A Slumless America : Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housing

Discover the extraordinary legacy of Mary K. Simkhovitch, a trailblazing advocate for public housing and urban reform, in this first-ever compelling biography. Betty Boyd Caroli's biography of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch is the first full-length work on a seminal figure in the settlement house movement, which spearheaded efforts to improve the life of immigrants and to counter urban squalor in cities around America in the early 19th century.Greenwich House, the community center Simkhovitch founded in 1902 in Greenwich Village, then a destination point for new immigrants to New York, quickly gained a reputation equal to that of Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, providing services in health, recreation, education, and the arts (which Greenwich House continues to do to this day).Simkhovitch became a tireless advocate of public housing and has been called by some "the mother of public housing." She played a central role in designing and administering the first public housing projects in