New Haven Independent

Posted by: Norton Street | November 17, 2009 6:49 PM

I thoroughly hate the Prescott Bush housing complex; it is monstrously ugly.
To think that housing identical to the kind on the East Side of the street was demolished for this behemoth is shameful. The elderly could have lived in ground floor apartments while their child and their spouse and grandchildren lived in the upstairs apartment. And the whole block could have been city owned with the corner house serving as a place for administration. Traditional housing is great because its so flexible, while housing complexes like Bush, Bella Vista, Crawford, etc have no flexibility and chance to change over time to adapt a new use.

Posted by: streever | November 18, 2009 8:29 AM

While I agree with your ideal, Norton, as usual I think it's hard to make a case for it--you'd be requiring people to live with their parents. Will you buy a place some day so your parents can live on the ground floor?

Posted by: Norton Street | November 18, 2009 11:23 AM

I'll do that before putting them in a nursing home.
This already occurs in many lower income communities, multi-generational single home living has been around since cavemen.

Posted by: Bob Solomon | November 18, 2009 1:55 PM

Norton Street - While I agree on most of your ideas about space, I think that you often let the perfect get in the way of the good. The elderly population in public housing has, as a group, very little financial resources. The notion of a block of governmentally owned, free-standing housing would be prohibitively expensive to manage, especially given the added heating and cooling costs. Even if that were not a problem, I'm not sure what you are suggesting. If your point is that Prescott Bush should not have been built, and the old housing should have been preserved, I might agree as a question of planning, but that ship has long sailed. If your point is that Prescott Bush should be demolished instead of renovated, then I disagree, because the renovated PB provides highly-functional housing for a vulnerable population. Multi-generational family living works for some people, but not that many, especially for the frail elderly. While my experience in anecdotal, in representing low-income tenants, much of the intergenerational living that I have seen is grandparent/grandchild, sometimes informally, but often through legal process. Your idea might be workable, but would require a massive influx of capital. Prescott Bush was expensive, but much less so than what you are proposing.

Posted by: Norton Street | November 18, 2009 4:32 PM

Bob,
I was complaining about the demolition of the previous housing for the original construction of Prescott Bush.
In a 3 story traditional house, the ground floor could be rented to an elderly person(s) while the 1 or 2 apartments/house above could be market rate. Its not difficult to reserve the ground floor apartments for a specific purpose. On any given block in New Haven, the ground floor apartments could be acquired on 10 consecutive houses, or on every other house on a block and these could be restricted to elderly people and in one of the apartments could be a small administrative office for people who look after the elderly on that block and this could be privately or city owned.
In the long term, it would be beneficial to demolish all the poorly designed, scaled and proportioned housing complexes in the city and replace them with buildings that are much more appropriate for a large New England town.
This suggestion does not work for everyone across the board, there are special conditions that require special buildings, locations and resources, but that is not what I'm talking about.