Public Housing Quotes

Public housing is more than just a place to live, public housing programs should provide opportunities to residents and their families. ~ Carolyn McCarthy

All the evidence over several decades cast a critical light on the high-rise as a viable social structure, but cost-effectiveness in the area of public housing and the profitability in the private sector kept pushing these vertical townships into the sky, against the real needs of their occupants. The psychology of high-rise life had been exposed with damaging results. Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here. ~ J.G. Ballard

Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees. ~ Justin Ker

One of the things that's amazing about reading the private writing of these folks is that they enthusiastically describe things which we have now seen, and which are widely regarded as unappealing. They'll write, "It's going to be beautiful, we're going to have a town of 1,000 stone buildings that are all identical." And we as modern readers think, we've seen that; that's bad Soviet architecture or a public housing project. Nobody fantasizes about living there. ~ Christine Jennings

In 2013, 1 percent of poor renters lived in rent-controlled units; 15 percent lived in public housing; and 17 percent received a government subsidy, mainly in the form of a rent-reducing voucher. The remaining 67 percent - 2 of every 3 poor renting families - received no federal assistance. 32 This drastic shortfall in government support, coupled with rising rent and utility costs alongside stagnant incomes, is the reason why most poor renting families today spend most of their income on housing. ~ Matthew Desmond

I'm a product of public housing. My parents grew up poor, but their dream was to own a home. ~ Gregory Meeks

In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists' lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo. ~ Jami Attenberg

What happens once you get a felony conviction? Now you are entering this American caste system where you can't get a job, you can't get a loan, you can't get a Pell grant, you can't get public housing. ~ Cory Booker

Public housing has two main functions: to meet a need and to punish the needy for having that need. In addition, it must never inspire resentment among those who get their shelter full price. ~ Richard Greenberg

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities. ~ William J. Clinton

We are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Total ghettoization, because they were in charge of public housing, the local council, and they deliberately located people in a ghetto situation in order to ensure that they maintained control. ~ John Hume

We have a responsibility to protect public housing residents from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, especially the elderly and children who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases. ~ Julian Castro

Lots of people have gone from public housing to do great things in the world and have a tremendous sense of duty to their fellow man because of it. ~ Jewel

I live in Brick Towers, a public housing project in Newark's Central Ward. I moved in when the projects were privately owned by a man who the residents and I believed was a grade A slumlord. ~ Cory Booker

If Mr Mah is unable to defend himself, he deserves to lose. No country in the world has given its citizens an asset as valuable as what we've given every family here. And if you say that policy is at fault, you must be daft." - when asked about a Straits Times report that cited keen opposition interest in contesting Tampines GRC, which National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan helms, so that they can raise the affordability of public housing as an election issue ~ Lee Kuan Yew

One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt - the child who never had a home of her own, who lives in her grandmother's home and then goes to school and then gets married and lives in her mother-in-law's homes, and then in public housing (like the White House and the State House) - housing becomes for Eleanor Roosevelt the most important issue. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Economic development is not a zero-sum game; the world does not need poor countries in order to have rich countries, nor must some people be poor in order for others to be rich. Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. They are poor despite the fact that Bill Gates lives in a big house. For a complex array of reasons, America's poor have not shared in the productivity gains spawned by Microsoft Windows. Bill Gates did not take their pie away; he did not stand in the way of their success or benefit from their misfortunes. ~ Charles Wheelan

Taxation for public housing destroys as many jobs in other lines as it creates in housing. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Later, when they sat down and went over the figures closely, they found an interesting pattern. Adamowski had received fifty-one percent of the votes, cast by white persons. But the enormous black vote had given Daley his victory. The people who were trapped in the ghetto slums and the nightmarish public housing projects, the people who had the worst school system and were most often degraded by the Police Department, the people who received the fewest campaign promises and who were ignored as part of the campaign trail, had given him his third term. They had done it quietly, asking for nothing in return. Exactly what they got. ~ Mike Royko

Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. ~ Charles Wheelan

By laying the groundwork for a system centered on home ownership rather than the public housing popular in Europe, the New Deal made possible the great postwar housing boom that populated the Sun Belt and boosted millions of Americans into the middle class, where, ironically, they often became Republicans. ~ Jonathan Alter

I've introduced eight bills to fight for support for our small businesses and ensure we get funding to rebuild public housing - among other things. ~ Cedric Richmond

As the data from the past decade clarify, there is no evidence that poverty causes crime but a great deal of evidence that crime causes poverty. By aligning themselves against the police, against commonsense tactics like stop and frisk, against metal detectors in public housing, against swift and certain punishment, and for a broad array of legal protections for accused criminals, liberals helped to aggrieve the lives of the poor and society as a whole. ~ Mona Charen

Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore from 1959 until 1990, making him, we believe, the longest serving prime minister anywhere. His party, the People's Action Party (PAP), dominated elections and that dominance was reinforced by the allocation of public housing, upon which most people in Singapore rely. Neighborhoods that fail to deliver PAP votes come election time found the provision and maintenance of housing cut off.18 In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went one step further. In an operation called Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Rubbish), he used bulldozers to demolish the houses and markets in neighborhoods that failed to support him in the 2005 election. ~ Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

If one is to use public funds he must accept a responsibility to the public. ~ Thomas Francis, Jr.

