Public Housing Projects & Boston

[BostonUrbEx]

Putting aside thoughts on whether public housing is effective and "works" or not... let's just say it is worth doing, or at the least, we WILL have it, whether we want to or not...



1. Why is all the public housing clustered so tightly, particularly Charlestown and South Boston?

2. Is there any public housing that doesn't look like a Commie Block? Or at least, that's how they all look like from Google maps. There's some decent looking places in the SW corner of Eastie (though, perhaps not shining examples of urbanity (so much green space)) which I'm not sure if they're public housing or not.



If we're going to have it, why is not homogenized and sprinkled throughout the city? This seems to only bolster class segregation and further reduce and demoralize the poorer people. If we truly believed that public housing is a public good, then why are we not doing it in a way that makes these people have hope? Instead of shoving them in an apartment from the Soviet Union that was coated with bricks where they're surrounded by thousands in the same predicament?

I'm guessing it's all about money and corruption. But to what extent does this influence things? Where is it that affluent public input is getting into this public project process? And why do these things get so much parking? Why are the Charlestown projects not near any transit at all?

I'm also thinking that this method is worse for property values. Instead of a thin density of public housing throughout, with little impact on values overall, we have these huge concentrations which make entire areas undesirable and lower the surrounding values, while causing other areas to increase in value due to this intervention. The public housing seems to be very perverted in this city, and certainly nothing anyone of any political agenda at all should proud of, period. The way things are right now, what a damn waste $.

 

[whighlander]

Putting aside thoughts on whether public housing is effective and "works" or not... let's just say it is worth doing, or at the least, we WILL have it, whether we want to or not...

1. Why is all the public housing clustered so tightly, particularly Charlestown and South Boston?

2. Is there any public housing that doesn't look like a Commie Block? Or at least, that's how they all look like from Google maps.

.... Instead of shoving them in an apartment from the Soviet Union that was coated with bricks where they're surrounded by thousands in the same predicament?

.... The public housing seems to be very perverted in this city, and certainly nothing anyone of any political agenda at all should proud of, period. The way things are right now, what a damn waste $.

Urb -- you answered your own question -- why does public housing look like a Commie Development in former E. Germany or in Poland -- because it is / was a Commie Development in the US -- note Poland and Germany have managed to sell most of the horrible blocks to owners and then they in turn have been selling to developers who have leveled many and replaced them by normal residential development

Russia -- not so much -- still a lot of the urban public is living in "Bloc Blocks"

However -- I challenge your statement about inevitability -- People used to say " Putting aside thoughts on whether rent control for housing is effective and "works" or not... let's just say it is worth doing, or at the least, we WILL have it, whether we want to or not... " -- well it wasn't worth doing and we got rid of it

Think thusly if we still had rent control we would most probably not have active residential construction on:
Washington St.
Greenway
SPID

Another point I will challenge is that the PH in Boston is atypical -- if anything it was somewhat more Hungarian (e.g. "Goulash Commie') as the worst of the worst were the truly massive Bloc style Blocks in places such as NYC, St. Louis, Chicago, Philly, Toronto and their legendary infamous names (Cabrini–Green, Pruitt-Igoe, Regent Park, Patterson Homes, Liddonfield Housing Project, Benning Terrace -- nee Simple City, Brick Towers, ect., etc., etc.)

Check out the story of Pruitt-Igo in the wiki -- except follows
Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954[2] in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956[3]; by the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation. Its 33 buildings were torn down in the mid-1970s,[4] and the project has become an icon of urban renewal and public-policy planning failure.
The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport main terminal.

the good news -- most of the 'names" have been demolished and replaced with much less dense mixed income developments

The reasons for the failures are manifold -- but perhaps all devolve down to the ideas of social engineers who have good intentions to help the poor -- but bad understanding in that traditionally most poor were only transiently poor -- PHAs created the culture of permanent poverty, crime and abuse which characterized all the "demolished in .... projects"

 

[Charlie_mta]

I grew up in one of the post WW-II Soviet-like housing projects, located in North Cambridge, called Jefferson Park at the time in the 1950's/60's.

We moved there in 1955 when I was 5 years old, and "the projects" as we called it was in very good shape, a pristine apartment complex with good playgrounds, nice families (though a bit rough), and landscaping. By the time we moved out in 1966 when I was 16, it had deteriorated into a vandalized slum. I remember whenever they tried to plant a tree, the 1,000's of kids living there would pull it down in a day or two. God, I hated living there as a young teen. Such an abysmal place to grow up.

Isolating thousands of low-income people into a crowded complex is a stupid idea on many levels.

 

[Ron Newman]

It's still there. Have you been back to look around? I'd be curious to hear what you think of its current condition.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I grew up in the back part of the projects, next to the Fitchburg Division railroad tracks. I've been back there a few times. It is obviously much improved physically, with the three story, six apartments to a doorway layout converted to townhouses.

