Chicago Housing moves tenants out--but not up; Ex-residents still live in Poor, Black, Segregated areas
/- Originally published by the Chicago Tribune February 27, 2005 Sunday
At the halfway mark of Chicago's decade-long "Plan for Transformation," 4,600 families have been moved out of the notorious public housing high-rises with the promise that they could find better homes and neighborhoods.
But the latest figures obtained by the Tribune show that three-quarters of those families are now concentrated in struggling, segregated communities such as Englewood, Roseland and South Shore.
Designed in part to move Chicago Housing Authority tenants into areas with better schools and more job opportunities, the migration has largely perpetuated economic and racial isolation, the new numbers show.
"People are not moving into better conditions," said Janet Smith, an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of an upcoming book on public housing. "Their lives are not going to change dramatically."
Critics say the migration of families has just exported the problems of public housing to increasingly unstable residential blocks.
Justifiably or not, CHA families in those neighborhoods are blamed for everything from trash in the streets to drug-related shootings on previously quiet blocks.
Predominantly African-American neighborhoods are absorbing the most public housing families. South Shore has taken in 394. Englewood: 307. West Englewood: 306. Roseland: 216. Chicago Lawn: 194.
In contrast, many predominantly white or integrated neighborhoods are unaffected. Three of the largest rental markets in the city--Edgewater, Uptown and Lakeview--have received only 14 total families from public housing. Bridgeport has four; Lincoln Park, two. Several Northwest Side enclaves have none at all, CHA figures show.
The new numbers debunk a misperception that many went to the south suburbs--only 141 families have moved outside Chicago.
The Plan for Transformation is the nation's most ambitious effort to overcome the failed 20th Century policy of warehousing the poor in cramped and crime-ridden high-rises. One of the goals is to "promote the deconcentration of low income housing."
Eventually, those who were moved out of the high-rises are supposed to be able to move into rehabbed apartments and new townhouses being built to replace the Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green and other CHA complexes. But critics say they fear that migration to the neighborhoods is permanent.
The CHA is more hopeful.
"At the halfway point, people are in better places, but there is still work to do," said Meghan Harte, CHA's director of resident services. "A lot of families are very nervous about leaving the communities they are in. They don't see their communities as isolated, poor and segregated."
On average, they now live in areas where four out of 10 households are in poverty. In public housing, roughly eight out of 10 families were in poverty, Harte said.
Community conflicts
In some neighborhoods, longtime homeowners are struggling for a tenuous peace with a transformation they didn't want.
"We let them know upfront we won't stand for certain behavior," said Emily Coleman, 68, who bought her home on the 7300 block of South Aberdeen Street in Englewood in 1963.
Now she mows the lawns of some of the seven homes on her block occupied by families using subsidized rent vouchers known as Section 8. She also leads a trash detail along the tranquil street of brick and stucco houses.
Yolanda Stone, 31, said she appreciates the vigilance. The single mother of two has lived in Englewood since being moved out of the Robert Taylor Homes in 2000. She has spent the last 18 months in a Section 8 house on Aberdeen, where she helped neighbors plant flowers in vacant lots and hosted a popular haunted house last Halloween.
"You feel like everyone is staring at you, saying, mmm-hmm, she's a Section 8," said Stone, an office administrative aide, about the experience of moving from public housing into a single-family neighborhood.
Like her homeowner neighbors, Stone said, she's concerned about "the riffraff" still moving into Englewood from CHA developments.
Stone said moving out of Taylor was the best thing that could happen to her.
After leaving public housing, she enrolled in parenting classes at Kennedy-King College and now works as an administrative aide for an Englewood accountant.
"A lot of people fell apart when they left the projects because all they know is those buildings," Stone said. "It's psychologically traumatic for some people and they probably need counseling. Me, I got my act together."
In numerous neighborhoods, the migration dovetails with middle-class black flight and high mortgage foreclosure rates.
Real estate investors snap up houses and two-flats and rush them into the subsidized voucher program. As homes become rental units, tensions between old and new residents boil over--among adults and children alike.
In some neighborhoods, block watch groups have responded to the influx with sidewalk signs prohibiting drug dealing, loud music, littering and loitering.
