Boston's Housing Experiment

In hopes of revitalizing one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, the Boston Housing Authority experiment with bringing middle class residents into the community has produced mixed results.

1 minute read

June 9, 2001, 8:00 AM PDT

By Christian Madera @http://www.twitter.com/cpmadera


"Elizabeth Shanley and Tricia Claussen recall the odd, unfriendly looks from neighbors the day they moved into their spacious, two-level, two-bedroom apartment last year. They were middle-class, white women from the suburbs moving into a $2,000-a-month apartment in Mission Main, a development where most tenants are racial minorities with very low incomes. Some longtime residents eyed the roommates with suspicion...Almost two years after Mission Main - long the area's most troubled public housing development - began a bold social experiment in renting luxury apartments to middle-class tenants, Claussen and Shanley remain strangers in a foreign land, lacking common ground with the poor, single mothers who live around them."

Thanks to Christian Peralta

Friday, June 8, 2001 in The Boston Globe

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