A Decent Place To Live

"A Decent Place to Live is a fabulous piece of work. Well-written, candid and engaging, its honesty is refreshing; nothing is swept under the rug. The voices of the tenants carry the story forward, but the transformation of Columbia Point is set in a political context and the impact of government policies is explored. A valuable resource for urban planners, architects, housing policy makers, and developers." -- Hubert E. Jones, Assistant Chancellor for Urban Affairs, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Readers will be moved by this exciting story of real-life good Samaritans in this uplifting story of Habitat for Humanity. Fuller tells how he came to be touched with the needs of others for affordable housing. He incorporates testimonies from celebrities--Jimmy Carter, Tom Brokaw, Paul Newman and others--who tell what Habitat for Humanity means to them.

Habitat for Humanity's founder tells the history of the organization dedicated to eliminating poverty housing.

Where is the best place to live? For Evan it's the city, with its diverse population and abundance of activities. Claudia prefers the country, where she lives side by side with nature. There's no place like the suburbs for Nandini for enjoying a sense of community and lots of friends. Which person and place will get your vote? Read these essays to find out.

Now in paperback, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Goodman and novelist/journalist O'Brien take a thoughtful and deeply personal look at the enduring bonds of friendship between women.

Across America, universities have become big businesses—and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow. Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target the Black and Latinx neighborhoods nearby. They become the primary employers, dictating labor practices and suppressing wages. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power—and who is made vulnerable. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.

When Boston's Columbia Point housing project was built in the early 1950s on the isolated edge of Dorchester Bay, it was hailed as a noble government experiment to provide temporary housing for working-class families who had fallen on hard times. By the mid-1970s, the model community had disintegrated and become a symbol of failure, decay, crime, and danger. Today, Columbia Point has been redeveloped as Harbor Point, a privately owned and managed mixed-income, racially integrated complex that stands handsomely alongside its institutional neighbors, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Massachusetts Archives, and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. A Decent Place to Live chronicles the rise, fall, and rebirth of Columbia Point through the voices of those who struggled to make a life there and who battled to rebuild their community. A fascinating story of people, conflict, continuity, and change, the work captures the rich yet troubled heritage of Columbia Point and celebrates the aspirations and tenacity of its residents. It reclaims a neglected piece of Boston's history and offers important lessons for urban planners and policy makers nationwide. Originally published by Northeastern University Press in 2000. With a new foreword by Karilyn Crockett.