City Dwellings: Public Housing

(i) While driving along the Lady Young Road, trying to avoid the city’s traffic, I spotted these apartment buildings. They seemed so mundane and depressing. I thought to myself, how do the residents of these apartments feel about their dwellings? You can see if you look closely that in an effort to beautify their small outdoor space, the porch, they hung potted plants, colourful flowering plants, decorative lights and painted the limited wall space in different colours. These low income housing cater for citizens of the lower-socio economic class (low annual household income) including those who cannot afford their own homes at present or those who want some sort of independence from their families. There are many such housing programs that are privately, state, or federally operated and funded. The purpose of it is to provide places for people to live at a reasonable cost for them to afford.

Source: http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=42140

(ii) This economic exclusion is translated into exclusion from many areas of city life. This underclass consists of both waged and unwaged poor, a disproportionally high number of members of ethnic minorities, and groups such as sick, elderly or disabled people and single parents. It has been argued that social polarisation has increased as a result of both international economic trends and recent government policy. This social polarisation has had an impact upon the spatial structure of cities. Areas such as inner-city areas and peripheral council housing estates have become equated with the presence of this urban underclass. These pockets of deprivation contain a number of groups who are surplus to the requirements of the formal urban economy. These areas are characterised by the prevalence of ‘alternative’ or ‘twilight’ economies run on an informal or illegal basis.

The principle of design for beauty and enrichment is too seldom used in the design of housing for low-income families. This is because of poverty of imagination, not shortage of money. It is not always easy to know what constitutes beauty or decoration for people who have been ground down by poverty. In some countries the first outlet of a person wanting something ‘more’ or ‘pretty’ may be to plant flowers or vines. In other countries delicate and elaborate designs are painted on the front of the home with rice flour paint. In Trinidad, local artists make murals and sculptures for buildings (Bell 1972).

References:
Bell, Gwen. 1972. Human identity in the urban environment. London: Butler and Tanner Ltd.

(iii) Here is some additional information to take a look at:

The Government focusing on affordable housing:
http://news.co.tt/public_html/article.php?story=20101124100829993

The delivery of low income housing communities in Trinidad and Tobago:
http://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2139/3108/GlennMahabirsingh_Dip.pdf?sequence=1

This video is based on how public housing transformed New York city