CHA Families Exit As Eviction Threat Grows

By: Brian J. RogalIn 1997, the Chicago Housing Authority filed eviction lawsuits against more than one-fourth of the families living in the Cabrini Homes Extension, a mix of 15 mid- and high-rise buildings on the city’s near North Side.

But of those 231 families, only 39 actually were evicted that year, a pattern repeated throughout the public housing system, according to Cook County Circuit Court records and CHA eviction data analyzed by The Chicago Reporter.

The agency filed 3,744 eviction cases against its tenants in 1997, but evicted only 459, or 12.3 percent. The proportion of cases varied from the 27.3 percent at the Cabrini Extension, to less than 1 percent, or six of 1,390 families, at the low-rise Altgeld Gardens on the far South Side.

CHA developments with the highest percentages of eviction cases per occupied units also tend to be those that are in the most disrepair, the Reporter found.

Critics say the CHA is filing hundreds of eviction lawsuits to push families out of public housing as the agency moves to demolish some complexes and redevelop others. Once served with a court summons, many tenants leave rather than contest their evictions before a judge, said attorney David E. Haracz, who has represented hundreds of CHA residents in eviction proceedings during his nine years with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, a publicly funded legal service for low-income people.

Those who leave on their own may face a long wait for other options, such as federal Section 8 certificates, which help poor families subsidize the cost of private market apartments. In 1997, 2,390 tenants—86.3 percent of those who moved out—did not take this option, the Reporter found.

In addition to the 39 tenants evicted from the Cabrini Extension, for example, 19 entered the private housing market with a Section 8 voucher. Another 122 left for parts unknown.

The CHA "was trying to get them out" from the valuable land near Chicago’s Gold Coast, said Henry Lee Johns, a board member of It’s Time for a Change Resident Management Corp., a resident group that took over management of the development from the CHA in September.

But the CHA said the lawsuits are merely a rent-collection strategy. "From the outset, the goal is to obtain the rent," said Brendan S. Power, the authority’s associate general counsel and head of the Department of Tenant Relations, which handles eviction cases. Cases are filed against delinquent tenants with no regard to where they live, he said.

Sometimes suing is the only way to collect the rent, said Ann M. Harrison, director of property management for East Lake Management and Development Corp., a private firm that contracts with the CHA to manage Rockwell Gardens and the Henry Horner Homes on the West Side.

In 1997, the CHA filed eviction cases against 80 families at Rockwell Gardens—about 16 percent of the 501 tenants—and sued 39 of 753 Horner families, or 5.2 percent. "You’re trying to impress upon people that they have obligations," Harrison said. "They may have to be told in court."

Cases Filed
Angenita Ramsey, 43, ended up in a homeless shelter when the CHA police put her out of her Henry Horner apartment on Sept. 7. Under CHA policy, Ramsey, who is unemployed and partially blind, should have been allowed to live rent-free at 1936 W. Washington Blvd.

Most tenants are required to pay a rent equal to 30 percent of their incomes. But in 1997, as welfare reform was taking hold, the agency adopted a "zero income exemption" as a safety net for tenants who may be cut from the welfare rolls, CHA officials said.

But officials at East Lake Management continued to charge Ramsey the minimum rent of $25 a month, and when her tab reached $600, a Cook County sheriff’s deputy served her with a summons, court records show.

Appearing in court on April 24, "I told the [court] I had no income and was looking for a job, but [they] said it was something I had to work out with housing," Ramsey said.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge James P. McCarthy granted Ramsey a continuance, but when she failed to return to court on June 2, the judge awarded the CHA possession of her apartment. "I was scared," Ramsey said, explaining why she didn’t go to court that day. "I was told to bring [$205] to court, and I didn’t have it."

She stayed at a West Side shelter and "prayed to God." A friend suggested she contact the Legal Assistance Foundation, and a lawyer there sent a copy of the CHA policy to East Lake. Ramsey was then allowed to move back home, said Barbara E. Richardson, a foundation staff attorney.

Housing court can be perilous for low-income Chicagoans, said Jennifer Payne, a supervisory attorney at the foundation. Most have "no concept they can pick up the phone and get a free civil litigator."

