Public Housing That Worked

by Bloom, Nicholas Dagen

• ISBN13: 9780812220674
• ISBN10: 0812220676
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-09
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

When it comes to large-scale public housing in the United States, the consensus for the past decades has been to let the wrecking balls fly. The demolition of infamous projects, such as Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and the towers of Cabrini-Green in Chicago, represents to most Americans the fate of all public housing. Yet one notable exception to this national tragedy remains. The New York City Housing Authority, America's largest public housing manager, still maintains over 400,000 tenants in its vast and well-run high-rise projects. While by no means utopian, New York City's public housing remains an acceptable and affordable option. The story of New York's success where so many other housing authorities faltered has been ignored for too long.Public Housing That Workedshows how New York's administrators, beginning in the 1930s, developed a rigorous system of public housing management that weathered a variety of social and political challenges. A key element in the long-term viability of New York's public housing has been the constant search for better methods in fields such as tenant selection, policing, renovation, community affairs, and landscape design. Nicholas Dagen Bloom presents the achievements that contradict the common wisdom that public housing projects are inherently unmanageable. By focusing on what worked, rather than on the conventional history of failure and blame, Bloom provides useful models for addressing the current crisis in affordable urban housing.Public Housing That Workedis essential reading for practitioners and scholars in the areas of public policy, urban history, planning, criminal justice, affordable housing management, social work, and urban affairs.

Author Biography

Nicholas Dagen Bloom is Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies at the New York Institute of Technology and author of Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Model Housing as a Municipal Service
Defining a Housing Crisis	p. 13
Three Programs Are Better Than One	p. 35
High-Rise Public Housing Begins	p. 45
Model Tenants for Model Housing	p. 77
Tightly Managed Communities	p. 92
Transforming Postwar New York
The Boom Years	p. 109
Designs for a New Metropolis	p. 128
The Price of Design Reform	p. 152
The Benefits of Social Engineering	p. 168
Meeting the Management Challenge	p. 181
Welfare-State Public Housing
Surviving the Welfare State	p. 201
The Value of Consistency	p. 220
Affordable Housing
Model Housing Revisited	p. 245
Guide to Housing Developments	p. 269
Tenant Selection Policies and Procedures	p. 277
Notes	p. 279
Index	p. 349
Acknowledgments	p. 353
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