From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors - Hardcover

Vale, Prof. Lawrence J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674002865 ISBN 13: 9780674002869

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2000

Synopsis

From the almshouses of seventeenth-century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing in Boston and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years.

First, Vale highlights startling continuities both in the way housing assistance has been delivered to the American poor and in the policies used to reward the nonpoor. He traces the stormy history of the Boston Housing Authority, a saga of entrenched patronage and virulent racism tempered, and partially overcome, by the efforts of unyielding reformers. He explores the birth of public housing as a program intended to reward the upwardly mobile working poor, details its painful transformation into a system designed to cope with society's least advantaged, and questions current policy efforts aimed at returning to a system of rewards for responsible members of the working class. The troubled story of Boston public housing exposes the mixed motives and ideological complexity that have long characterized housing in America, from the Puritans to the projects.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence J. Vale is Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

Vale, an urban studies and planning professor, examines more than three centuries of Boston's provision for "the public neighbor," exploring "shifting relationships among the state, the market, and civil society," which reflect policy makers' profoundly mixed motives. From indoor and outdoor relief to tenement reform and settlement houses to urban renewal and massive housing projects, genuine desire to help the poor has always been interwoven with a demand for tighter social control. Increasingly the geographical placement of public housing has sought to insulate the nonpoor from social problems of the public neighbor. A fascinating analysis of how one city has manifested "our collective ambivalence" about citizens unable to provide adequate housing for themselves. Mary Carroll
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674002865
• ISBN 13: 9780674002869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 482