Have you ever heard of Nafta? Or any of the other government programs that took most of our manufacturing jobs overseas? Ever heard of the eviromentalists, you know, the ones who destroyed the lumber industry and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work? Ever heard of minimum wage jobs? These are the reasons lots of people are in low income housing, through no fault of their own. In this service society we live in good paying jobs for the average person have went the way of the DoDo bird and have left many americans trying to live off of income from jobs such as flipping burgers, doing yardwork, you know all the jobs the government says Americans won't do so we have to import mexicans to do them! That is why people are in the low cost housing. Not all but many. You do them a great disservice with you blantanly prejudice attitude toward people not making good money. Working hard doesn't always insure a good income.
I spent three and a half years as a social worker working with people just like this. I understand why people don't have jobs. I also understand that a lot of people are worse off because they don't know how to manage limited resources.
All I am saying is that the lights aren't a necessity. Especially when resources are limited.
This is public housing. It's quite possible that part or even all of the utilities are subsidized.
OK, from where I stand, most project dwellers tend to be unemployable "persons of color" with a proverbial chip on their shoulder. I've been listening for years to paleo social(ist) conservative talking about how free trade has created a large underclass of otherwise employable "hard werkin Amurcans." Yet most native born Americans I know with an education have a good standard of living, while the project dwelling underclass remains the same people who were there when I was a kid.