How urban renewal schemes destroyed working-class neighborhoods

Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment in a series examining the roots of America’s housing crisis. To read the earlier pieces, visit The roots of today’s housing crisis.

The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Berman v. Parker, which upheld the destruction of a working-class neighborhood for the benefit of redevelopment, paved the way for the destruction of working-class neighborhoods across America. But it took decades for the American public to catch on. Only after Kelo v. City of...