However, much of what was open space and playgrounds has been converted to parking lots. The bigger change is the social structure. In the 1950's and 60's, the family structure was a traditional one, with two parents and children, with at least on one parent working. Also, there were no guns, though there were plenty of fights and tough kids. There were no gangs or shootings at all. I'm not sure what the typical family structure is like now, though I do know there are a large number of shootings there and in the adjoining neighborhoods.

I see the changes in Jefferson Park as typical of the U.S. in general; the buildings and landscaping may have improved, but the family life, economic health, family wage job opportunities, and sense of community have deteriorated greatly.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

It's all politics. Public housing in Boston had two main eras, Pre-WW 2 and Post.

Pre-WW 2 Boston was what? It was a working class city where the corrupt Irish politicians controlled the money. The Federal government starts a housing program to rehabilitate the slums and of course what ends up happening is that the Irish politicians give the money out to developers who pay them off and give the apartments to their hardest working constituents. Where are the two biggest Irish areas (at the time)? Southie and Charlestown. Contrary to present images of the projects these new housing developements were actaully much better than the slums that were there. Due to the already tight communities that existed they were stable and safer. They were also completely Irish only and not open to people at the lowest end of the income spectrum (who then filled in the old slums and worsened the problem).

Post-WW 2 came the big Federal guns and Urban Renewal programs which allowed for even larger projects. The politics and city had changed so that much of the middle class population had moved out into the suburbs leaving large sections of the city in need of intervention. Today we would do surgical demolitions but back then it was a clean slate whipe out. These projects were the ones in Roxbury and Dorchester. These worked for a while, albeit as a jumping off point for lower income families to get on their feet and move out. It was when the Federal government in the 1960s demanded desegregation and allowed for even poorer families to move in that things took a nose dive. Crime and a black/latino population that had little to no economic opportunities moved in and.... the rest is history as they say.

To answer your other question about location more specifically, housing projects even back then were seen as an economic depressant. Communities that were still holding on or well off fought to keep projects out and due to high land costs most were built on the cheapest land (look at the Columbia Houses out on Columbia Point built on an old dump).

Check out Lawrence Vale, he wrote THE books on Boston housing projects.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_ath...s&ie=UTF8&field-author=Prof. Lawrence J. Vale

 

[Lurker]

Careful reading too deeply into Larry's work. He's a big advocate for government owned rental housing along the European model. The idea that perhaps having the government control the housing for a majority of citizens might be anti-democratic is beyond him.

Employers were banned from controlling worker housing for the same abuses which government can hypothetically, and has occasionally, exercised in practice. Having a large chunk of the population dependent on complying with the government in order to keep a roof over their heads doesn't allow for too much resistance at the ballot box.

It's also worth noting much of Boston's public housing was originally veterans housings and part of a deliberate effort to displace political adversarial populations or disfavored ethnic groups by the political machine. Temporary housing for intact working families is far different that housing full of professional dole takes and people which years previously would have been sequestered in mental institutions.

The deliberate destruction of ethnic neighborhoods to suit the whims of city politicians also backfired in destroying the family and neighborhood institutions which once existed in them. A decade or so later when the displaced ethnic groups returned to their neighborhoods transformed into projects, the very family and neighborhood institutions which kept the populations socially stable no longer existed. Exacerbate those underlying social issues with the subsidy of bad behavior through the welfare state, and you have a gold plated elevated dubious good intentions highway to Hell to compliment the interstates raping urbanity around the same decades.

 

[Beton Brut]

Lurker, your post is astute and sad in equal measure. I have come to believe that the unintended byproduct of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was the destruction of personal responsibility among a significant segment of the population that these well-meaning programs were designed to assist and empower.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Having grown up in a Cambridge housing project, and hearing bits and pieces about them over the several decades during and since, I recall these justifications for constructing the housing projects.

The post WW-II housing projects built in the early 1950's in Cambridge, such as Jefferson Park, were intended to house returning WW II veterans. Other Cambridge housing projects, such as Newtowne Court, Washington Elms, and Roosevelt Towers, were also built to provide decent housing for factory workers in the powerful industrial sector of that time.

They did serve those purposes. Most of the families in Jefferson Park in the 1950's when I lived there were young families of veterans who had jobs. They tended to move up and out once they got their feet on the ground financially. As the 1960's progressed, more government funded welfare programs came about, and the demographic of these housing projects shifted to single parent families receiving government aid in some form or another. Also, the opportunities in Cambridge for blue collar factory jobs started to decline.

So these projects started out in the early 1950's for many as fairly stable, healthy places to start a family and graduate to home ownership after serving a stint in the projects, but changed into high crime welfare enclaves by the late 60's.

This is from someone who observed all of this first-hand. Unfortunately for my parents, they never graduated to home ownership, but felt they had to get out of the projects anyway, so in 1966 moved to a tenement over a bar on Mass Ave just north of Cameron Ave, which was worse than the projects in some ways. Of course, all of that is torn down now and replaced by new, upscale apartments.

