The Chicago Reporter

Cover Stories, Inside Stories, Web Extras, Spin Offs, New Voices, Editor's Note, Reporter Impact, Keeping Current

August, 2007 Horner Moves at Faster Pace, But Much Work Remains It is hard to believe the seven-story mid-rise at 1815 W. Monroe St., across from the United Center, is public housing. Instead of the open-air breezeway found in most Chicago Housing Authority developments, glass doors lead into a tiled lobby. Two guards are always on duty, monitoring closed-circuit security cameras and admitting guests. Residents use access cards to pass through a security door... > Read More	August, 2007 HOPE VI: Same Areas, Better Buildings The federal government wants to demolish 95,000 units of America's worst public housing by 2003 and replace them with viable, socially and economically thriving communities. Chicago undoubtedly will be its greatest challenge. The city has 18,000 "distressed" public housing units, far more than any other public housing authority in the nation. City and federal housing officials are... > Read More	August, 2007 Is Section 8 Moving Away from Its Mission? Since 1976, the Chicago fair housing organization with the baffling name has helped more than 7,000 families use federal rent subsidies to move from public housing to 115 racially diverse communities in the city, suburbs and beyond. Having fulfilled its mission, established by a federal court order, the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities will end its subsidy program in... > Read More
August, 2007 Finding Sites for New Public Housing No Easy Task But that simple theory has proven very difficult in practice. In fact, no problem facing public housing has been more intractable. In 1969, as part of the Gautreaux Consent Decree, a federal judge ordered the Chicago Housing Authority to build scattered-site housing in areas that were no more than 30 percent African American, or were in the process of economic revitalization. In... > Read More	August, 2007 City Set-Aside Program Misses Target Chicago's long-standing policy of encouraging minority and female participation in city contracts is suffering from neglect and lax enforcement, an investigation by The Chicago Reporter has found. In each of the last two years, the city reached only half its annual "Target Market" goal to award 10 percent of its contract dollars directly to minorities. While the Target Market goal is not... > Read More	December, 1969 Infant Mortality Still Hits Blacks Hardest Black newborns in Chicago continue to die at higher rates than other babies, even as the city's infant mortality rate has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, an analysis by The Chicago Reporter shows. Today, black babies account for more than two-thirds of all infant deaths, a slightly higher percentage than two decades ago. In 1996, the city Department of Public Health reported... > Read More
December, 1969