Chicago Public Housing

        Throughout World War II, the Chicago Housing Authority’s focus shifted to creating housing for the workers in war industries. Altgeld Gardens, built in the Riverdale neighborhood, had 1,500 units and was designed exclusively to house black war workers. After the war ended, the CHA provided temporary housing for veterans. This guarantee for “temporary housing” was usually satisfied by cheap plywood homes which led to miserable living conditions for veterans. Around this time, the CHA abandoned the Neighborhood Composition Rule, and introduced a short-term policy of racial integration. This led to numerous confrontations between blacks and whites.

        The Housing Act of 1949, which provided funding for public housing, stated a goal for “a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family.” Soon after Congress passed the Housing Act the CHA was prepared with a map of proposed sites for projects to be built on open land throughout the city, but the city council rejected this map. White aldermen rejected plans for public housing in their wards. CHA’s policy thereafter was to build family housing only in black residential areas or around existing projects. The city council’s rejection of the map proposed by the CHA explains the concentration of public housing on the South and West Sides.

        After 1950, many of the public housing projects began to rapidly deteriorate. Many of the buildings had serious design flaws, combined with bad maintenance, the deterioration became accelerated dramatically. During this time, CHA managers stopped screening applicants and the socioeconomic mix of tenants changed. This change was a cause of the CHA having to accommodate Chicagoans displaced by urban renewal, expressway construction, and other forms of gentrification around the city.

        By the late 1950’s, it was clear that the projects had serious physical problems. Despite this, the CHA continued to build high-rise projects in predominately black areas. In 1968, the federal government stopped funding high-rise buildings for family housing. By this time, the CHA had built 168 high-rise buildings with approximately 19,700 apartments for families.

        In 1966 a group of tenants filed a lawsuit against the CHA, with allegations that the agency was racially segregating by putting projects in the ghettoes of Chicago. In Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, a federal judge put a stop to the building of any future public housing projects in black residential areas. In addition, he ordered the CHA to build scattered-site housing elsewhere in the city. Following this court case, the CHA didn’t build anymore than a few scattered-site housing developments and almost all of the housing was intended for the elderly, this housing could be built in the white sections of the city.

        From the time of the Gautreaux decision, family high rises have been the source of many social problems and the buildings continue to deteriorate. In 1996, the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took control of CHA operations based on mismanagement and poor performance. HUD replaced the housing act altogether after taking over. In its place, the government drew up a wide-ranging housing law that, among other things, established what’s become known as the "viability test."  

Under the law, if officials judge that it’s more expensive to rehab a public housing building than to tear it down and give residents Section 8 housing vouchers to subsidize the cost of rent paid to private landlords, they’re required to demolish the building. In Chicago, almost 18,000 public housing units failed the test--a full 58 percent of CHA apartments.

The 1996 law also suspended the "one-for-one replacement" rule that required a new unit to be provided or built for every public housing unit demolished. That cleared the way for the Plan for Transformation--a barely disguised land grab that allows property developers to get their hands on prime real estate, while leaving public housing residents wondering where they will live. 

Under the plan, the high-rises will be pulled down, and "mixed-income" developments will go up in their place. But even the CHA admits that there won’t be nearly enough housing units to go around. Only one-third of the new units will be reserved for public housing families (earning up to $19,500 per year for a family of four). Another third will be rented or sold at reduced rates to low-income families (earning $19,500 to $47,800 per year for a family of four). The rest will be sold or rented on the open market.

The CHA admits that 98.4 percent of current public housing families earn less than $20,000 per year--meaning that an overwhelming majority of families won’t be able to get into the new developments. According to the Chicago Reporter, "16,183 families could be vying for half of the available family units--7,647." And that number doesn’t even include the more than 29,000 families currently on the waiting list for public housing.

According to the CHA, the goals of this program included renewing the physical structures of many of the CHA buildings, promoting self-sufficiency for public housing residents, and reforming the administration of the CHA. Within the plan, approximately 25,000 public residences are to be built or rehabilitated by the end of 2009. These 25,000 units represent the number of leaseholders that were living in CHA units at the time the plan was put in place. Approximately 6,100 family homes are currently scheduled to be redeveloped as new mixed-income housing, 9,500 units are reserved for senior citizens and will also be rehabilitated. The remaining 9,400 apartments will be either reconstructed or rehabbed.

This “Plan for Transformation” proposed by the CHA, received approval from HUD in 2000, which just so happened to be a presidential election year. The influence the Daley family provides to the Democratic Party both nationally and locally is well known. It’s clear why this plan was approved in Washington. Anticipating the upcoming presidential election and mindful of Illinois’s status as a swing state in presidential races, the democrats wanted to strengthen their alliance with Mayor Daley. One direct way of sealing this alliance was by approving the CHA Plan for Transformation.

To this day, the transformation project is behind schedule and is struggling to with funding to keep up the pace outlined in 2000. Mixed-income housing is still a work in progress and it is not yet known whether or not it will be a success. Without a doubt, the biggest problem the transformation will encounter will be the tens of thousands of people stranded with no where to live.

In conclusion, the CHA’s “Plan for Transformation” looked good on paper in 2000, but in all reality, it is not going to work. The future for thousands of low-income families are as unclear as the CHA’s current intentions. Many of the current housing projects should be demolished. But leaving the tenants of those projects stranded and without homes isn’t fair. The city of Chicago already has a large homeless population, the displacement of public housing residents will only contribute to that problem. As highlighted in several of the sources I have used, the public housing issue seems to heat up only around election time. In the meantime, there is little focus within city council about what needs to be done to make this plan work. It is now seven years after the plan was accepted by HUD and it has no chance of being completed by its deadline. It is clear; the City Council of Chicago needs to give more attention to the Chicago public housing issue and revise the “Plan for Transformation.”

 

 

Works Cited

Bennett, Larry, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright, eds. Where are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities. London: M.E. Sharpe.  

"CHA." Chicago Housing Authority. <www.thecha.org>.  

Chicago Assembly. Affordable Housing and Public Policy: Strategies for Metropolitan Chicago. Ed. Lawrence B. Joseph. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993.  

"Chicago Public Housing Residents: Kicked Out." Socialist Worker Online. <http://www.socialistworker.org/2002-1/410/410_06_ChcgoPublicHousing.shtml>.  

Choldin, Harvey M. "Chicago Housing Authority." Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005.  

Oldweiler, Cory, and Brian J. Rogal. "Public Housing: Read Between the Lines." Chicago Reporter. <http://www.chicagoreporter.com/2000/03-2000/032000plan.htm>.  

Venkatesh, Sudhir A. American Project. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.  

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