Maggie's Farm

My father worked in construction for half of his life. He told me about a major housing project they built in Boston in the late 50's. He said that it was completed in phases and they moved in the welfare families into completed units while work went on with the new units. About 3 years of building. They had a lot of problems with the completed units. The tenants would rip the copper flashing off the roof to sell for money to buy drugs and the rain and snow would seep down into the walls and destroy the walls in the units. The elevators would break down because unattended kids would ride them up and down all day for fun pushing buttons all the way up and down until they broke. One unit burned down because a family recently from Puerto Rico tried to roast a whole pig in the cast iron bath tub and the building caught fire. When the season changed and it got dark before 4:30 pm the workers would quit early because the male tenants would rob them at gunpoint after dark. My father moved on to other jobs but this new expensive beautifully bricked and finished "projects" had to be condemned within 5 years of completion. The tenants and the newspapers made it appear that it was because of shoddy workmanship but of course the truth was that the welfare recipients didn't care for or about their own housing and trashed it.

So what have we learned 60 years later???