful. There were lights on every porch."

Wilson's childhood was typical of the early days; his family was headed by two working-class parents. "Everybody knew everybody," he says. "If your child got lost, he got found. At night, you didn't see any kids. Everybody back then was scared of their parents."

The good days faded fast.

From 1967 to 1974, the percentage of working-class families plummeted from 50 percent to 10 percent, Hunt says; those on public aid jumped from slightly more than a third to 83 percent.

The downward spiral continued.

Over the next 20 years, jobs in steel and other smokestack industries that offered black workers a steppingstone into the middle class disappeared. Federal budgets shrank. The buildings deteriorated; garbage piled up from broken incinerators; mailboxes and laundry rooms were vandalized. Repairs took months. After a fatal fire in the 1990s, one building was found to have 436 code violations.

The vacancy rate rose. Empty apartments, many on the top floor, became drug dens. The crack epidemic exploded. So did gang violence.

When Beauty Turner arrived in 1986, she witnessed the shooting of a teenage boy on her very first day.