From the almshouses of 17th century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-20th century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years.