SAVANNAH, Ga. — Blocks from where tourists stroll along the cobblestoned riverfront in this racially divided city, Detraya Gilliard made her way down the dark, ruptured sidewalks of Yamacraw Village, looking for her missing 15-year-old daughter. This story also ran on .
It can be . 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 is needed to fund a backlog of .
But, two years ago, money to fund those repairs became a casualty of negotiations between the Biden ad.