Regardless of what all people view as the solutions to the many problems in our society something very important is missing. Immediacy. Since the 50's and especially late 60's and 70's many people had plans and well intended solutions. People are misled by leaders of all sorts as well as media outlets that the great ideas will fix things. Many so called fixes can take many many years to show not only results but if the results are actually positive.

I am sure if there were a message board back then many would have thought the Chicago Housing Authority was a great idea. People probably welcomed it. It took how long to see it was a failure and Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor torn down?

A part of this is politics. Pols promise grand solutions that are not even possible to really see results in their terms or possibly their lives. Unfortunately, people expect to realize these promises in a much faster time frame.

Do any of us really have a grand solution to much that can be realized quickly?

In the beginning Public Housing was considered a good thing. The first secretary of public housing sought to integrate. She believed that in order for it to be successful there would need to be integration. This plan was nixed by white alderman and largely driven by whites in the outlying communities.

In 1966 a lawsuit was filed by a CHA resident which stated that public housing had been unsuccessful largely because it'd primarily been built in black ghetto areas. She "won" the suit and in exchange for winning the courts ruled that any new public housing would have to be built in white areas. As a result of this local politicians simply decided to build no new public housing.

The thinking behind public housing was sound, and in the beginning there were some benefits. The public housing of the 1950's was starkly different from that of the 90's. It had a chance to be successful but political and societal factors combined to kill whatever hope that Elizabeth Wood originally had for it.

Regardless of what all people view as the solutions to the many problems in our society something very important is missing. Immediacy. Since the 50's and especially late 60's and 70's many people had plans and well intended solutions. People are misled by leaders of all sorts as well as media outlets that the great ideas will fix things. Many so called fixes can take many many years to show not only results but if the results are actually positive.

I am sure if there were a message board back then many would have thought the Chicago Housing Authority was a great idea. People probably welcomed it. It took how long to see it was a failure and Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor torn down?

A part of this is politics. Pols promise grand solutions that are not even possible to really see results in their terms or possibly their lives. Unfortunately, people expect to realize these promises in a much faster time frame.

Do any of us really have a grand solution to much that can be realized quickly?

Not really. All reforms will take decades.

And then it takes (or often takes) a generation or more to understand it.