For the past three years, Joy Johnson and her Westhaven neighbors have met every other week to plan their community’s redevelopment. They’ve decided on the pitch of their porch roofs and where plants and playgrounds will go. They’ve added more units, and a building specifically for seniors, so that more people can live in their neighborhood.
Johnson and her neighbors have dreamed of this for years. Westhaven is the city’s oldest public housing community, built in the 1960s, and it hasn’t had any major renovations or upgrades since, despite residents’ pleadings.
In 1998, Johnson founded the Public Housing Association of Residents with the goal of amplifying the voices of the people living in publicly subsidized housing…