| Abstract: | Public housing is regarded as a map resource for rehousing families displaced by the urban renewal and highway programs. Yet a study of some 500 families relocated from Boston's West End reveals that the overwhelming majority refused to consider the possibility of living in a housing project, for reasons consistent with their preference for the residential patterns and life-styles prevalent in their former neighborhood. Those who do relocate in projects are not typical of the stable working class, and most frequently are characterized by some personal situation that limits their rehousing choice. Planners are confronted with the alternative of allowing public housing to become a care-taking institution for the disabled elements of the society, or of creating new forms for the public housing subsidy to encourage mobility, to provide satisfactory living environments consistent with the values of the inhabitants, and to permit the kinds of heterogeneity which prevail in existing neighborhoods. |
