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More than 400,000 people live in public housing in New York City, and thousands more are on wait-lists for available apartments.  When Radio Rookie Winnie Guo’s family first moved into public housing, it felt like a big step up.  Then 14-year-old Winnie started wondering about how public housing can affect the aspirations and focus of kids who grow up there.

Four Radio Rookies, who are all very recent immigrants from the Caribbean, now attend high school in the heart of what was the epicenter of the Crown Heights riots 20 years ago.  But, as newcomers, the Rookies know nothing about the neighborhood’s fraught history. 

Rookie Reporters Yun Mei and Ricardo Castro profile Aida Salgado, a mother who’s been working for years to make the neighborhood she grew up in safer for young people coming up now.