Reporting on Recommendations for the Chicago Housing Authority

by Lauren Goldstein
JCUA intern

The Chicago public housing residents’ Central Advisory Council (CAC) recently published their recommendations to the Chicago Housing Authority. These recommendations shed light on systemic problems, and the need soar need for resident voices in the discussion about the future of public housing. JCUA’s Lauren Goldstein gives some background and explains the five main recommendations.
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Demolition at Cabrini Green

On November 30, 2012, a vast, diverse, and energetic crowd came together at the University of Illinois at Chicago Student Center to bear witness to an incredibly powerful presentation of a hopeful plan created by the Chicago public housing residents’ Central Advisory Council (CAC).

The CAC is a tenant organization recognized by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that serves to represent public housing residents and provide resident input into the CHA’s policies via the participation of fourteen Local Advisory Council offices and seven mixed income communities.

The CAC presented their “Strategies and Recommendations Report,” which is a thorough set of recommendations for the Chicago Housing Authority to consider when moving forward with the Plan for Transformation 2.0.

This innovative report (which can be accessed here) was prepared by Lucas Greene Associates, LLC in partnership with Chicago Jobs Council, Heather D. Parish, Prim Lawrence Group, UIC Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, and We The People Media, but it was really made possible by the strong, persistent, enduring, and hardworking residents of the CHA who tirelessly work to have their voices heard, their needs represented and met, and their families, friends, and neighbors given the rights they deserve as human beings and fellow residents of Chicago.

What Happens to Displaced Public Housing Residents?

by Lauren Goldstein
Advocacy and Community Organizing Intern

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As part of JCUA’s work with the Chicago Housing Initiative’s “Lease Up!” campaign, we have been engaged in research on public housing in Chicago. Specifically, we are gathering data on where residents move when they are displaced from their homes due to demolition or redevelopment, and what those towns look like.

Given that part of the goal of the Plan for Transformation involves creating a less isolating environment for residents both racially and economically, we wanted to find out if these goals are being met. The question is: Where are Chicago’s public housing residents moving, and what kinds of opportunities exist once they arrive there.

The Facts

A study done at UIC shows that between 2000 and 2007, 55% of moves within Illinois of public housing residents occurred between the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Housing Authority of Cook County (HACC).  We looked into what towns in Cook County do have public housing developments in them, so that we could then paint a better picture of what life looks like in these new communities.

Chicago’s public housing residents moved to many different towns in Cook County, and we learned that many of them, over time, have in fact become racially segregated. Many of these towns…

Housing Justice Teach-In Draws More Than 150 Public Housing Residents and Allies

By Holly Krig
JCUA Community Organizer 

Eviction, displacement and homelessness.

Those are the sad keywords that have described the Chicago Housing Authority’s “Plan for Transformation” in the 13 years since the CHA first unveiled it. JCUA has been monitoring the awkward implementation of this plan all along. We are anxiously looking forward to presentation of the updated edition – “Plan for Transformation 2.0” – in June.

This anxious feeling is shared by displaced people and their allies across the city. More than 150 of them came together recently (April 24) for a housing justice teach-in, held in the Spertus Building on Michigan Avenue, where JCUA is located.

Advocates march to the Chicago Housing Authority office, demanding that vacant apartments be leased to residents on the CHA waiting list.

Families shared powerful personal stories of eviction, displacement and homelessness resulting from CHA policies. We heard from real people with strong voices that amplified the need to act now and brought the scary statistics to life:

• The number of homeless people in Chicago is rising. According to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless 93,780 Chicagoans were without homes in 2010-2011.
• As reported by the Chicago Tribune, 60,000 families are on the waiting list for subsidized housing.

Lathrop Homes Advocates Set Teach-In and Action for April 24

Residents at a Lathrop Homes protest last year.

By Holly Krig
JCUA Community Organizer

Supporting the residents of Lathrop Homes, JCUA will host a teach-in and action in collaboration with the Chicago Housing Initiative. Lathrop Homes is a Chicago Housing Authority site in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.

We are working directly with residents at Lathrop Homes, where CHA hopes to enact a plan similar to the mixed-income development at Cabrini’s Parkside, which has forcibly displaced hundreds of families and cost the city $11.4 million in bail-out for mostly market rate housing.

Lathrop Homes Teach-In and Action
(A collaboration of Chicago Housing Initiative, Common Ground and JCUA)
Tuesday, April 24, 10 am-noon (registration begins at 9:30)
Spertus Building, 630 S Michigan Ave., 9th floor
Contact Holly Krig: holly@jcua.org or 312-663-0960, ext 111

The Teach-In, which will help us understand the policy issues from the perspective of those who live with their impact will be followed by a public action. Folks will gather outside Spertus at noon for that portion of the day; details will be announced at the Teach-In. Contact me at JCUA before Friday if you are interested in helping to organize the action.

JCUA first came together with Lathrop Homes residents when we joined the Coalition to Protect Public Housing as CHA announced its Plan for Transformation.

Recently JCUA has joined the table again with a new formation of resident leaders called Common Ground. Once again, the timing is critical. CHA plans to announce its “recalibration” of the Plan for Transformation in June.

Myths and Realities of Homelessness and Poverty: A Plan for Transforming Cities

By Jane Ramsey
President, JCUA

This lecture was delivery by Jane Ramsey on Feb. 29 at Iowa State University. Her appearance was cosponsored by the College of Design, the Department of Community and Regional Planning, the Graduate Community and Regional Planning Club and the Committee on Lectures.

We are here tonight to explore the myths and realities of homelessness and poverty, through the lens of Chicago’s supposed “transformation” of public housing. How fascinating that a path has been forged between Chicago and Iowa by some former residents of public housing and others who were forced out of the housing market as a result of the “transformation.”

Let me begin by sharing with you my somewhat unique vantage point as this story unfolded.

It began, coincidentally, for me as a University of Chicago graduate student in 1976 when I was placed as an intern with the city of Chicago’s economic development department, then called the Mayor’s Committee for Economic and Cultural Development. Following my internship I was hired on as a city planner…getting an invaluable, first-hand education about Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago Machine.

Faith Leaders Call on Washington Leaders for Renewed Public Housing Efforts

Fifty faith-based leaders, including JCUA Executive Director Jane Ramsey, gathered in Washington, D.C. July 29 to voice their concerns on the state of the nation’s public housing with Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan.

At the forefront of the discussion were concerns with newly introduced HUD legislation would call for moving public housing units to the private sector. The Preservation, Enhancement, and Transformation of Rental Assistance Act of 2010 (PETRA) would be:

“A multi-year effort to transform properties with rental assistance contracts under various programs into properties with long-term, property-based sustainable rental assistance contracts that include flexibility to address capital requirements, to enhance resident choice, and to streamline and simplify the administration of rental assistance.”

-Department of Housing and Urban Development

Hud Secretary Shaun Donovan

From a Chicagoan standpoint, the words “transform” or “transformation” with regards to the issue of public housing are likely to induce thoughts of the city’s plan for transformation, which displaced thousands of families.

The thought that the proposed HUD legislation could lead to further losses of housing for vulnerable families, said Ramsey to HUD Secretary Donovan, “would be unacceptable.”

Donovan said HUD is looking to build safeguards into the legislation to prevent housing losses, but was unclear as to what those safeguards might look like.

What does seem more certain in HUD plans, however, is a shift back to making sure those displaced by public housing redevelopment are the first placed back in newly developed housing, and a shift back to one-for-one replacement of public housing– meaning that public housing units won’t be torn down until there are new units to replace them.

Both Ramsey and other leaders at the HUD meeting expressed the overall need to bring back a national commitment to housing development that will reach our society’s most vulnerable.

Learn more about JCUA’s housing work here.