Lulu Marketplace

Voices of Home in Bluegrass-Aspendale looks at the history of a public housing project in Lexington, Kentucky through many different kinds of voices. From former tenants to housing scholars, this book demonstrates how the concept of home means many things to different people. Situated within the East End neighborhood, a largely African-American community, Bluegrass-Aspendale represented the challenge of renewing neglected urban spaces and providing affordable housing. From its opening in 1938 as one the first public housing projects in the country, to its destruction in 2006 by way of a HOPE VI grant, the site has continuously evolved. At times espoused as model housing and others as a collector of crime and destitution, the now destroyed project illustrates the complexity of creating an ideal domestic space through a public housing program.