Staffing Shortage Hits CHA Families

By: Brian J. RogalWhile the Chicago Housing Authority will move more than 2,000 families this year as part of its transformation plan, its program to connect residents with jobs, day care and other social services is significantly understaffed, The Chicago Reporter has learned.

Many believe the situation could grow critical as more buildings come down for the authority’s 10-year, $1.5 billion redevelopment plan.

Chrissinda Carter, a 26-year-old resident of the Robert Taylor Homes on the South Side, is an unemployed mother of five. She wants to work. “I’m willing to do whatever I have to get out of here,” she said. Carter’s building, 4555 S. Federal St., will be closed and demolished later this year. It will eventually be replaced by a mixed-income community—affordable units, private townhomes and public housing units.

But her 3-year-old daughter, Kaywanna, although boisterous and playful, suffers from asthma and lead poisoning, and needs constant care. And Carter, like many residents, has never heard of the new service program, known as the Service Connector.

Under the new program, the CHA re-allocated its social service money to other city departments and private agencies, with the Chicago Department of Human Services getting $5.9 million to run day-to-day operations. The program provides few direct services such as on-site job training, but instead gives residents referrals to groups outside public housing.

The city would need to spend at least $1.8 million more to hire the staff needed to adequately serve the 12,218 families still in public housing, according to a 2001 study by the Mid-America Institute on Poverty. The institute is a division of the Heartland Alliance, a human rights organization that provides housing and health care to poor Chicagoans.

In what it terms a conservative estimate, the institute said 96 case managers were needed citywide to help residents with severe problems like extreme poverty or substance abuse. A city report shows 29 were hired.

CHA officials dispute the numbers and say it’s too early to evaluate the program.

Critics disagree. The program is “woefully underfunded [and] understaffed,” said Jamie Kalven, an advisor to the resident leadership at the South Side’s Stateway Gardens development.

But Robin Snyderman, housing director for the Metropolitan Planning Council, a research and advocacy organization, said that, although the new program does not have enough funds, “for the first time there is an effort to systematically address” problems like resident unemployment.

Jobs, however, are scarce on the South Side, where most public housing residents live. And the connector agencies are inundated with unauthorized residents, not only extra family members but also people squatting in vacant apartments. Their needs are even greater than legal residents’, since they are essentially homeless, according to Cynthia Randall, associate director of supportive housing for Chicago Connections, another division of the Heartland Alliance.

Yet the city has not tapped into all the federal funding available for social services. Up to 15 percent of $70 million in revitalization grants Chicago won in 2001 from the federal HOPE VI program could have been devoted to social services. But the CHA chose to spend less than 5 percent. At Robert Taylor, that is the difference between $1.8 million and $5.3 million.

Although CHA officials have touted the success of the Service Connector, they have declined the Reporter’s requests to turn over public documents charting its progress.

Since the program began in September, each of the six private agencies hired to run it has filed weekly progress reports. Though some of the documents are seven months old, “the program is still very new and we want to be careful about releasing results prematurely,” wrote Lisa Elkuss, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Human Services.

Documents show the CHA will demolish 24 high-rise and mid-rise buildings this year alone. Most of the displaced residents will be given vouchers to rent private-market apartments, but they have the right to move back into the refurbished neighborhoods. But developers say work requirements for the new homes will be stricter than for the old CHA apartments.

“The Service Connector was created with the success of the Plan for Transformation in mind,” said Meghan Harte, the CHA’s managing director for resident services. The authority’s vision, she said, is to prepare current residents to move back to rebuilt areas “and to be successful in those mixed-income communities.”

But without intensive support, current residents may not meet the tougher standards, residents and advocates say.

“A significant percentage of the families will need intensive case management services in order to become self-sufficient, there’s no question,” said Peter Levavi, senior vice-president of Brinshore Development, which the CHA selected as the redeveloper for the Robert Taylor and Henry Horner Homes. “The Service Connector doesn’t provide for that.”

“Right now I can tell you that we are only [in the] beginning phases of understanding what it’s going to take to move these people, and where resources exist, and where they don’t,” said Isabel Blanco, the director of the CHA’s department of resident programs.

Many families don’t have much time.

“Without a babysitter, you can’t work,” Carter said. “This factor is a big problem for some people, and I’m one of them.”

Kaywanna just became old enough to attend a child care program at St. Paul’s Church of God in Christ, 4526 S. Wabash Ave. Carter hopes that, along with the help provided by other family members, this will be enough to allow her to find a job.

But rats have overrun the family’s apartment. “I got to get out of here,” she said. “I got a lot of other problems; I don’t need to worry about housing.”

Getting Started
A small pilot project that became a model for the Service Connector began at Henry Horner in October 2000. By March 2001, the CHA had drawn up the program’s outline. But the same month, officials acknowledged the funding was “modest,” according to notes of a meeting convened by the city and other groups. Although the model was not perfect, “my anxiety is that we have to get started,” B.J. Walker, the city’s chief of human infrastructure, said in the meeting.

“I don’t think the funding for this program is modest,” Walker later told the Reporter. “There is a reasonable amount of money on the table to get started.”

In April 2001, the CHA put out a job description for the private agencies needed to carry out the program. By June, the authority had selected six: Employment & Employer Services for the North Side developments of Lathrop and Cabrini-Green; The Woodlawn Organization for eight South Side developments; the Abraham Lincoln Centre for the Ida B. Wells and Madden Park developments on the South Side; William Moorehead and Associates for other South Side developments, including Taylor; the Marcy-Newberry Association for six on the West and Southwest sides; and the Near West Side Community Development Corp. for Henry Horner.

It is “strictly a voluntary program,” said Mattie Hunter, director of Human Services’ Service Connector program.

The companies that manage CHA properties tell people about the program if they’re behind in rent. Otherwise, they hear about it by word of mouth or from a resident advocate, tenants hired to do outreach on the program.

Each development has a Service Connector office, where workers go over a checklist with residents, covering their employment history and urgent concerns such as domestic violence or impending eviction. Often, residents have other, more common problems like getting a state identification card.

Case managers handle families with severe problems. Kurt Miller, the case manager for the 638 families in the North Side’s Lathrop Homes, estimates 50 to 60 percent are “in crisis.” He said he refers them to appropriate aid providers, such as food pantries, and typically covers their transportation costs.

Managers are required to do follow-up. Miller frequently talks with residents to ensure they use the referrals. “To be honest with you, it takes a few tries,” he said.

Miller is one of 114 full-time staffers—case managers, resident advocates, service coordinators and administrative staff—hired by the six agencies to increase resident employment and ensure the CHA’s families are more stable, paid up on their rent and taking advantage of other community activities, such as school councils.

Some residents give the program good reviews. “I’m glad this program came into our community,” said Charlene Jones, a resident of Ida B. Wells. She found her Service Connector office with no problem. “I live two doors down,” she said.

The 33-year-old mother of two was unemployed last fall when the Abraham Lincoln Centre found her work as a Chicago Public Schools bus aide. But it was only two hours a day. So, this January, Lincoln hired Jones to be a resident service advocate. She now works an additional eight hours a day knocking on doors, telling residents about the Lincoln Centre and passing out fliers at nearby George T. Donoghue School.

Entry Level
Still, the success of the Service Connector program is difficult to judge.

The program is “very cutting edge in social services,” said Blanco, citing a computer system that will track how much residents use the services. But the computers were not supposed to be ready until April.

And, although one of the main goals of the program is to help residents keep up with their rent, the CHA could not provide the numbers and the causes of evictions in each development since the program began, according to Kathryn Greenberg, director of CHA communications.

The number of evictions from all CHA properties has ranged from 553 in 1999 to 226 in 2000 and 399 in 2001, Greenberg said.

About 95 percent of CHA families are currently up-to-date on rent.

The city’s Human Services Department provided the Reporter with the program’s 2001 compiled referral numbers, not detailed results.

From September through the end of 2001, the program made 1,332 job training referrals and helped 388 residents get jobs, 367 of them full-time.

But it’s not clear if these jobs are steady enough to enable residents to live in mixed-income communities. In their weekly reports, the connector agencies are providing the city with information on the wages and types of jobs residents get, according to agency leaders. But the city would not release the information.

Most jobs are “entry level,” said Carl A. Murrain, Lincoln Centre’s president and chief executive officer. “What are some of the salaries? What are the retention numbers? Somebody needs to force the issue.”

Clifford Wiley, a Madden Park resident, got a job with the development’s private property manager “trashing out the units” to be demolished. “Once the apartments are cleaned out, then I have to wonder where I’m going next,” he said.

Wiley earns $8 an hour and feels the lack of jobs and income will, in the long run, force most residents out. “We don’t know when they are going to say, ‘We don’t have no work.’”

“Right now, we’re just looking to get people started in the job market,” said Blanco.

There is also a problem with placing tenants in jobs near their neighborhoods. Employment & Employer Services reported landing 127 full-time jobs for residents of its two North Side developments, while 10 South Side developments got 79.