When a CHA tenant falls behind on rent, the development manager delivers a 14-day notice, said Power of CHA tenant relations. If there is no response, the manager refers the case to the CHA’s legal department, which files suit. A county sheriff or CHA police officer presents the tenant a summons to appear before a judge.

In many cases, the tenant works out an arrangement with the agency to either pay in full, set up a payment plan or move out, Power said. The agency does not record a case as an eviction unless CHA police actually remove tenants and their belongings.

While CHA officials said eviction cases are filed to spur rent collection, they could not say how much they spend on litigating the cases, or how much the agency collects, making it impossible to determine whether the policy is cost-effective.

Court records show the agency pays at least $69 in filing fees for each lawsuit, meaning the CHA spent at least $260,000 trying to collect rent in 1997. Of the 3,215 cases examined by the Reporter, the CHA sought a money judgment in 1,667 cases, for a total of nearly $610,000.

The CHA sued for amounts ranging from $16 to $4,973; more than half of the tenants owed less than $250.But the authority is not as concerned with "collecting outstanding rent as having an effective deterrent," said CHA Executive Director Joseph Shuldiner. "We collect 95 percent of the [monthly rent] money billed" to CHA residents, he said.

Generally, the CHA files suit once a tenant falls two months behind on rent, said George Phillips, director of housing management. But "because of the volume, we can’t get to all of [the cases]" on a timely basis, Shuldiner added.

But Johns of the Cabrini tenant group said the CHA lets overdue rent pile up until a tenant cannot possibly pay it back. "We live here so we know the situation. Sometimes people are ashamed they can’t pay and won’t tell anyone," she said. Her group monitors rent-delinquent tenants and tries to work out a payment plan early on. "We won’t let it ride out," she said.

There have been no new rent eviction cases at the Cabrini Extension since the group took over, said Josephine Trotter, president of the tenant organization.

Leaving Home
Between January 1996 and August 1998, the number of occupied family units in the CHA declined 21.4 percent, from 21,235 to 16,692. From 1996 through 1998, 1,646 tenants left family housing with Section 8 certificates, the Reporter found.

But these numbers pale in comparison to the 5,192 tenants who moved out during that time and vanished from the system. "I don’t know what happened to those people," said Ed Moses, the CHA’s deputy executive director for the office of programs.

He attributes much of the exodus to the poor design and steady deterioration in developments like the Robert Taylor Homes, which stretch along South State Street from 40th to 53rd streets, and at Rockwell Gardens and Cabrini-Green.

Erma Glover, 55, is ready to go. For 18 years, she has lived on the 13th floor of the Robert Taylor building at 5266 S. State St. Four other buildings, including three directly south of Glover’s, were demolished in 1997 and 1998. Besides the malfunctioning, unlighted elevators, the building is "really raggedy, work orders go unfulfilled and garbage chutes aren’t clean," she said.

Many of her neighbors have left, without waiting for a Section 8 voucher. "Some just find their own apartment. They don’t want to wait," she said. Glover has been trying to get Section 8 since last year, but "would accept public housing, if decent," for her 12- and 4-year-old grandsons, who live with her.

Barbara Moore, Glover’s building president, estimated the 158-unit building is one-third vacant. "I don’t know where they go. Other slums I guess," she said. When residents get an eviction notice "they don’t think they can win, so they leave."

The people of Robert Taylor are scattering. In January 1996, 3,261 families lived in the development. Through August 1998, 2,064 remained. In that time, 198 families were evicted by the CHA police. By the end of last year, 368 families had moved out with Section 8 certificates, while 1,082 families had left on their own.

The pattern is repeated at other complexes that are under redevelopment. Since January 1996, the population at Addams-Brooks-Loomis-Abbott, a development on the Near West Side, has dropped by more than half—from 2,432 to 1,173 families. Although 279 families opted for Section 8, 651 voluntarily left their homes.

Attorney William P. Wilen said Horner residents who have not secured other public housing should be among the last to leave. Under a 1995 consent decree, tenants represented by Wilen sued the CHA to repair Horner buildings and guarantee a new unit for every one demolished.

