Public housing gets a bad rap, but Maddie Garrett has no complaints. She’s lived on the same few blocks on Austin’s east side for 50 years, moving between one of the nation’s oldest public-housing complexes, Rosewood Courts, and a senior housing development called Salina Apartments. When her family grew, the housing authority helped her move to a bigger apartment; when her kids moved away, she moved back to a smaller one. When her husband became disabled, the housing authority put them in a unit that could accommodate his disabilities.
“It’s comfortable; it’s safe; I haven’t had any problems,” she told me, in the shady courtyard of her apartment building.
It can be hard to remember, among the multiple stories ofneglect and crime in the nation’s public-housing complexes, and amid the efforts to dismantle the buildings over the last few decades, that for millions of Americans over the past century, public housing has worked well. Today there are 1.2 million Americans living in housing managed by some 3,300 public-housing authorities, many of which have received scores of 98 or higher out of 100 in HUD’s public-housingassessment system.
[For more of this story, written by Alana Semuels, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...blic-housing/406705/]
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