Reply #48: I now live 2 blocks from one of the oldest public housing projects... [View All]

[RevStPatrick]

...in the country:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamsburg_Houses

It was built in 1937.

I sort of took the OP's question of "What were the "liberal excesses" of the 70's" to be less that rigidly decade-specific. It was in the 70's that the housing projects went to shit, leading to the "white flight" of that decade. I know this, because I was a kid who moved from a private housing project in Queens - Lefrak City - to the suburbs in 1972 when people started getting murdered in the stairwells.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefrak_City

As many others here have noted, that phrase "liberal excess" is often meant to have racist connotations, and it was in the 70's and white flight when the projects became "noticeable" to much of the country.