What Needs To Change In Adolescent Public Housing?

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working in public housing, mostly as executive director of the St. Louis Housing Authority. Over the years there have been many changes in public housing in my city. Gone are the derelict, isolated warehouses of poverty that once dominated the landscape.

They have been replaced with the mixed-income communities that blend with the surrounding neighborhoods and reestablish the traditional street patterns. These communities reconstruct neighborhoods and reconnect residents with the surrounding communities. They attempt to reduce the isolation of public housing communities by breaking down the physical barriers of isolation that shout to all, “This is a public housing development.”

Although the physical condition of public housing has dramatically improved, the challenges of working in public housing often make one reflect upon the reasons why there are not more effective methods to deal with the social issues that continue to plague many families that live in public housing. Even more perplexing is why some families have children who thrive and are very successful, whereas children in other families are destined to remain in poverty. I know a family with a single mother and three children who lived most of their lives in a severely distressed public housing development in a neighborhood with the highest level of poverty and crime in the city. Of the three children, one has an associate’s degree, the second has a bachelor’s degree and is pursuing a master’s degree, and the third has a doctorate in pharmacological and physiological science.

What makes these children thrive when their neighbor had a baby at the age of fifteen, never finished high school, and is destined to repeat the cycle of poverty? i h av e s p e n t n e a r ly t w e n t y y e a r s

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This book’s innovative approach to researching how the experience of living in public housing affects adolescent behavior seeks to answer these questions. This work does not approach the research by starting with only youth who demonstrate antisocial behavior but instead provides insight to the potential positive impacts of living in public housing. The authors suggest that the existing research expresses only the perception that all public housing is dangerous to children. By failing to recognize the new realities of life in public housing, the existing research does not explore other factors that influence the lives of youth in public housing. The research method here uses an integrated model that explores how the social context can inhibit or promote a community’s ability to create safe environments.

The research results indicate that many factors contribute to the development of public housing youth. The study shows that community cohesion reduces the influence of other risk factors. The authors do not claim that their research is exhaustive but rather present the new model to encourage discussion and advocate for a unified model for future research. The authors also introduce the theoretical concepts of inorganic communities and the tropic cascading effect, challenging future researchers to develop these theories to better understand how the community affects overall youth development.

Dr. Nebbitt’s personal connection with the youth in public housing provides him with a unique perspective that leads to a fresh approach to researching extremely challenging issues. When I first met Dr. Nebbitt, he was managing a community center in a classic inner-city public housing development. The development had more than 500 units in 11 high-rise buildings. Built in the early 1950s, by the late 1990s the development was the epitome of everything that was wrong with public housing. His goal was to engage as many youth as possible and to give them the tools to avoid going down the wrong path. The experiences of his youth gave him the ability to connect to many adolescents who were engaging in destructive behavior and to provide alternatives before they became victims of the violence and poverty that surrounded them. His compassion and capacity for understanding the plight of the youth who live in public housing led him to continue developing a more effective research model, which will lead to interventions that will truly improve the lives of youth and reduce the cycle of poverty.

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Dr. Nebbitt’s work is particularly valuable in these trying times. In all my years working in public housing, I have never seen a time when so few resources were available for social programs. Our leaders lack the political will to invest in the future by investing in our youth. Instead, the policymakers are arbitrarily cutting spending without concern about the effects.

Unfortunately, the most vulnerable in our society suffer. Until we as a society have the will to ensure that all of our citizens have the opportunity to develop in an environment that provides the opportunities to reach their full potential, we are destined to repeat the cycle and let yet another generation go to waste. Hopefully, through works like this book, meaningful change can occur and restore the potential for a brighter future for children living in public housing.

Cheryl A. Lovell Executive Director St. Louis Housing Authority St. Louis, MO