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The Hudson Gardens Public Housing sits on the farthest northern edge of the City of Poughkeepsie. These apartments were one of the first public housing complexes in the city.
These housing projects are way out on Smith Street, which is just at the very northeastern border of the City of Poughkeepsie. Now why would public housing be placed so far out in the margins of the city? It seems a long distance from the downtown or from any other shopping center.
First of all, there was available land. However, even more important in terms of social context, public housing is not something the city fathers would have wanted anywhere closer into the city.
So placing it out on the margins, particularly where you have dirty and noxious industry (such as auto-body shops, the city’s public transfer station for dumping bulk items, and other kinds of polluting types of industry) was one way of symbolizing their unhappiness with a public housing project.
So it’s very important to understand why a public housing project might have been sited where it is, in this case very far out from the other residential and higher-rent areas of the city.
The backside of Smith Street housing has lawns, gardens and playgrounds. These are pleasant backyards with safe spaces for children surrounded by walls and windows to observe from each apartment.
Smith Street housing was a problematic public housing project for many years, even after it was initially built. The question for many who worked in social services was how to normalize the situation and strengthen family lives. The housing began to be abandoned, because the issues were very difficult.
However, the community got together and realized they first needed to make it into a safe place. There needed to be places where mothers could watch their children, activities that could form itself into a community. Happily, it was accomplished, and the housing project was returned to solid rent-controlled housing by some architectural design changes, such as taking the anonymous backyard spaces, which were unsafe and filled with litter and trash, and turning them into functioning social open spaces. Also, there was a lot of effort on the part of a number of professionals from the city’s Department of Social Services who assisted the establishment of a neighborhood community development organization that empowered the project’s residents.