"There's nothing you can do about it but walk up and down the street and cry," said Dolores Johnson, a local block watch captain in Chicago Lawn, blaming most of the problems on families who moved from public housing via Section 8 vouchers. Many mornings, she said, older residents go through the block picking up empty beer bottles and other trash left from the night before.
"You can't tell them anything or they'll get in your face and curse you out, making threats on you," said Johnson, 66.
Likewise, many of the former high-rise residents say they don't fit in.
Linda Morgan, 43, said she worries about the gunshots she sometimes hears at night. Keeping mostly to herself inside a drafty five-bedroom house she rents with her voucher on 118th Street, the recently married mother of five left the Robert Taylor Homes in 2001.
"I'm not saying it was any better at Taylor, but at least you knew everyone there, which made you feel a little safer," said Morgan, who has lived in two houses since leaving public housing.
It's a battle of perception. Those who have relocated from public housing account for only 13 percent of all the Section 8 voucher holders in Chicago, but fingers point at them for many problems.
Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) blames the migration for numerous shootings in her ward and said leftover territorial frictions from public housing caused a rumble this month between students at two South Shore elementary schools.
Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said that when she hears of neighborhood flare-ups in Chatham--where 163 CHA families have relocated--she checks with the agency and finds that "more often than not," the instigators are from the agency's developments.
But a neighborhood complaint hot line established last year has fielded only about 100 calls, with few problems traced back to former public housing residents, said William Riley, executive director of CHAC, the private company that manages the voucher program for CHA.
"I don't think we're going to get away from perceptions," he said.
The moves out of public housing were designed to be temporary, with families retaining the right to return to their old communities once reconstruction is finished by the end of the decade. But housing advocates warn the migration may be permanent.
Many voucher holders will not pass stringent requirements to get back into the CHA's new developments, housing advocates predict.
After years in crumbling towers, former tenants also like the bigger, if often run-down, private homes they can get with vouchers. Also, family ties keep many rooted in disadvantaged areas.
"So far, we aren't seeing a great deal of interest in going back," said Paul Fischer, a Lake Forest College politics professor who has tracked the CHA migration.
In Chicago Lawn, longtime homeowner Edna Hardick has watched subsidized renters replace deceased neighbors and others who moved away or lost their houses to foreclosure.
"We're losing our community," said Hardick, who has lived on Claremont Avenue for 29 years.
Now, she's considering moving. It's a common response. Several neighborhoods experiencing the influx from public housing have stagnant homeownership and high rates of mortgage foreclosure.
In Chicago Lawn, for example, homeownership dropped from 53.2 percent in 1970 to 51.6 percent in 2000 despite an increase in homeownership citywide. And 735 houses in the neighborhood went into foreclosure in 2002-03, studies show.
Those factors create a fertile environment for real estate speculators seeking the guaranteed income that comes with participating in the CHA's housing subsidy program, neighborhood activists said.
"Single-family, owner-occupied neighborhoods are being transformed into absentee-owner, rental neighborhoods," said Mike Reardon, a director with Neighborhood Housing Services, a group that refurbishes homes and sells them to moderate-income buyers.
Lawsuit alleges segregation
Settlement discussions continued before a federal judge on Friday in a lawsuit charging the CHA with systematic segregation of the former public housing tenants. Those allegations have been backed up by academic researchers and by former U.S. Atty. Thomas Sullivan, a CHA monitor who has blamed the funneling of public housing tenants into poor, black neighborhoods on CHA's rapid pace of move-outs and cozy relationships between relocation counselors and certain landlords.
CHA officials argue they've developed a solid strategy to persuade public housing tenants to move to areas of low poverty. Each year, tenants are counseled about middle-income enclaves throughout the city that have improved school test scores and job opportunities. Right now, more than 400 Section 8 apartments in such "areas of opportunity" are available but vacant, the CHA said.
"Families have to accept some of the burden and the responsibility," said Sudhir Venkatesh, a Columbia University researcher who has been intensely critical of the Plan for Transformation.
Some aldermen are seeking their own solutions.
Jaded by the CHA's inability to meet its lofty goal to transform the lives of families, Ald. William Beavers (7th) has exacted a promise from the CHA to stop targeting his South Side neighborhood for public housing relocation.
