| dc.description.abstract | “Reimagining Public Safety” is a sociological study of transformations in collective efficacy and community control at Mildred C. Hailey apartments, a Boston public housing development from the 1960s to 2022. In the late 1960s, Boston public housing began to decline. Broken windows, vacant apartments, drugs, gang violence, and police misconduct were among a host of issues experienced by Boston’s Black public housing residents. At Mildred C. Hailey apartments, residents conducted massive cleanups, protested their living conditions, and demanded greater control over their safety and quality of life. Tenant activism ultimately resulted in the formation of the Bromley-Heath Tenant Management Corporation (TMC), making Bromley-Heath the nation’s first tenant-managed public housing development.
My dissertation examines community-based approaches to safety and quality of life issues through the case of the Bromley-Heath TMC, which managed the Mildred C. Hailey development from 1971 to 2012. The Bromley-Heath TMC not only controlled managerial functions, but also formed its own security patrol. This study compares the managerial and public safety behaviors of the Bromley- Heath TMC (a community-controlled institution) to those of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) and the Boston Police Department (BPD) (state-controlled institutions).
Drawing on interview, archival, ethnographic, and administrative data, this study finds that in its first phase of management (i.e., 1970s-mid-2000s), the Bromley-Heath TMC was perceived as more effective at managing the development than the BHA. This was in part due to the high levels of collective efficacy among the Bromley-Heath TMC staff and residents. Given their shared values and expectations for social control, Bromley-Heath TMC management and residents worked together to improve safety and quality of life at the development.
Furthermore, this study finds that from the late 1960s to the 1990s, when state actors increasingly sought punitive approaches to public safety concerns in racial minority communities, the Bromley-Heath TMC prioritized rehabilitative alternatives to arrests and evictions. This was in part due to the negotiated coexistence between TMC staff and residents. By the mid-2000s, however, during the TMC’s second management phase, community collective efficacy declined, and ethnic tensions arose between the majority African-American TMC staff and the majority Hispanic tenant body. This was among several factors that contributed to the dissolution of the Bromley-Heath TMC in 2012.
Overall, the study of the Bromley-Heath TMC demonstrates that while not a perfect solution to the crises facing U.S, public housing developments, community control can and has led to significant improvements in neighborhood safety and quality of life. This study showcases the highs, the lows, and everything in-between in the Bromley-Heath TMC’s 40-year-reign at Mildred C. Hailey apartments. | |
