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

by Lawrence J. Vale

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Local History, Cities

482 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Associate Dean Lawrence J. Vale is Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, where he served as Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 2002 until January 2009. He has taught in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning since 1988, and he is currently the director of the Resilient Cities Housing Initiative (RCHI), a unit of the School’s Center for Advanced Urbanism. He was president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History for 2011-2013. He is the author or editor of eleven books examining urban design, housing and planning.

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very compelling explanation of housing problems in the United States. Centering the issue of public housing on Boston allowed for the connection of the functionality of public housing to the American individualistic ethos, making for an excellent critique of both.

[Jamie Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading to understand the United States' housing system and the roots of our housing and homelessness crises.

[Tillie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned