Best hope for Bromley
In one view, the Bromley-Heath housing development is a success story, a pioneering example of tenant empowerment.
To others, it is a vortex of drugs, gangs, and violence. Which view predominates depends, basically, on how recently Bromley-Heath has been the scene of a high-profile crime.
Anyone pushing the second view better be prepared to deal with Mildred Hailey, the white-haired matriarch of Bromley-Heath. Hailey was seething last week, thanks to a barrage of negative press reports. Some indicated the development would be taken over by the Boston Housing Authority this spring.
One passage in a recent Boston Herald editorial especially struck a nerve among Bromley tenants: "Bromley-Heath is an ungovernable city within a city, playing host to generation after hopeless generation of kids who from their basketball courts can see the office towers of the Back Bay. But most haven't a clue how to get from the lives of abject poverty they are leading to the gleaming towers in need of a skilled work force."
"That killed us," one tenant told me last week. "It's so unfair."
Just a couple of months ago, city officials were hailing a truce between two gangs, Heath Street and H-Block, for bringing peace to a battle that had resulted in at least 20 shootings. The November slaying of Jahmol Norfleet, a reputed H-Block member, shattered the peace. The slaying of Luis Gerena , 13, in Bromley-Heath Jan. 12 elevated the anxiety.
"I don't understand it," Hailey said, of the recent coverage. "We are working on the issues with the youth. The youth worked out the truce. It's painted us as the worst community in the city, which isn't true."
Few are as identified with a community as Hailey is with Bromley-Heath. She was the tenant leader who had the idea that tenants, rather than the Boston Housing Authority, could and should run the place. Since that battle was won, in 1973, she has been in charge. She is a legendary figure in public housing.
To generations of Bromley residents, she has been the ultimate security blanket, the person who always knew how to solve any problem. Her political clout is considerable. She is tough and resolute, a stern matriarch. Like any strong-willed leader, Hailey has rubbed some people the wrong way. She has been periodically accused of looking the other way at criminal activity, preferring to handle problems internally. She dismisses that criticism as unfounded and insulting.
In fact, Bromley residents have been at work to bring the crime problem under control, an effort that led to the truce between the warring gangs.
The Rev. Jeffrey Brown began working in the development last summer. He organized a young men's group that met once a week, and started a GED class to begin to address the development's unemployment. He helped broker the truce between Heath Street and H-Block.
"We were dealing with people law enforcement considers the worst of the worst," Brown said. "To us, they are young men in need of guidance and direction. And they responded."
Brown has worked with troubled youth since the early days of the Ten Point Coalition, but he barely knew Hailey when he was asked to help out in the development. He quickly learned that she was the focal point of the development.
"You can tell she loves the people there," he said. "They aren't just a printout in some agency."
A high-ranking BHA official flatly denies that the agency has any intention of taking over Bromley-Heath. It isn't as though the BHA doesn't have its own troubled properties to deal with.
Bromley-Heath has problems, but it is not an ungovernable mess. That the editorial suggested Bromley youths view the world "from a basketball court" speaks directly to its stereotypical view of the place and the people there.
The peace that reigned for a few months looks fragile. But Mildred Hailey's guiding belief has always been that, given a fair chance, the residents can solve their problems. They may yet again.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
