Housing as History Series

Boston has been a national leader in efforts to bring much needed public and affordable housing to its residents. However, the city’s housing legacy is as complicated as it is innovative. Boston’s low-income housing hit bottom in 1979 when a judge placed the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) in receivership after the agency that housed nearly 10 percent of the city’s renters had been repeatedly sued by tenants describing inhumane conditions and racial discrimination. As the BHA deteriorated in the late 1960s and 1970s, urban renewal efforts threatened to displace other lower-income households. This triggered an emergence of novel grassroots organizations that demanded greater community control over neighborhood development. These new institutions, together with a revitalized BHA and new networks of public-private partnerships, fueled metro Boston’s rapid recovery from the challenges of the 1970s and 1980s. Even so, the city must now grapple with a new scarcity of affordable housing.