Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from the previous Part 2 and Part 1.]
 
So far in our multi-part history of public housing using MIT Professor Lawrence Vale’s comprehensive study, From the Puritans to the Projects, we’ve covered the pre-urban era (the Puritans and their almshouses, poorhouses, and Houses of Industry), and the Progressive period that ended the nineteenth century and opened the […]

Buried in the typical apartment lease is the resident’s right to ‘quiet enjoyment’ of the premises.  While it doesn’t specifically mean noise (rather, it refers to undisturbed occupancy), as anyone who’s lived in an apartment complex knows, ‘quiet’ is often a precondition to ‘enjoyment.’ 
 

I’m not enjoying your taste in music
 
Noise travels, and it cannot be […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
[For more on my views of public housing, see Public housing: the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (June, 2006), Public housing’s Gordian’s knot (December, 2006), and The essential housing authority (September, 2007).]
 
In our multi-part history of public housing [If this isn’t your cup of tea, see you next week! – […]

Columbia Point, Boston, 1960
 
With the public housing inventory failing apart, with it falls the public housing system – the next President, whoever he may be, cannot avoid dismantling it.  As the nation figures out how to do so, we need to appreciate how we got here, why housing authorities are the way they are, and […]

Do you feel … lucky?
 
Ever get yourself into an oh-no fix?  One of those where, scarce seconds after you’ve slammed the car door shut, hit the delete key or the flush lever, or seen the subway doors shut behind you bearing away your luggage?
 

Not that lever!
 
Multiply that by roughly a thousand and you have the […]