Brand.

 

The New York projects were once considered an awesome civic accomplishment, and those who resided there seemed not atypical New Yorkers.  But the image of housing projects nationwide began to deteriorate in the 1980s and 1990s, in films such as Candyman (focussing on Chicago's Cabrini Green project).  By the new century, as funding of the New York projects began to dry up and conditions began to deteriorate, the housing developments began to represent for Hollywood and even indie filmmakers cesspools of urban decay and violence, reaching a peak in 2009's Brooklyn's Finest.  Complemented by a relentless focus of New York's tabloids and TV newscasts on shootings, floods, and such -- well beyond the media exigencies of 'it bleeds it leads' -- the image of the city's projects sank to the point where it actually dampened government support rather than encouraged it.