My Love Affair

There were a few couples besides Harry and his wife. Even the police chief’s parents were in the highrise. They were often busy with family. They were among the lucky ones, as were others in the building who had families who visited. Some others had families, but they rarely visited. It broke my heart to […]

I must also tell you about the women. There were many, and I can’t tell you all the stories, but some still stick in my mind. Nellie (a very proper lady) and I used to chat about what used to be. Many people wanted to view the highrise, and she allowed us to show her

Life in the highrise continued on. There were more women in the building than men. Believing in the adage that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” there were many dishes delivered throughout the building to the few men who were brave enough to live there, some surreptitiously left outside the door

The next hurdle was to relocate the Concord Street residents. I thought it would be easy — the highrise was so much nicer than where they had been living. I knew they would be excited. Not so. Babe was the biggest challenge. First of all, we had no parking meters to talk to. And no liquor stores

As the elderly highrise building took shape and became a reality, it was time to start taking applications. I went all over town, talking up the building.  At first it was slow. People were embarrassed to have to apply for low-income housing. It seemed like welfare to them. But when I got them into the

It’s pretty scary to realize that I’ve been working in subsidized housing since before HUD was created. I started with my first housing authority in 1963, and the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 created HUD as a Cabinet-level agency. The Public Housing Administration, U.S. Housing Authority, and House and HomeFinancing Agency were all swept into