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

Rating:
Summary: Double-Binds, Double Trouble
Review: Vale's marvelously detailed history of public housing in Boston from the early Puritan settlements to the present day tells the story of our "alternating current of compassion and hostility" toward the poor in the U.S. Through his exploration of public housing in Boston, Vale writes a compelling sociological history of the tensions inherent in the American dream of home ownership, government subsidy vs. free enterprise, and most valuable of all explores the ideology of homeownership and its bearing on citizenship. Dense, meditative, often wryly humorous, this is a deeply researched work which yields uncommon insights about mythic American values of community as expressed through public housing and public spaces.

Particularly well-rendered is the recurring theme of how the government used its powers to dispense and dispose of land to reward certain Americans. The U.S. soldier was the first, and continues to be, a singular actor in this drama of service and reward. In the Jeffersonian post-revolutionary war period, veterans were rewarded with grants of land. In so doing, the government empowered these men to do the work of settling the frontier -- who better to perform such a task than those already trained in war? Civil War veterans were similarly rewarded.

From there, other "deserving" populations were rewarded with housing -- those who demonstrated their commitment to an American standard of behavior: industriousness, cleanliness, responsiblity being some of the key attributes for qualification for early public housing. Vale describes, for instance, how public housing developments in the Depression and postwar era were also used by politicians to reward their supporters, especially deserving working-class poor families who fit a traditional dual parent, father/provider schematic.

The early chapters exploring the city fathers erection and administration of jails, insane asylums, shelters for the poor, and the concomitant rise the settlement movement and the social worker are particularly well-rendered. Great illustrations, too!

Rating:
Summary: Double-Binds, Double Trouble
Review: Vale's marvelously detailed history of public housing in Boston from the early Puritan settlements to the present day tells the story of our "alternating current of compassion and hostility" toward the poor in the U.S. Through his exploration of public housing in Boston, Vale writes a compelling sociological history of the tensions inherent in the American dream of home ownership, government subsidy vs. free enterprise, and most valuable of all explores the ideology of homeownership and its bearing on citizenship. Dense, meditative, often wryly humorous, this is a deeply researched work which yields uncommon insights about mythic American values of community as expressed through public housing and public spaces.

Particularly well-rendered is the recurring theme of how the government used its powers to dispense and dispose of land to reward certain Americans. The U.S. soldier was the first, and continues to be, a singular actor in this drama of service and reward. In the Jeffersonian post-revolutionary war period, veterans were rewarded with grants of land. In so doing, the government empowered these men to do the work of settling the frontier -- who better to perform such a task than those already trained in war? Civil War veterans were similarly rewarded.

From there, other "deserving" populations were rewarded with housing -- those who demonstrated their commitment to an American standard of behavior: industriousness, cleanliness, responsiblity being some of the key attributes for qualification for early public housing. Vale describes, for instance, how public housing developments in the Depression and postwar era were also used by politicians to reward their supporters, especially deserving working-class poor families who fit a traditional dual parent, father/provider schematic.

The early chapters exploring the city fathers erection and administration of jails, insane asylums, shelters for the poor, and the concomitant rise the settlement movement and the social worker are particularly well-rendered. Great illustrations, too!