Boston Housing Authority

A new pilot program will bring cleaner heating and cooling to public housing residents in Dorchester using ground-source heat pumps.

Local, state and federal officials gathered Monday at the Ausonia Apartments in the North End to celebrate the allocation of $1.75 million in federal funding to the apartments, a public housing complex for the elderly and people with disabilities.

When the first rehabbed units in the Mission Main public housing development came online in 1999, it was the culmination of a seven-year, nearly $100 million process during which the 1940 brick-and-concrete development was razed and rebuilt as a community of three-story wood-frame buildings.

When Zandria White was growing up in the Alice Taylor apartments in the 1970s and ’80s, the idea of buying a home was fairly remote. Her family sometimes struggled to put food on the table. Her father died in 1980 of an overdose.

Doris Bunte, the first Black woman elected to the state Legislator and the first Black person to run the Boston Housing Authority, died Monday at age 87.