Clarisa Alayeto (She/Her/Ella)
Patterson Houses , 1982-2009
I dont know where my family would be without Public Housing. My parents were Cuban Immigrants and when they arrived in the Country in 1980 my paternal grandparents were living in Patterson Houses. Here I am with my paternal step-grandmother, but I never called her step anything. No one ever knew that she wasn’t my biological grandmother. She was always ma mom or mami. People would always tell us how much we looked alike and we’d always look at each other and smile. She was a strong Puerto Rican woman. She raised me. She was from the Barrio, East Harlem, 111st to be exact. But when they started building the projects and knocking down the tenement buildings, my great grandmother moved into Taft Houses but my grandmother asked to go to the Bronx. The rest was history. She resided in Patterson Houses for 50 years. Raised a lot of us in that apartment. A two-bedroom apartment that felt like a mansion growing up and I bet this sink felt like a full-size pool to me. My grandmother passed in 2019. But public housing is still an important part of my life as my mother continues to live on 111st in Jefferson Houses where she is now raising her grandchildren.