East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story
This new documentary premieres on Tuesday, March 24 at 8:00PM on WSKG-TV.
In October of 1970, the Atlanta Housing Authority opened a public housing community on the edge of Atlanta called East Lake Meadows. Over the next 25 years, many thousands of low-income Atlantans, mostly African American, would call it home.
Residents moved in for hundreds of different reasons and created strong bonds despite the many challenges they faced. But as public housing in America became stigmatized and abandoned, and a crack wave swept through the neighborhood, East Lake Meadows became nearly uninhabitable. In the mid-1990s, Atlanta bulldozed the housing project to make way for new mixed-income housing, as government and philanthropic funds poured into the area in an effort to create a thriving community.
Through the stories of former residents, EAST LAKE MEADOWS: A Public Housing Story gives voice to some of the most marginalized people in our society and raises critical questions about how we, as a nation, have created concentrated poverty and limited housing opportunities for African Americans, and what can be done to address it.
EAST LAKE MEADOWS: A Public Housing Story is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D. C. Executive Producer is Ken Burns. Producers and directors are Sarah Burns and David McMahon. Project Executives for WETA are Dalton Delan, John F. Wilson and Anne Harrington.
This project was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and public television viewers.