“We are already talking to the Mayor’s Office of [Workforce] Development to talk about how they might look at their contracting process to put more resources on the South Side,” said the CHA’s Blanco.

So far, she said, residents have been most focused on finding jobs. For example, the Service Connector program made few referrals for “Family Stability” services such as substance abuse, domestic violence or mental health services. And, of nearly 400 referrals for food aid and child care, less than 26 percent were given at South Side developments.

Heavy Caseloads
Miller, the Lathrop case manager, expects that his workload will keep growing. “We’ve never closed a case,” he said. Managers typically keep cases open because families “are forever coming back. They need bus tokens. They need treatment. I do what’s called for.”

City officials reported that they had 4,131 “open cases” at the beginning of the year. But they would not provide the Reporter with the number of households with severe problems. And, according to “Service Connector Performance Management Briefing,” a CHA document obtained by the Reporter, the six agencies opened an additional 896 cases in January.

The study by the Mid-America Institute on Poverty suggests the CHA is far short of staff. The institute based its findings on the New Start/New Home program, a two-year initiative, which began in 1998, of several government agencies, including the CHA.

Through a combination of subsidies and social services, the agencies attempted to move nearly 100 families, mostly from the CHA, to stable housing.

The institute “conservatively” estimates that 25 percent of the CHA households will have “significant economic, physical, psychological and behavioral issues such as extreme poverty, developmental disabilities, substance abuse, domestic violence, physical disabilities and mental illness.”

Citywide, the Service Connector needs 96 case managers, the institute recommended; it now has 29. To calculate the number, the institute used what they termed a reasonable case manager-to-client standard of 35-to-1, said Amy Rynell, director of the institute.

For example, the institute estimated that the South Side’s Wells, Madden Park and Lake Parc Place developments, with a total of 1,480 households, need 11 case managers. It has three.

The gap is similar in other parts of the city, according to the study. Rockwell Gardens and ABLA, two West Side developments, need 10 case managers. But two are budgeted.

Some of the service providers said the task is daunting. “We have 643 [families] and we only have three workers counting myself,” said Vorricia Harvey, the program director for Horner’s service connector.

Marvin Garth, director of the Service Connector program for Employment & Employer Services, is having a similar struggle. “We need three case managers at Lathrop,” where there is now one, Garth said. And each of the two managers at Cabrini “is seeing 15 or 20 residents a day.”

To accommodate them, Garth said his group recently had to extend its business hours to 8:30 p.m., and the “staff volunteers on Saturday.”

But Hunter had a different analysis. “None of the offices are overwhelmed,” she said. “We have our fingers on the pulse of this program everyday. If we feel that the case managers’ caseloads are building up too high, then we’ll bring on additional staff.”

Missed Signals
Blanco, the CHA’s director of programs, said focusing exclusively on case managers was the wrong way to look at staffing numbers. Instead, she said, it is more accurate to compare the open cases reported at the end of December to all 114 connector staff—case managers, resident advocates and service coordinators. That’s a 36-to-1 ratio, which is reasonable, Blanco said.

Each of the CHA’s 25 developments for families have at least one advocate. City officials said resident advocates can handle a large number of cases by simply giving information on services already available.

But staff with less training “sometimes miss those [key] signals” about resident needs, said Albert Burns, vice president of Moorehead and Associates. And, because the advocates are their neighbors, “maybe residents would not be as forthcoming with them,” he added. His staff handles approximately 600 cases in five developments, and it has chosen to assign a case manager to each person.

“I must admit the caseload is high, but we have to deal with the resources we have,” Burns said.

City officials also said the selected agencies all have some connection to their neighborhoods, and can tap private funds to fill any gaps in service. Some agencies agree.

“We’re not new kids on the block who just came into public housing. [We had] a network of relationships in place when the Service Connector rolled out,” said Benjamin J. Kendrick, executive director of the 118-year-old Marcy-Newberry. “These are the families we have offered services to.”

Resident leaders at neighborhood developments, including Rockwell Gardens, also on the West Side, “supported and encouraged us” to become the area’s service connector, Kendrick said.

Even so, Ray Bentley, Newberry’s director for the connector program, said the workload was “starting to wear on our case managers.”

And numbers reported by Human Services might not show the whole picture. Harvey of Near West Side said each family counted as one case, even if it included five children.

Even with scarce dollars for additional staff, CHA and city officials contend they have enough resources to do the job.

Blanco said many residents do not need intensive services. But she admitted that “the caseload will grow” and “right now we are taking in a significant amount of cases.” Still, she added, the CHA is “not looking to invest right now in lowering those caseloads.”

