Public Housing Projects & Boston

AmericanFolkLegend said:
Short version:
Public housing started the thread. Someone said something vaguely left or right wing (I can't remember/tell anymore).
Whiglander broke out some neocon ideological monologues that took up more of the internet than Napster.
Hitler made an appearance.
Van had the greatest idea in history (when Hitler is mentioned, close thread).
I woke up in a pile of my own filth.
Submit, Repeat.
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AMF -- you apparently have now decided to contribute by creating a pseudo-intelectual monologue to summarize your view of the thread -- The only saving grace is your's is short!

Specifically -- What does the term Neocom have to do with a genuine intelectual who happens to be of Aftican-American origians

"Hitler" was not part of the original discussion -- only a "contribution" from someone who while never apparenly reading anything writen by Thomas Sowell seemed to be able to associate him with a tem (NeoCon) commonly used to characterize (usually in a derisive way) conservative Jewish intelectuals (e.g. Norman Podhertz) who have favored an agressive U.S. foreign policy. NeoCon is a term utterly irrelevant to the discussion of the culture common in today's public housing -- and Sowell's quite credible thesis on its origins in Northern England / Scotland border area. The mention of Darlrymple was in the context of his observations of a common "under-class" "culture of the dole" in English cities -- which is very similar to what Sowell was diescribing.

Contrary to your dismissal -- this discussion about the "culure of the dole" is as relevant to a thread on public housing -- as a discussion of the "culture of the cow" would be to a thread deaiing with India.

Without any significant debate -- the essence of the history of public housing in the U.S. has been its massive failure to provide a livable environment to the point of near total replacement of the buildings as an attempt to deal with the "culture of the dole" -- e.g. Pruitt–Igoe, Cabrini–Green, much of Detroit, etc.
 
whighlander said:
Without any significant debate -- the essence of the history of public housing in the U.S. has been its massive failure to provide a livable environment to the point of near total replacement of the buildings as an attempt to deal with the "culture of the dole" -- e.g. Pruitt–Igoe, Cabrini–Green, much of Detroit, etc.
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It's a failure if you limit it to the failures. If you expand to include the huge number of projects built under Section 8, Community Development Block Grants, Hope VI, etc., it's been pretty successful.

Pruitt-Igoe, Cabrini-Green, etc didn't fail because they were public housing. They failed because they were underfunded and poorly executed by bad leadership on the national and local level.

If you want to read about Cabrini, Pruitt, etc, the Bauman, Biles, Szylvian and especially the Hunt I posted earlier are great. If you want to read about more recent things like CDBG, Hope, Section 8, the Von Hoffmann I posted earlier is great as well.
 
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whighlander said:
Specifically -- What does the term Neocom have to do with a genuine intelectual who happens to be of Aftican-American origians
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Whig, my post was intended to be tongue in cheek. I only mentioned neocon because I saw your post about how we had actually won the war in Vietnam (which struck me as an uber-neocon stance to take from a foreign policy point of view). But please don't take it seriously - I hadn't even read all the back and forth so wasn't attempting to wade into the argument.

P.S. Why did you bring up Sowell's race at least twice?
 
Can we shift this discussion to focus on which local public housing projects are successful and well-designed, and which ones are not? I'm sure we can come up with plenty of examples in both columns, and then we can talk about what makes the difference.
 
I like it Ron.
IMO subsidized housing works best in a mixed-income environment (i.e., not a traditional "Project"). One of my favorite examples is Rollins Square in the South End. A reasonably attractive development that is 20% low-income; 40% moderate; and 40% market. From what I understand the market and non-market units were intended to be of the same quality and spread throughout the building. The goal being that you can't tell who's non-market (i.e., remove some of the stigma from the subsidized housing).
On the negative side, the developer once told me that they've had problems with the condo association because subsidized units pay less in condo fees but expect an equal voice in the HOA.
 
Agreed, Rollins Square is really nice. The rebuilt Washington-Beach project also looks promising.
 
Ron Newman said:
Can we shift this discussion to focus on which local public housing projects are successful and well-designed, and which ones are not? I'm sure we can come up with plenty of examples in both columns, and then we can talk about what makes the difference.
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Ron there is more to it than the design -- there is the surrounding context and operational "rules," etc.

For example consider the Cambridge Housing Authority's Newtowne Court on Main St. near Portland St.

I'm sure that when it first opened in 1938 that it was full and then when the GI's came back in 1945 I'll bet that for a while it was extra full. I'll also bet that there was probably minimal crime and that no one woried about being near to it.

However, by the 1970's most able bodied MIT students even in a small group would cross to the industrial side of Mass Ave. at the corner with Portland to avoid the "project"

After it was renovated in 1999, slightly reduced in capacity, and had a number of the units designated to elderly &/or disabled -- it seems to have become a "good enough citizen" of the Kendall / Camabridge Center general area that MIT is willing to build 610 Main for Pfizer directly across the street.

So what changed over the 70+ years: leading to decline and then renaissance (up to a certain point anyway):

building structures -- no other than maintenance
buiding dixtures - maintenance and some replacements
building systems -- no other than maintenance
process of selecting and managing residents -- yes
character & culture of residents - yes
 
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119010000720

  • UCLA Institute of the Environment, La Kretz Hall, Suite 300 Box 951496, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
Abstract

Traditional explanations for why some communities block new housing construction focus on incumbent home owner incentives to block entry. Local resident political ideology may also influence community permitting decisions. This paper uses city level panel data across California metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2008 to document that liberal cities grant fewer new housing permits than observationally similar cities located within the same metropolitan area. Cities experiencing a growth in their liberal voter share have a lower new housing permit growth rate.
 
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