Did you just call me immoral? Oh, snap. Was it because I used the word "bums"? I suppose you would have been offended by "winos" too? [I kid.]
Call them whatever you want, but if you say that they don't count as a residential community or it doesn't matter if they're homeless or relocated whereever's convenient, that's immoral. I'm guessing that's not what you're saying, but it was reminiscent of that kind of argument to me. Judith Martin in
Past Choices/Present Landscapes mentions that some of them had lived there 40-60 years, and after they'd been relocated "tried to return to their former abode". They did not want to leave, and I think that deserves some consideration. There were also much fewer of them than I thought - she says there were 2427 relocated by renewal, and while there were probably more living in the area just outside the renewal boundaries, 2500 seems like a safe ballpark.
Go back through and read the accounts of the housing conditions in these buildings. They make SRO's look like luxury condos. It was not good.
Certainly I've heard some bad things - Judith mentions 40 cage hotels were cleared, but that was out of 180 structures cleared. There's no question that some of the buildings could not have been rehabilitated. But I'm just as certain that many could, especially when I look at pictures like
these. The spaces look tiny and creepy, but they don't look like they're in particularly bad shape - I've certainly stayed in more delapidated hotels. Hell I lived in
houses in worse condition.
It's only speculation, but I just don't see that these buildings would have survived for another 30 years given their pre-Gateway trajectory. Not that somebody couldn't have come in and invested a lot of money to repair and upgrade these buildings, but why would they have?
Just like we can keep arguing the condition of the buildings that went down, we can certainly argue forever about what would have happened if they had remained. I look at similar buildings in similar neighborhoods in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and New York that weren't cleared and today are being renovated into condos. Probably the biggest difference is that in those cities there were far more of them - in Minneapolis the Gateway was the largest cluster and therefore an easier target.