#columbia point

[southie187]

[tk914-blog]

a short history of the CHC movement nationally and in Massachusetts. 

the video "out in the rural" is especially good stuff

[doculicious]

I was doing some research and went to Boston College to watch an interesting documentary about the now demolished Columbia Point Housing Project in Boston.  This documentary was made in 1981, when the housing project was in receivership.  In it, a tenant activist claimed that the next phase of Columbia Point was to become mixed income housing, and no longer be exclusively Boston Housing Authority public low income housing.  She was right, in 1988 Harbort Point Apartments opened as 75% market rate housing.

Also, in the documentary talked about how Columbia Point changed when federal poverty programs were created in the 1960s.  It went from married working couples with children, to mostly single mothers on welfare (ADFC, now TADFC due to Bill Clinton).  Maintenance stopped, trees were removed and green grass lawns were paved over with cement and asphalt.  A woman was interviewed an explained that to the single mother, the government is her man and her children's father.  It is hard for a real man to compete with what the government will do for a single mother and her kids: guaranteed housing paid, money for the children, medicaid (medical care for people at or below the poverty line for their household size) and food stamps.