The drab, hulking structures at Horner are now being replaced by single-family homes and refurbished mid-rises. "Horner is different. At Horner they can see the [new] units," Wilen said.

Since 1996, 200 tenants have cut their ties to public housing and left the development. The aged and decrepit buildings that still stand sometimes go unheated in winter, he said, and residents are faced with a choice: "using a stove to heat the apartment, or leaving."

Whatever is behind the exodus, low-income Chicagoans will struggle to find affordable housing, tenant advocates say.

In the summer of 1997, CHAC Inc., the private management company that administers the Section 8 program for the CHA, accepted applications from 104,000 families. About 31,000 are on the waiting list.

"The possibility of increased homelessness is real" if the new Section 8 recipients don’t have access to good jobs, said Aurie A. Pennick, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, a Chicago-based fair housing group.

The CHA signed contracts with the Leadership Council in December and Family Dynamics Inc., a West Side non-profit agency, in September, to counsel as many as 4,000 families who will soon move out of public housing with Section 8 vouchers.

This is "too many low-income families" to shoehorn into the area’s shrinking affordable housing market, Pennick said.

Pennick’s prescription? "First of all, slow down," she said. "Most of these buildings have been in bad shape for years. Now they want to empty them in a year." And she suggests a region-wide effort to build more affordable housing in "job-rich areas" such as west suburban DuPage County.

But CHA Media Relations Manager Specialist Vivian Potter said 95 percent of displaced residents who chose a Section 8 voucher have found housing.

Staying Put
As the CHA attempts to transform public housing developments into mixed-income communities, Cassy Williams, 26, would appear to be the kind of tenant the agency would like to keep.

In September 1997, Williams, who had lived for five years at Maplewood Courts, a West Side mid-rise, got a job as a recertification specialist with East Lake Management. But her higher income drove her own rent up to $450 per month, and she moved out in January: "The rent went up too high, and [the gangs] shoot so much. I did not want to live there for $450."

Under a 1994 state law, public housing residents who are out of work for at least six months and then get a job can receive an "income disregard," allowing them 18 months without a rent increase. According to a 1998 CHA study of 16 family developments, between 80 percent and 98 percent of the residents were unemployed.

Williams, who now lives in a private- market apartment in the West Side Austin neighborhood, said she "would have stayed" at Maplewood if she had known about the law.

Ricki Granetz, a policy analyst with Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a non-profit public interest law firm, has helped residents apply for the income disregard. While hundreds of CHA residents are eligible, few know about the program, and the agency has not showed its development managers how to process tenants who apply, she said.

It is "a failure on our part to make sure the [development] manager knows" about the income waiver, Shuldiner acknowledged, and vowed to correct the problem.

Other tenants said they would stay in public housing if they could live under decent conditions. In December 1995, residents of the Henry Horner Annex voted 54-17 to rehabilitate their buildings rather than take Section 8 certificates or move to scattered-site housing.

Sarah Ruffin, who has lived in the seven-story mid-rise at 1815 W. Monroe St. for 29 years, was one who voted to stay. "I felt like it was home," said Ruffin, who raised five children in Horner, and is now president of her building and serves on the Henry Horner Local Advisory Council.

Her building’s rehabilitation was finished in May 1998; now one of her "main joys is living without the roaches" that had infested her apartment, Ruffin said. She is also encouraged by the level of tenant participation. Residents chose paint colors and advised the developer on the design. "We were involved and we were being heard for the first time," she said.

Louise Williams, secretary of It’s Time for a Change, also wants to stay in public housing. She moved into Cabrini-Green in 1957, "two weeks before Christmas, with three small children," she said. In all, she has raised seven children there.

Although the elevators don’t always work, and there are "abusive elements" at Cabrini, the 71-year-old Williams is "dedicated to hang on here." She hopes the redevelopment will bring back the "close-knit community" she remembers from the 1950s and 1960s.

She worries, though, about the stalled negotiations over Cabrini’s future, in which The Habitat Co., the court-appointed receiver for the CHA, has objected to the redevelopment plan worked out between the agency and the residents. While officials may "have another agenda for the space, I am rooted," she said.