background : : : historical context of abandoned houses in Providence

On a national level, abandoned houses have blighted urban neighborhoods since the beginning of the twentieth century. After World War II, federal subsidies to build highways accelerated the development of the suburbs. Driven by increasing perception that America's cities were dangerous, dirty, and unhealthy, young families fled urban centers, taking with them a valuable tax base and many would-be owners of urban property.(1) Federal policy also favored new construction in the suburbs over renovation of urban buildings, New England in particular was hard-hit by the suburbanization. Cities such as Providence and Worcester, once industrial behemoths, struggled to find their place in the changing industrial landscape.

Starting in the nineteenth century, American housing reform focused entirely on the "sanitary and social pathology of the urban slum."(2) These early housing reformers insisted that underutilized buildings "not only nurtured the cycle of disease and poverty, but also contributed to family and social demoralization." (3) Because of this, housing improvement became a tool of social improvement in an urban community.
Indeed, urban planners in the early twentieth-century attributed so-called "problem houses" to community neglect and ignorance.(4) These slums, regarded as dangerous and unhealthy, were also considered a scar on civics and community values. Every "problem house" can be attributed to neglect and ignorance. It is no wonder that the cities slowly were perceived as more dangerous, dirty, and unhealthy.

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