Chicago housing halfway through transformation
CHICAGO - Kelvin Cannon has lived most of his adult life in a high-rise apartment in Cabrini-Green, the once-notorious Chicago housing project. That will change by 2011, when his building is torn down.
"I believe change is good, depending on how you look at it," the 44-year-old laborer said last week. "It's time for a change. A lot people have been here all their life, that's all they know. Sometimes it's best to take people out and let them go out on their own."
Cannon, a resident leader, hopes eventually to find a home in one of the mixed-income redevelopments that have gradually been replacing public-housing towers across Chicago. Cabrini-Green, like other Chicago Housing Authority sites, is a work in progress: Pristine new condos, apartments and town homes have appeared, but some of the old high-rises - not yet demolished -- loom in the background.
The CHA is halfway through its 15-year, $1.6 billion "Plan for Transformation," which was seeded by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal demolition and revitalization grants. When the Chicago revamp is completed in 2015, the CHA system will provide 25,000 new or rehabilitated housing units, which is the same amount of occupied apartment dwellings at the time of the plan's 1999 launch.
About 7,500 of the CHA units will be in the showcase mixed-income redevelopments, where public-housing families will live next to market-rate homeowners and renters. To date, about one-third of those 7,500 residences have been constructed, CHA spokesman Brian Zises said.
The Chicago strategy is not new to Illinois. Public housing authorities in Springfield and Peoria have launched similar, but smaller-scale redevelopments downstate using grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Under the mixed-income model, the poorer residents benefit by moving out of isolated, crime-ridden housing projects and interacting with home owners. Meanwhile, higher-income residents, in theory, learn about the challenges other people face. The Chicago developments also feature an equal share of "affordable," or partially subsidized, housing.
The "dramatic mixing" has not gone entirely smoothly, concedes Peter Holsten, who is developing his latest mixed-income complex in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood a few miles north of the Loop.
In the North Town Village mid-rise that opened in 2000, Holsten said nearly half of the original 105 property owners have moved on. And he said some public-housing tenants have been evicted for not meeting CHA standards.
"Literally, everybody lives next door to everybody," Holsten said of the combined classes. "So it is pretty dramatic. There are bumps along the road, but we're definitely heading in the right direction."
His second mixed-income development in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood is Parkside of Old Town. The initial half of that 800-unit complex is complete, and the first families are expected to move in later this year, Holsten said. Even amid today's slow housing market, town homes go for $500,000 to $800,000, while condos begin at $300,000, he said.
"Of all the CHA sites in the city, this is the strongest," Holsten said. "We can command pretty strong prices."
CHA officials faced criticisms early on that public-housing residents, once shifted from housing projects into neighborhoods, would be cut adrift. But researcher Susan Popkin of the Urban Institute said a study by her organization that tracked displaced residents suggests they have fared OK in the private market using rent vouchers. The neighborhoods have less poverty and crime, she said.
"I can't understate the importance of this," Popkin said recently. "The children in these families are doing better."
Mike Ramsey can be reached at (312) 857-2323 or ghns-ramsey@aol.com <mailto:ghns-ramsey@aol.com> .
ON THE WEB
For more information about the Chicago Housing Authority's "Plan for Transformation," go to www.thecha.org <http://www.thecha.org/> . For Urban Institute studies about the effects of public-housing revamps on tenant families, go to www.urban.org/housing/index.cfm <http://www.urban.org/housing/index.cfm> .