Touching on what has emerged as one of the CHA’s biggest concerns, Garth said Employment and Employer Services provides assistance to unauthorized residents. Many families have other members living with them illegally, he said, and their problems often ensnare the legal residents. Garth said it is not unusual for a family head to tell him: “I’ve got my daughter here, and she needs employment. It’ll make my family more stable.”

Blanco said “we are currently talking with [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] to add additional resources for non-leaseholders.” She could not provide any details “because we’re in the talking stages.”

Often the unauthorized resident helps prop up a family. Until recently, Dorothy Jean Battie, 48, lived illegally with her daughter and grandchildren in a Robert Taylor high-rise. Battie said her only income is $545 a month in Supplementary Security Income, and she suffers from diabetes, high-blood pressure and occasional depression. Even so, she helped provide child care and extra money.

She also reached out to mothers outside her family.

“They need cash, and I need food stamps, so we swap,” said Battie. “That’s how people survive.”

Despite concerns the program doesn’t go far enough, Kalven said he “appreciated” that the private service agencies and the CHA recognized the housing developments have essentially become homeless shelters.
In 2001, the CHA hired the CARA Program, an agency that helps homeless people get jobs and stable homes, to work with Stateway’s approximately 150 unauthorized residents. Three staff members figure out what the people need, said Stephanie Wernet, director of client support. In December, the group will issue a report recommending a strategy for other developments.

But the focus of the Service Connector “was always on the leaseholders. That’s always been the priority,” said Elkuss.

Bentley, of Marcy-Newberry, estimated “a large number” of the people his agency sees are illegal residents. The agency helps any way it can, he said, “as long as they listen to us.”

But the connector agencies only report to the city on referrals for leaseholders and authorized residents, Bentley said. And he is worried the illegal residents might fall by the wayside.

Even now, Burns said, “we can’t really deal with many of them.

Lincoln Centre’s Murrain and other critics worry the CHA is implementing the program because they don’t want to spend money on direct services.

“The city is hanging its hat on this program because they have nothing else,” Murrain said.

But CHA officials said the authority did a lousy job when it tried to deliver services in the past.

“We had recreation programs. We had a midnight basketball league that was specifically for our residents and our residents only,” Blanco said. But those programs were “ineffective,” she said, and the city was already spending $750 million on similar services.

“So we said, ‘As a housing authority, we are going to run viable housing. We are not in the process of being social workers.’”

The city might have become convinced the old way of providing on-site services was somehow at fault, “when in reality the management was bad,” said Jean Butzen, president of Lakefront SRO, a Chicago organization that provides low-income housing and social services. “There is such an urge to throw out the old and bring in something new.”

But “when you have communities that have been deprived to the extent these communities have been deprived,” Murrain said, the city should worry less about duplication than about making sure everyone has access to services. “There’s no one doing midnight basketball anymore,” he added.

Walker said “any community where there are CHA residents, there are tons of organizations and agencies” that receive government money to provide social services, including case management, but many haven’t done a good job helping those in public housing.

Organizations not doing the job shouldn’t get the money, Murrain said. But “let’s say you have a contract to do job training from the [state]. There is never enough money in those contracts to do the level of case management that needs to be done.”

Francine Washington, the longtime president of Stateway Gardens’ Local Advisory Council, an elected tenant body known as the LAC, said residents had frequently run into indifference and bureaucracy when trying to get social services in the neighborhood. Stateway’s connector agency, William Moorehead, has made a difference, she said.

“They’ve helped people get into rehab, [got] seniors housekeeping, [and have] gotten social workers and psychiatrists for residents who need it,” Washington said. “We, the council members, are doing social services all night long. If they have a caseload [with] too many, some in the LAC will just have to come in and help out.”

To Kalven, whose group works closely with the council, that means Stateway’s successes would be difficult to reproduce elsewhere. “We’re working around the clock,” he said. And any achievements are the “product of informal networks and ad hoc interventions.”

Hovering over the CHA’s far-reaching plans is a continuing atmosphere of distrust in many developments. Few residents believe they will be moved back to the new mixed-income communities.

“Small people don’t have a chance,” said Wiley, the Madden Park resident.

“People are getting laid off every day,” said Jones, the Wells tenant who praised the program. As she walks around her neighborhood at 37th Street and Vincennes Avenue, she sees a reason to worry. “You got some working, but they’re not making enough money.”

“We got people all the way over on 39th Street, and they don’t know what’s going on,” Jones said. “We’re like sitting ducks in a pond.”

Audra Martin, Chloe Mister and Jocelyn Prince helped research this article.