CHICAGO (AP) — As Rahm Emanuel begins his term as Chicago mayor, one daunting challenge he inherits from his predecessor has barely been mentioned: how to finish nationally watched public housing reforms while the city is drowning in debt.
A half-century ago, Mayor Richard J. Daley built
miles of concrete high-rises to house — or, as critics said, warehouse — the
city's poor. Decades later, his son tore most of them down in an ambitious
improvement project.
The younger Daley demolished or renovated infamous
developments like Cabrini-Green and scattered an estimated 100,000 of Chicago's
poorest residents into other living arrangements such as mixed-income
developments and private apartments paid for with rent vouchers. Now it will be
up to Emanuel to keep the commitment to those reforms even while making deep
financial cuts.
Last month, as Richard M. Daley approached
retirement, the Chicago Housing Authority released a first-of-its-kind report
on residents who were forced to leave the high-rises. It concluded that the
changes made life safer, more stable and more hopeful for thousands of
families.
But while Daley was praised by some for abandoning
the high-rise system, housing advocates say the changes have done little to
break the grip of poverty.
"As an urban-development strategy, the
transformation is an A. It gets a far poorer grade if it is approached as a
strategy to help low-income populations to achieve social and economic
stability in their lives," said Columbia University sociologist Sudhir
Venkatesh, who spent 18 months living in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes as a
graduate student in the early 1990s.
Some observers, like author Alex Kotlowitz, fear
the disappearance of the high-rises means Chicago's poverty has passed out of
sight and out of mind.
When the high-rises existed, "you couldn't
drive into the city from the west or south side and not notice those monoliths
that rose to the heavens," Kotlowitz said.
The towers were a constant reminder that parts of
the city "were completely neglected," said Kotlowitz, whose 1992 book
"There Are No Children Here" chronicled the lives of two brothers in
the Henry Horner Homes projects. "And now that's gone."
The first Mayor Daley didn't want high-rises and
had been warned they'd be hard to manage and unwholesome for families. But the
white voters who were the backbone of Daley's political machine didn't want
public housing in their neighborhoods. Plus, empty land in the city was scarce,
and the federal government balked at the cost of low-rises.
So up the high-rises went, and every dire
prediction came true. The buildings were not well-maintained, and crime, gangs
and drugs soon became rampant.
In 2000, the housing authority launched its Plan
for Transformation, which is slated to be complete in 2015, five years behind
schedule. As the plan was being developed, Emanuel was vice-chairman of the
housing authority — a job he held from 1999 to 2001, before he was a North Side
congressman and White House chief of staff.
He now concedes the effort needs improvement.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Emanuel
said the plan's primary goal — short of ending poverty — was to eliminate the
isolation of high-rise residents from the wider society.
"In every way, the residents were literally
cordoned off," Emanuel said. The vision was to reintegrate them by
transforming public housing.
"There have been successes. There have been
clear setbacks," he said, noting how the depressed housing market made it
difficult to complete the plan. "From where we came from, (the new
situation is) far superior, and there's more to be done."
Other cities — including Atlanta, Pittsburgh and
Seattle — have undertaken similar overhauls. New York City kept its high-rises
and had more success maintaining them.
For some CHA residents, the demolition was a
catalyst to seek a better life. For others, the plan has not moved them any
closer to self-sufficiency. They still cannot find work, still suffer substance-abuse
problems and still rely on government help to survive. And many continue to
live in neighborhoods that are less diverse and more dangerous than the rest of
Chicago.
"They tore down our buildings, and they told
us we were going to move out into the world, and they were going to take care
of us, and we were going to be fine ... and none of it was true," said
Catherine Means, who lived in the Stateway Gardens complex in the late 1990s.
"It was always warm. It was near transportation. It wasn't hard — we only
had to pay a little bit of a rent, and a little bit of a light bill, and you
were fine."
Means, a single mother of five, has had trouble
making ends meet since leaving for a private-market apartment she pays for
using CHA vouchers. Now, she said, she's still unemployed, and her heating and
utility bills are "out of control."
But Diane Wallace, 52, and she and her asthmatic
children do not miss the lack of security, frequent floods and resulting mold
in their home at the ABLA Homes near downtown.
"I got tired of the violence. It wasn't a
decent place to raise my kids, I just wanted to get out of there," Wallace
said. The projects were "a place for me to lay my head until I get
something better, then I moved on," she said. "The only which way I'm
going is up."
In its report, the CHA said more residents are
reporting employment — from 15 percent when the Plan for Transformation began
to 42 percent now. And average incomes are up from $10,000 to $19,000. The
housing authority's CEO, Lewis Jordan, acknowledged the numbers need to
increase, but said the progress represents "incremental steps."
Of the 16,500 families displaced, 56 percent remain
in the CHA system, according to the report. The agency says it has lost track
of 13 percent, while another 9 percent have been evicted. Small percentages are
living in private housing and some have died.
Venkatesh doubts some of the numbers. He believes
CHA has lost track of at least 40 percent of relocated residents.
Still, he's hopeful that Emanuel will move the
city's public-housing efforts forward.
"He was a champion for public-housing
families. He strongly resisted efforts to reduce services," Venketesh
said. "He wanted a rational, sane relocation plan."
Associated Press writers Don Babwin and Deanna Bellandi
contributed to this report.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
