How did he approach this idea of public housing?

Well, it was kind of in the air.

If we think about this city in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, there wasn't much infrastructure.

You know, when they say Los Angeles was the urban West, it really was kind of like not the wild West, but the urban West.

He recognized the people that he was making it for really did need it because they were leaving circumstances in the American South that put them behind in terms of because of race issues.

And because of, you know, what they were or were not earning in segregation.

And so when they arrived in Los Angeles, how about living somewhere that you can have a dignity that was not allowed for you as a sharecropper in the South? So the box form, this idea of multiple apartments within a larger community.

What was his role in it?