The city of Jackson is located in the western part of the state of Tennessee. The area around Jackson (Madison County) consists largely of farms and small towns. Jackson itself contains some 49,000 residents in an eighteen square mile area. While the population has grown fairly slowly -from 39,000 in 1970, the housing stock has grown much more rapidly -from 13,000 units in 1970 to 19,000 in 1980. About two thirds of the population is white, a little less than a third is black, and only small percentages are Hispanic or Asian.

Public Housing has a lengthy history in Jackson. The first units were built during the Second World War. A few more projects were built in the mid 1950's. A third spate of construction occurred in the mid-sixties. As in other cities, public housing served two quite different groups of poor people: the elderly (only a fraction of whom were minority); and female headed families (a large fraction of which were minority). While these groups inhabited projects close to one another, the projects themselves were specialized -some designed for the elderly and some for families.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.