Scattered Sites Finally Reach White Areas

By: Brian J. RogalThe Habitat Co. ended up in the public housing business because of the “incompetence and intransigence” of the Chicago Housing Authority, Alexander Polikoff recalls.

Polikoff, a staff attorney for Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a public interest law firm, was a 39-year-old lawyer in 1966 when he filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of CHA resident Dorothy Gautreaux and other tenants. They accused the CHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of isolating African American families in Chicago’s massive public housing developments.

Three years later, the CHA’s historic scattered-site program was born when the late U.S. District Judge Richard B. Austin ordered the agency to begin desegregating public housing. He instructed the CHA to build at least 700 low-rise units in Chicago neighborhoods that were less than 30 percent “non-white.”

But the effort was slowed by resistance from aldermen and residents in white wards. By 1981, the CHA had completed only “several hundred” units, Polikoff said. To jump start construction, Polikoff, the mayor’s office and the CHA agreed that half of all future scattered-site units could be built in “black” areas, defined as more than 30 percent African American.

And after protracted negotiations, HUD agreed that year to help move at least 7,100 public housing families to those neighborhoods or to areas that were undergoing revitalization. Families would either move to scattered-site units or use federal Section 8 subsidies to rent private housing.

By 1987, the CHA had built or acquired 1,147 units, but nearly two-thirds were in mostly black neighborhoods, an April 1994 investigation by The Chicago Reporter found. The construction quality “was questionable,” Polikoff recalled, and “the number of units being completed was paltry.”

Polikoff asked U.S. District Court Judge Marvin E. Aspen, who had taken over the case, to shift control of the effort from the CHA to a “receiver,” a development firm that would oversee all phases of construction, from hiring contractors to design.

In August 1987, Aspen chose Habitat as receiver and put the company in charge of developing all future family public housing.

His decision came after a 1983 Chicago Sun-Times investigation into Presidential Towers, a residential development just west of the Loop. The developers, including Habitat, were exempted from a federal requirement to set aside 20 percent of the units for low- to moderate-income tenants.

Habitat Chairman Daniel E. Levin said he wanted to include Section 8 recipients at Presidential Towers, but HUD could not provide enough Section 8 subsidies for the project. “All the Section 8 units were gobbled up and we were not able to get them,” he said. He added that six other developments in various cities received similar exemptions.

Between August 1987 and October of this year, Habitat has built or purchased 1,822 scattered-site units. But 971, or 53.3 percent, are in neighborhoods that are at least 60 percent Latino. Of those, 709 went to three communities with significant Latino populations: Logan Square, West Town and Humboldt Park, according to Habitat data analyzed by the Reporter.

Habitat has built 274 units in neighborhoods that are more than 70 percent black and 446 in mixed areas. It built just 131 in neighborhoods that are more than 70 percent white.

“We probably identified every piece of vacant land in the city,” Levin said. But white neighborhoods “had very little land” and high prices, sometimes as much as $75,000 a lot, he said. And white neighbors resisted Habitat just as they had the CHA.

In 1994, Humboldt Park residents demanded that the company scale back its plans. Between 1994 and 1995, Habitat capped the number of scattered-site units in Logan Square, West Town and Humboldt Park at 734, and agreed to reserve half for families living in the immediate neighborhood, