The CHA's daring experiments (8 of 8)

In part eight of an interview with YoChicago, architect Pat FitzGerald discusses the Chicago Housing Authority's mixed-income projects.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Chicago
• Illinois
• architect
• Pat
• FitzGerald
• CHA
• mixed-income
• Housing
• Authority

[YoChicago1]

What a sad story.

Many, many (almost 40) years ago I was a social worker in Milwaukee.

We'd have the occasional new resident from Appalachia who didn't know that toilets flushed and called the landlord when they filled up.

[YoChicago1]

Finally we learn what Chicago's Picasso is - a gallows!

[artistmac]

As someone who has lived two blocks from Robert Taylor Homes for 45 of my 50 years, I have four words for middle-class and welfare people living side-by-side in the same neighborhood: IT. WILL. NOT. WORK. If it's such a wonderful idea, build some Section 8 units on the Gold Coast, and in Lincoln Park and Sauganash. Why should the South Side have all the fun;-)

[YoChicago1]

Mixed-income units are being built on the former Cabrini site, not that far from the Gold Coast.

Also in the area is quite a bit of subsidized housing along Evergreen, and the subsidized units at the former Marshall Field apartments complex on Sedgwick.

And Lincoln Park quietly had some low-income units going back many years (e.g. the co-op and the townhomes on North Ave).

It has worked in a number of cases, when properly managed.

[artistmac]

"Properly managed". Two words that have not applied to the CHA's south-side wrecks for over 35 years. The CHA even managed to take the Rosenwald, a wonderful place to live for over 60 years, and trash it within 5 years. Take a look at my video "An Election-Year Tour of Bronzeville."

If section 8 apartments ever showed themselves on N. Michigan Ave. and N. LSD and on Lincoln Park West, the market-rate residents would hang Daley from the Picasso.

[Drogyne]

@artistmac Well said! I am a sociologist who did a site study of the Robert Taylor Homes over 20 years ago, and what I have seen since then confirms it. These developers are hopelessly rosy in thinking that it's about the geography. It's about the headspace or mentality of people--regardless of race. What is needed is a shift in MINDSET. From what I saw of both Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green, I don't think this latest experiment in social engineering will work.

[crazyclubber]

Bahahaha... The chosen few that got townhomes across from Cabrini barely remain. The best of Cabrini simply doesn't mix well with actual families working for a living - regardless of race. That's why the residents that paid market rates to get in there did everything they could to have those other families removed. They trashed other people's yards and had all of their friends from the row houses and remaining buildings come over. That's not racist. That's reality.

[artistmac]

Also the world's rustiest skateboard ramp;-)

I'm looking at a Tribune article from 9/20/99, about one of CHA's earliest efforts at replacement housing at Henry Horner Homes in the 2100 blk. of W. Maypole. They were beautiful, but 2 years after they were built and occupied, 1/8 of the them were boarded up. The problem was residents, most former project dwellers, who trashed the units. One woman, who had never had carpeting before, tried to clean it with a mop.