 

[Kahta]

Doesn't MA now require new housing to be a certain % affordable to maintain local control over developers?

 

[Lurker]

No that's up to municipalities to determine. "Affordable" usually means jacking up the prices on most of the units to subsidize a select few units. It ironically makes housing more unaffordable than "affordable" to the majority of people seeking housing.

 

[Shepard]

Did anyone read the globe article today about the Chelsea housing authority? I'm on my phone so can't post a link... Summary is that tenants are evicted on technicalities with little warning while housing authority workers with $50,000 salaries and their grown children move in for $25/month. And, if a tenant complains, they face eviction as retaliation. The courts have not been especially helpful.

 

[JohnAKeith]

I don't know if I agree that public housing is "clustered" in Charlestown and South Boston. A look at the BHA's website shows that the foci (?) is the South End.

One reason for this may have been the urban renewal projects of the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's.

The map doesn't include the "private" developments that are made up of those using Section 8 vouchers, such as the Mass Pike Towers (Chinatown) and Villa Victoria (South End).

http://www.bostonhousing.org/housing_dev.html

 

[Charlie_mta]

I found this picture of Jefferson Park in North Cambridge on the internet. This is where I grew up, though we got out in 1966 before it got quite this bad. This looks like the early 1980's before the renovations were done.

You know, this photo makes me angry and brings back some really bad feelings. The condition of "the projects" when I lived there wasn't this bad, but it was close. I hate the concept of large public housing projects. This is what you get; isolation, ugliness and crime.

 

[Ron Newman]

It does not look anywhere near this bad now. I don't think it has a single broken or boarded up window anymore.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Oh boy, no boarded up windows anymore. I suppose that's some kind of indicator of success?

 

[Ron Newman]

Without the boarded-up windows this could be any private 1940s-era apartment block in any city. Are those railings intended to hold clotheslines?

 

[crash575]

swings?

 

[whighlander]

Lurker, your post is astute and sad in equal measure. I have come to believe that the unintended byproduct of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was the destruction of personal responsibility among a significant segment of the population that these well-meaning programs were designed to assist and empower.

Bet, Charlie, Lurk -- as has been pointed out in this thread the problem was not with the architecture or even the scale although those were not inspiring or beneficial to the system

No the problem was nearly entirely the result of Federal and State policies which while seeking to helps single mothers generated the reality of the multigenerational disfunctional freeloading "family."

Such "families" have been studied by Thomas Sowal who documents extensive instances of:
1) majority of able-bodied, young men are not working full time
2) many men have a collection of simultaneous relations with multiple women -- much like the pride of a lion
3) many young women have a first child while still technically a child themselves -- some grandmothers are in their thirties
4) many women may not be able to identify the father of a given child and often have a mixed household with several fathers' children
5) most women are not working full time -- but are often not home full time either
6) many young women have their first child to escape an unpleasant home life and to gain access to their own apartment
7) drugs and violence are rampant
8) illegitimacy may exceed 70%

Immediately people who read the above might think of accusing Prof. Sowal of being a racist or at least racially biased -- even if they find out that he himself grew-up in Harlem and is of course of African background

But the kicker is that the above observations were made of nearly all Caucasians, born and bred and living in Birmingham England, UK

The same of course can be applied to a multitude of major US cities because the same policies are in effect -- well meaning -- but destructive

Before projects in cities can really be fixed and once again become at least a benign if not beneficial element of cities:
1) the social policies need to be drastically reformed
2) the public schools need to be fixed to re-attract the middle-class traditional families who've fled the cities or at least their schools
3) the middle-class needs to find a motivation to live on the outskirts of the projects and gradually "re-infect" the neighborhoods with productive citizens who can be models for the kids in the projects

 

[Lurker]

Before projects in cities can really be fixed and once again become at least a benign if not beneficial element of cities:
1) the social policies need to be drastically reformed
2) the public schools need to be fixed to re-attract the middle-class traditional families who've fled the cities or at least their schools
3) the middle-class needs to find a motivation to live on the outskirts of the projects and gradually "re-infect" the neighborhoods with productive citizens who can be models for the kids in th

1.Yes, but people gain political power by keeping populations on the dole. There are votes to be bought, masses to be agitated, and problems which will never be "fixed" but can be exploited by people to pretend they are doing something beneficial. -See Chuck Turner & why nothing ever improves in ghettos despite "politicians fighting for the downtrodden".

2.The union model and a lack of neighborhood schools destroyed this. Yes that means people will self segregate by neighborhood, but that's been the story of civilization since the first cities came into existence.

3.Get rid of the projects period. They artificially concentrate poor people and prevent large sometimes valuable areas in cities from undergoing natural demographic changes. Projects also prevent neighborhood organizations from naturally forming and rely on artificial constructs which never really work well. Look at the area around Blackstone Square for a microcosm of this effect.