Like most other people living in one of the nation’s oldest public housing projects, Gilliard endured the boarded-up buildings and mold-filled apartments because it was the only place she could afford.

Without working streetlights in parts of Yamacraw, Gilliard relied on the crescent moon’s glow to search for her daughter Desaray in May 2022. She passed yards dotted with clotheslines and power lines, and a broken-down playground littered with juice boxes and red Solo cups.

“I happened to look down, and I knew it was her by her feet, by the shoes she had on,” Gilliard said. She was “barely hanging on and she was covered in blood.”

The year before Desaray died, President Joe Biden called for the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to fix dilapidated public housing that he said posed “critical life-safety concerns.” The repairs, Biden said, would mostly help people of color, single mothers like Gilliard who work in low-income jobs, and people with disabilities.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that $115 billion is needed to fund a backlog of public housing repairs. But, two years ago, money to fund those repairs became a casualty of negotiations between the Biden administration and congressional lawmakers over the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans also have blocked efforts to lift 25-year-old legislation that effectively prohibits the construction of additional public housing, despite the catastrophic public health consequences.

Tenants living in derelict housing face conditions that contribute to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, asthma, violence, and other life-threatening risks.

The federal government has a long history of discriminatory practices in public housing. In cities across the country after World War II, Black families were barred from many public housing complexes even as the government induced white people to leave them by offering single-family homes in the suburbs subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration. Starting with the Nixon administration, lawmakers slowed investing in new public housing as more Black families and other people of color became tenants.