In presentations or speeches less really is more ~ Stephen Keague

Thanks are due in three quarters. To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with ~ Charlotte Bronte

Where you can starve to death in safety," I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you. When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food ~ Suzanne Collins

In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. ~ Edward Gibbon

There are three ways to spoil a public man: women, gambling, and listening to experts. The first is the pleasantest, the second is the fastest, but the third is the most certain. ~ Georges Pompidou

Ollie was soon invited to attend public rallies and private meetings in which the crowd called for the expulsion of all foreigners from Sweden calling them parasites that sucked money and health benefits from the social security system. In fact, most of the protestors and demonstrators themselves lived on social security money while most of the immigrants were gainfully employed and paid their taxes regularly. But these facts were irrelevant since prejudice and xenophobia were dominant. ~ Charles Z. David

[L]ike poems, cruising carves privacy out of public spaces. Poems are a kind of private communication that occurs in public speech. And I think cruising is that too: a training in reading occult codes; a way of seeing a significance in the world that most people don't see. ~ Garth Greenwell

Oh, we solved that long ago!" Rubedo chuckled. "I believe that was Greengallows, Henrik Greengallows? Is that right, my love? Ancient history has never been my subject. A famous case study even reported a method for turning straw into gold! The young lady who discovered it wrote a really rather thin paper - but she toured the lecture circuit for years! Her firstborn refined it, so that she could make straw from gold and solve the terrible problem of housing for destitute brownies."

"Hedwig Greengallows, my dear," mused Citrinitas. "Henrik was just her mercurer. Men are so awfully fond of attributing women's work to their brothers! ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Before AIM, Indians were dispirited, defeated, and culturally dissolving. People were ashamed to be Indian. You didn't see the young people wearing braids or chokers or ribbon shirts in those days. Hell, I didn't wear 'em. People didn't Sun Dance, they didn't Sweat, they were losing their languages. Then there was that spark at Alcatraz, and we took off. Man, we took a ride across this country. We put Indians and Indian rights smack dab in the middle of the public consciousness for the first time since the so-called Indian wars. ~ Russell Means

I'm worried about looking like a bad person when, in fact, I try to be a good person. I don't like the public image that I've been dressed with and it worries me. ~ Rachel Johnson

Naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones ~ Susan Cain

Despite the painful changes we have had to make, we continue to believe in the St. Louis market. And we are hoping to add flights, in a careful way, as the economics of our business improve and the demands of the traveling public in St. Louis become clear. ~ Gerard Arpey

Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and in the end makes itself irresistible. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There can be no complete and permanent reform of the civil service until public opinion emancipates congressmen from all control and influence over government patronage. Legislation is required to establish the reform. No proper legislation is to be expected as long as members of Congress are engaged in procuring offices for their constituents. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a peoples Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

My throne for your throne,' Damen said. He pushed back the fabric. It was more bare skin than Laurent had ever shown in public, on display to the entire tent. 'Help me regain my kingdom, and I'll see you King of Vere.' Damen fitted the cuff to Laurent's left wrist. 'I'm overjoyed to wear a gift that reminds me of you,' said Laurent. The cuff locked into place. ~ C.S. Pacat

If you really want to be traumatized, then consider this: Why the hell isn't Pooh wearing pants? He's a bear who lives in a house and sleeps in a bed. He drinks tea out of a cup. And yet he wears no pants with his polo shirt? I mean, is Pooh fully anthropomorphized or not? Because, if he is, then he's a 'public lewdness' charge waiting to happen. ~ Lauren Rowe

I think the social faux par is probably what most people fear ... more people fear public speaking than death and that's because we don't want to make a fool of ourselves. It's fundamental. ~ Ricky Gervais

Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I don't enjoy doing the daily stuff ... but I would love to do something like the series that I did on 'Change India.' That was not just news. The programme was based in public policy, so that kind of influences change. ~ Raghav Bahl

The public has always expected me to be a playboy, and a decent chap never lets his public down. ~ Errol Flynn

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right. ~ Samuel Johnson

Culture is public, because meaning is ~ Clifford Geertz

I don't know if I'm a heartthrob or if I want to be one! I heard that I get the most fan mail. It's very flattering, and lovely to be popular with the public. ~ Christopher Parker

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights. ~ William Blackstone

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world's biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level. ~ John McMurtry

I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The public education movement has also been an anti-Christian movement ... We can change education in America if you put Christian principles in and Christian pedagogy in. In three years, you would totally revolutionize education in America. ~ Pat Robertson

People love to see public figures get taken down a notch, and by the same token, everyone loves to be the center of attention, even when there's a target on their forehead. ~ Jeff Ross

The public doesn't particularly care for advertisements. ~ John C. Malone

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it. ~ Jascha Heifetz

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith." ~ Thomas Jefferson

When people are forced to respect civil rights and human rights or face legal consequences, they don't like it. Civil rights laws will be scrupulously observed only when people accept that it is morally wrong to oppress or discriminate against fellow human beings. That awareness can come only through education. A law will enable integration in public places, but it does not foster understanding or appreciation in the hearts of people who continue to live with their prejudices. ~ Arun Gandhi

We are soldiers who devote ourselves to arms not for the invasion of other countries, but for the defense of our own, not for the gratification of our private interests but for public security ~ Nathanael Greene