ABSTRACT
Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the federal government into the business of funding public housing with the remark, "Within a very short time people who never before could get adecent roof over their heads will live here in reasonable comfort and healthful, worthwhile surroundings" (cited in Lick 1996). Sixty years later, those under the roofs of public housing all too often lack the comfort or healthfulness. Then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Henry Cisneros acknowledged to Congress in June 1993 that "HUD has in many cases exacerbated the dec1ining quality of life in America." In Cisneros's words, much of public housing, "which began 30 years ago as transitional housing for working people who had come upon hard times, has become a trap for the poorest of the poor rather than a launching pad for families trying to improve their lives" (cited in "Look Out, Landlords ... " 1995).
