Too often, public housing projects turn out to be much like low-income dwellings run by private absentee land lords: poorly maintained by owner and tenant alike. So it was in St. Louis, where the 33-building, $40 million Pruitt-Igoe project, intended two decades ago to be a model for the nation, now stands abandoned and partially demolished. Embarrassed by the fiasco, St. Louis housing officials are trying something new: turning the management of projects over to the tenants themselves.
The 9,000 residents nearly all of them black and poor of four of the city's largest public housing developments have been...
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