A friend to whom I forwarded this replies:
"I notice they don't mention that the neighborhood had originally been
full of Japanese who were rounded up and shipped off to internment
camps. When they left, the black workers coming to fill the shipyards
during the war were moved into the conveniently empty housing. It
became run down due to banks discriminating in loan approvals, then
destroyed when it became a convenient place to experiment and further
disrupt the community."