The history of public housing in our country is filled with noble intentions, as it is littered with the unintended consequences of public policy.

During the early 1930’s, and challenged by the tragic evidence of homelessness brought about by the Great Depression, our government decided to take on the burden of home provider of last resort.

The philosophical roots for this kind of policy were in the remarkable accomplishments of the early twentieth century by municipal governments in Northern Europe, England and Scandinavia, both with Town Planning and the housing of the poor.

The pressure to act immediately was brought about by the pronouncements of the great competing political ideology of that time, Soviet Communism. The communists had taken on the program of providing free housing for their entire population. In the face of massive social challenges at home brought about by the Great Depression, it seemed impossible not to engage in similar political experiments with housing here.

No one at the time questioned all the issues we now know to be crucial to the failures of the public housing programs of the New Deal and the Great Society: There was not enough money available in the richest economy in the world to provide public housing for all. The quality of the housing being built was inadequate. The high-rise form of housing being built was not suited to the ways of life and needs of the people being housed. Programs for helping people to graduate from public housing through personal betterment were largely absent. The management network for keeping up the housing stock was inadequate. The concentration of poor people of color in public housing at a time of rampant racial tension focused both dire social need and negative political attention on the subject of public housing.

This was a cluster of challenges this public program was never designed to address and did not survive. Eventually, social realities, politics and the market defeated the dream of public housing in America.

Enter Hope 6 and the transformation of our country’s housing agenda. It took a great deal of courage to admit that after more than sixty years of failed public housing policy, our government could again take the initiative to redress the housing question. Action was taken, and we have had the privilege to judge the remarkable results in this first Hope 6 competition.

Central to the strategy of Hope 6 change was the idea that redevelopment was inevitable and that this included demolition of most of the existing failed housing stock.

The key decision was then taken to transform by design single density and type housing projects into traditional American Neighborhoods. This entailed designing humane, safe traditional dwellings in a variety of densities and types, along porched traditional streets. Allowing a variety of uses to be accommodated in the buildings and paying attention to the character of surrounding places in order to integrate new Neighborhoods into existing city and town fabrics.

On the social side, these Neighborhoods were designed to be lived in by people of various incomes, and therefore, programs were made available to encourage personal advancement. The emphasis on betterment in place promises that these new Neighborhoods will thrive over time by the initiative of their residents, much as it is done everywhere in the country.

The results are remarkable by any account. As an Architecture student, I visited a New York project in the early 70s and was struck by the fear in the eyes of people milling around the no-man’s land around the buildings. As a visiting architect in Washington DC to judge the Hope 6 competition I was shown a number of recently completed program Neighborhoods. I took home with me the warm smiles of kids bicycling in the street in front of their houses, and the excited voices of students getting home from school at the end of the day.

It struck me as normal, which Neighborhood life should be for all Americans.