[PDF] Toward A Housing Policy And Program For The City Of Boston eBook

Author : Lawrence J. Vale
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 477 pages
File Size : 26,57 MB
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0674044576

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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.

Author : Boston Housing Authority
Publisher : Forgotten Books
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 44,92 MB
Release : 2018-05-05
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780365897880

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Excerpt from Department of Housing and Urban Development Urban Initiatives Program: Boston Housing Authority Proposal Since the inception of public housing programs in 1937, the Boston Housing Authority has been committed to providing safe, decent and sanitary housing for low income families and elderly residents of Boston. Today bha controls over housing units, one out of every ten housing units in Boston. Many of these units are located in developments troubled by a variety of physical, social and management problems. These problems have resulted from a combination of factors, including inadequate funding, management and maintenance difficulties, design deficiencies, obsolescence of major systems and equip ment, neighborhood deterioration, radical shifts in population, increasing frequency of crime and vandalism, and widespread feelings of fear and helplessness among public housing resi dents. There is no quick, simple and cheap solution to these problems, and a piecemeal approach simply does not work. The solution lies in an integrated and comprehensive approach which reflects the complex and interrelated nature of the pro hlems themselves. The Public Housing Urban Initiatives Program, using a comprehensive approach with substantial funds to back it up, provides the Boston Housing Authority with a real oppor tunity to begin to address these problems. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.