Also, he has encouraged developers to turn some 500 rental units into condos in the last three years, adding to another worry among affordable-housing advocates about excessive condo conversions in Chicago.
"One bad tenant can clear out a whole building," Beavers said. "When you own, you take care. I'm condoing everything possible."
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CHA overhaul
As the Chicago Housing Authority replaces public housing high-rises with mixed income developments, most of the 4,600 displaced families issued federal "Section 8" rent vouchers have moved to struggling areas on the city's South and West Sides. CHA critics say the moves mirror old segregation patterns for public housing and have caused conflict in the affected communities.
POVERTY LEVEL
(Map of Chicago)
15% or less
16-25%
26-35%
More than 35%
3,635: Number of relocated families from the Chicago Housing Authority, out of 4,459 remaining in Chicago, that have moved to the areas outlined on the map.
| AREAS WITH 100 OR MORE FORMER CHA FAMILIES | ||
| NEIGHBORHOOD | FAMILIES | POVERTY RATE* |
| 1. South Shore | 394 | 27.1 |
| 2. Englewood | 307 | 43.8 |
| 3. West Englewood | 306 | 32.1 |
| 4. Greater Grand Crossing | 238 | 28.5 |
| 5. Woodlawn | 233 | 39.4 |
| 6. Grand Boulevard | 228 | 46.9 |
| 7. Washington Park | 227 | 51.6 |
| 8. Roseland | 216 | 17.6 |
| 9. Auburn Gresham | 211 | 20.6 |
| 10. Chicago Lawn | 194 | 19.8 |
| 11. West Pullman | 167 | 22.0 |
| 12. Chatham | 163 | 17.7 |
| 13. Austin | 162 | 24.1 |
| 14. South Chicago | 154 | 29.7 |
| 15. North Lawndale | 123 | 45.2 |
| 16. East Garfield Park | 107 | 35.2 |
| 17. Humboldt Park | 104 | 31.1 |
| 18. New City | 101 | 34.5 |
| AREAS WITH MOST RENTAL UNITS | ||
| (Number in parenthesis represents relocated CHA families) | ||
| APARTMENT UNITS | ||
| (Map of Chicago) | ||
| 5,000 or less | ||
| 5,001-10,000 | ||
| 10,001-15,000 | ||
| More than 15,000 | ||
| NEIGHBORHOOD | RENTAL UNITS | |
| A. Lakeview (3) | 39,841 | |
| B. Near North Side (11) | 26,620 | |
| C. West Town (24) | 25,107 | |
| D. Uptown (5) | 23,279 | |
| E. Lincoln Park (2) | 21,432 | |
| F. Edgewater (6) | 21,172 | |
| G. Rogers Park (34) | 20,849 | |
| H. Austin (162) | 20,123 | |
| I. Logan Square (22) | 19,995 | |
| J. South Shore (394) | 19,726 | |
| PREVIOUS RESIDENCES | ||
| A majority of the CHA families moved out of the developments below: | ||
| Rockwell Gardens | ||
| Cabrini-Green | ||
| ABLA Homes | ||
| Ickes | ||
| Stateway Gardens | ||
| Ida B. Wells | ||
| Robert Taylor Homes | ||
* For poverty rate, the U.S. Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is poor. In 2000, a family of four with two children would be considered poor if its income before taxes was less than $17,463.
Note: CHA defines a family as an average of three people.
Gentry Sleets, Marty Bach and Max Rust/Chicago Tribune
- See microfilm for complete graphic.
- - -
MANY CHA FAMILIES MOVE TO STRUGGLING NEIGHBORHOODS
| TOP FIVE DESTINATIONS | |
| NEIGHBORHOOD | FAMILIES |
| 1. South Shore | 394 |
| 2. Englewood | 307 |
| 3. West Englewood | 306 |
| 4. Greater Grand Crossing | 238 |
| 5. Woodlawn | 233 |
| Chicago total | 4,459 |
| Living outside Chicago* | 141 |
| Total families | 4,600 |
| *Includes those living in the suburbs and out of state | |
| Source: CHA | |
| Chicago Tribune. | |
| - See microfilm for complete graphic. | |
| (Chicago Early Edition, News section, Page 1.) | |
