Here’s a sentence to consider: “No place in the contemporary United States, with the possible exceptions of prisons and certain hospitals, stigmatizes people in as many debilitating ways as a distressed inner-city public housing project.” These are the words of MIT Professor Lawrence Vale. He’s spent more than two decades walking the dusty yards and dangerous hallways of public housing developments, and talking to the people who live and work there. His latest book, Reclaiming Public Housing, comes at a time when support for housing projects is at a crossroads — when government can’t decide whom public housing is for — and what it should look like.
Guests:
Lawrence Vale, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and author of “Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods”