By Daniel Brown<\/p>\n
On a spring morning, with crisp air and blue skies outside, Theresa Cook, 51, sits down on the beige couch in her living room. She wears shorts, a gray t-shirt and a blue bandana around her head. Her two-year-old son sleeps beside her. Her nephew awakes from a mattress on the ground, tossing off an orange blanket.<\/p>\n
Cook calls her sister into the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cSharon\u2026Come in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Sharon says from the bedroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what,\u201d Cook replies.<\/p>\n
Wearing a pink t-shirt depicting an ice cream cone, Sharon Kransuch, 68, ambles into the living room and sits down on the couch. She has short gray hair, chopped bangs and distinct upside down smile lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m using my bedroom as a closet,\u201d Cook says. \u201cMe and the boy, we sleep right here,\u201d she points down at the couch on which she is sitting, her son still fast asleep. \u201cThose are clothes,\u201d she says, pointing to the boxes next to the couch and along the wall, \u201cand I still got more clothes in the back.\u201d On top of the boxes rests an alarm clock, lice shampoo and other household items.<\/p>\n
Cook, her son and Kransuch have lived in this two-bedroom apartment for a few months. Cook\u2019s kidneys are failing, and she suffers from heart disease, which keeps her from working. She tries to sell cigarettes to make a few dollars here and there, but the only way the two sisters scrape by is with Kransuch\u2019s Social Security check.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s plenty of us out here who need help. We don\u2019t need the Targets and stuff like that,\u201d Cook says. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of Targets and K-Marts and stuff around. But there are some of us out here who need help. We need affordable housing.\u201d Buried in her statement lies a bundle of resentment felt by many Chicagoans, something at least partially responsible for the Chicago Housing Authority\u2019s (CHA) long waiting list: sections of public housing land have fallen into private hands.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Currently, there are approximately 100,000 Chicagoans on CHA\u2019s waiting list. The last time they opened the waiting list was in 2014. More than \u201c200,000 people registered for the waitlist, and those names were placed in a lottery,\u201d said Ketsia Colinet, CHA Director of Occupancy\/Asset Management, over the phone, \u201cand via a random electronic process, names were selected and then placed on the wait list.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consequently, thousands of people were denied the right to even wait for public housing, although, according to Colinet, CHA \u201cinformed them of other opportunities they may [have wanted] to consider if they [were] still in need of housing.\u201d
\nKransuch happened to be one of the lucky names drawn in the lottery. That was nearly two years ago. Still without public assistance, the two sisters live down near 47th street.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
From the Red Line, cross the bridge over the Dan Ryan Expressway, where the cars steadily flow, creating a loud humming noise, and pick up the CTA 47 bus heading into New City.<\/p>\n
Ride past the industrial parks, the long grass growing in the empty plots of land, the run down and boarded-up residential homes, the occasional food joint or business \u2013 Big Ray\u2019s Grill, City Sports, M. Ojeda Tire Shop, etc. \u2013 and the vacant store fronts too.<\/p>\n
Get off the bus at South Racine Avenue, and you will find Cook and Kransuch near 49th Street and South Elizabeth Avenue. Who knows where they would call home if CHA had adopted a different course of action more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
In 2000, CHA implemented its \u201cPlan for Transformation\u201d, an ambitious plan that sought to rebuild and renovate 25,000 public housing units and create mixed-income communities. And so during the last 15 years, public housing units have been demolished: Ida B. Wells, Robert Taylor, Cabrini Green, LeClaire Courts and more; but public housing does not always return. Sections of public housing land, in accordance with CHA\u2019s plan to create mixed-income communities, have been sold \u2013 some at discounted rates \u2013 to private buyers in retail, real estate and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe landscape of public housing in Chicago has been completely transformed,\u201d said CHA spokesman Matt Aguilar in an email. \u201cDilapidated high rises that once plagued our city have been replaced with mixed-income communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, the public housing landscape, as Aguilar said, looks very different now. Previously filled with only housing for low-income Chicagoans, public housing land now also contains private condominiums and businesses. Whether this is good or bad, seems to depend on with whom you speak.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
\u201cExcuse me, do you live around here?\u201d I ask the man donning a blue button-up shirt, jeans and black glasses as he waits for the bus on East Pershing Road and South Martin Luther King Drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he says curiously, as if wondering what I am doing and why I am there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this field where Ida B. Wells used to be?\u201d I ask, gesturing towards the enormous stretch of grass expanding approximately six square blocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow far did it go back?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt extended all the way to the lake.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what are those buildings over there?\u201d I prod, pointing to the apartments beyond the field and close to the lake.<\/p>\n
Those are private homes, he says.<\/p>\n
From afar, the picture is clean: just green grass, blue-sky and tall white buildings to the north. Up close, the grass is shaggy; empty chip bags, wadded sandwich wraps and other garbage together with the daisies and long, matted-down blades scream of wasteland and the passage of time.<\/p>\n
The sign in the field is huge. It\u2019s white and olive green. It reads: \u201ccoming soon!\u201d \u201cMARIANO\u2019S\u201d, with the trademark green leaf over the \u2018N\u2019. Underneath the Mariano\u2019s name is the CHA logo, City of Chicago seal, and more text reading: \u201cWith support and assistance from: Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 4th Ward Alderman William Burns, 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell, Michael Merchant CEO of Chicago Housing Authority, Commissioner Andrew Mooney, Chicago Department of Planning and Development.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the changing landscape of public housing. A Target popped up on former Cabrini Green land. A running track rolled out where the Harold Ickes Homes once stood. The Robert Taylor Homes went down, and a fitness center came up. And at the Ida B. Wells, a Mariano\u2019s will soon appear.<\/p>\n
The square block of open field north of the soon-to-be Mariano\u2019s is, however, a mystery. Still inspecting the sign, I notice construction crews digging up there in the field. I mosey on over.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s loud. Some sort of heavy machinery is dredging a large hole. Construction workers surround the pit, wearing hard hats and the typical thin coat of dirt on their jeans and boots.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcuse me, are there going to be more businesses located here?\u201d I ask a guy on the sideline wearing a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. I assumed he was some sort of foreman. He was cleaner then the workers. Foremen are always cleaner.<\/p>\n
No idea, he says over all the noise. They are only installing sewer pipes. Aguilar said he did not know either. Perhaps that part of CHA land is still for sale.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [CHA] wanted to tear down the buildings, scatter the people out, and then take as long as they possibly can so they can\u2019t find the people to bring back,\u201d Rod Wilson, Executive Director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, said in his radio voice over the phone. \u201c[The city of Chicago] lost 200,000 black folks from 2000 to 2010,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Whether or not CHA and the city intended to move people out of Chicago, it has happened. CHA promised public housing residents the \u201cright to return\u201d after buildings were demolished, but housing has been slowly rebuilt. \u201c[The Plan for Transformation] was supposed to run from 2000 to 2010\u2026and so we\u2019re in the 15th year of the program,\u201d said Wilson.<\/p>\n
Because public housing residents usually have few, if any, economic options, they oftentimes move to public housing in the suburbs or surrounding states out of necessity while waiting for the rebuilding.
\nIn many ways, the sluggish rebuilding is about funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t had the federal funding or the ability to build the necessary housing,\u201d said Political Science Professor Dick Simpson over the phone at his wonted methodical pace. The private businesses obtaining portions of public land are affecting the long waiting list, \u201cbut not as much as the problem of [having] no money to build the housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
This lack of funding is a federal, city and private sector problem, according to Simpson. \u201cIt\u2019s not as profitable to build the mixed income housing, unless there is a large federal subsidy, as it is to build condominiums or apartments in the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson disagreed to a certain extent: \u201cCHA has a half a billion dollars in their coffers,\u201d he chuckled over the phone. \u201cThey get money for 51,000 Section 8 vouchers,\u201d but in the last five years they have only distributed 38,000. \u201cThey just increased it, because we\u2019ve been pushing them, to 41,000\u2026that\u2019s 10,000 vouchers that they get money for that\u2019s not being distributed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson continued: \u201cThey get money for replacing housing\u2026They get 2.2 million dollars annually to rebuild the [Harold Ickes Homes] and they have not built one unit of public housing at the Ickes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what you\u2019re saying is that [CHA has] the money but they\u2019re just sitting on it?\u201d I clarified.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simpson agreed with Wilson over the annual Section 8 voucher distribution. \u201cA number of people have gotten housing vouchers \u2013 the so-called Section 8 program \u2013 but\u2026there is neither enough of the actual apartments or the Section 8 vouchers to cover everybody that needs the housing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Whatever CHA\u2019s actual goal was with their \u201cPlan for Transformation\u201d, it is nonetheless a microcosm of public housing on the national level.<\/p>\n
National policy, according to Professor Janet Smith, Co-Director of the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, supports mixed-income communities, arguing that it will drive the economic and social interaction between low-income residents and the rest of the community, and further promote the upward mobility of public housing residents.<\/p>\n
Wilson disagrees with city and national policy. \u201cI do understand what [CHA is] attempting to do,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the land is designated for public housing use. There are other economic development tools you can use or other land they can use for Mariano\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps Smith summed up the debate best over whether to have mixed-income communities or just invest in existing communities in her book, \u201cWhere are Poor People to Live? Transforming Public Housing.\u201d She wrote that transforming public housing land into mixed-income communities could work, but is controversial.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn one hand, it provides the opportunity and the resources to improve the terrible, often uninhabitable living conditions of many public housing residents,\u201d Smith wrote. \u201cOn the other, these efforts stand to significantly reduce the number of permanent public housing units, disrupt the lives of residents at many sites, and cost millions of tax dollars with little guarantee or evidence that the outcome will fully meet the social goals of the program.\u201d The latter is most salient, she posited: evidence does not exist that these desired effects would materialize.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
As Cook goes into greater detail about her kidney and heart disease, her two-year-old son awakes on the couch. He raises his head up and sees me. His eyes widen, and mouth opens in a frightened manner, as if he wanted to scream but nothing came out.<\/p>\n
Embarrassingly, my mind sidetracks from Cook\u2019s poor physical health to the fact that her child appeared terrified by the sight of a stranger in the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gotta go pee-pee?\u201d Cook asks her son. She takes his hand. \u201cCome on\u2026come on,\u201d and they walk in to the bathroom together, her slippers dragging along the floor like sandpaper on wood.<\/p>\n
They return shortly. Cook\u2019s son hops back onto the couch. Scooby-Doo comes on the television and a bottle quickly goes into his mouth.<\/p>\n
Cook turns back to the topic of public housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere ain\u2019t nothing really to be done about it, you know\u2026this is Chicago, you know. That\u2019s all I can say about it,\u201d Cook says. \u201cIt seems they\u2019d be about helping their own people, but they\u2019re not. They\u2019re only about building up and making money for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discussion pauses; the sound of Scooby-Doo and his friends rise. I break the silence.<\/p>\n
I ask what she thinks will happen, if she thinks she will get public housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope,\u201d Cook said. \u201cAll you can do is hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
I spent a few more minutes there, thanking them before I walked back outside and to the train.<\/p>\n
By Daniel Brown On a spring morning, with crisp air and blue skies outside, Theresa Cook, 51, sits down on the beige couch in her living room. She wears shorts, a gray t-shirt and a blue bandana around her head. Her two-year-old son sleeps beside her. Her nephew awakes from a mattress on the ground, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":16790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,30,436],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-public-affairs","category-spring-2015"],"yoast_head":"\n