After the Projects

How we house the most needy is a clear barometer of our success and failure as a culture. Lawrence Vale has given us both the potential heaven and hell of this defining social nexus as well as a sense of the huge stakes at play." -Ken Burns, Filmmaker
What happens to affordable housing in an era of market solutions, austerity, and anti-welfare politics? Lawrence Vale, a leading scholar of housing and urban development, provides the first full-scale account of the federal government's HOPE VI housing program. In four richly detailed case studies from big cities around the country, he offers an even-handed account of the successes and limitations of efforts to provide affordable housing in an era of growing housing insecurity. Urban scholars, policymakers, activists, and advocates alike will learn a lot from After the Projects." -Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University
Over the last two decades no scholar has examined American public housing more thoughtfully or more comprehensively than Larry Vale. After the Projects continues Vale's examination of the origins, decline, and contemporary condition of public housing in the U.S., this time with four exhaustive case studies. Vale's close analysis of HOPE VI redevelopments in New Orleans, Boston, Tucson, and San Francisco situates them within the political and economic context of each city and highlights the importance of 'governance constellations' in explaining the wide variation in outcomes across HOPE VI projects. Vale has produced another invaluable resource for students and scholars of American housing policy, neoliberal welfare reform, and urban development." - Edward G. Goetz, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
Public housing has always been a problem area, and its latest version is no different. Vale surveys the situation today, focusing on the cities of Boston, New Orleans, Tucson, and San Francisco, and shows how those cities differ widely in how they provide housing for the poorest of their citizens... This is a valuable guide to today's public-private choices as well as to the complex pattern of choices that must be made and the equally intricate pattern of decision makers. Recommended."- CHOICE
Vale offers a thorough, masterful, and scrupulously fair account of four public housing projects under the federal HOPE IV umbrella: St. Thomas (now River Garden) in New Orleans, Orchard Park (now Orchard Gardens) in Boston, Connie Chambers (now Posadas Sentinel) Tucson, Arizona, and North Beach Place in San Francisco. Planners and others with any public housing involvement will learn much from Vale's work."- Planning Magazine
After the Projects, one of the best books I have read in recent years, makes major contributions to existing understanding about mixed-income housing and poverty governance. Anyone who is interested in the future of public housing should read it." -David Varady, Journal of the American Planning Association