In less than a year at Santa Rita Courts, Antasia Smith has found community in a way she didn’t expect or previously have: neighborly barbecues, a bustling playground for her kids, friends she can call on for a missing recipe ingredient or a tissue box.
Soon, that will be gone. And though she will miss it, Smith, 28 and a mother of three, understands the change to come. As residents of the country’s oldest public housing complex, she and her neighbors have endured the inconveniences of living in a group of largely uninsulated, gray-and-brown brick buildings, some more than 85 years old. Rooms often fail to cool in the summer or heat in the winter, adding to the discomfort.
As her neighbor Patricia Owens — a 13-year resident known by Santa Rita children as “Mama Trish” — put it: “They need to break them [the buildings] down and put them back up.”…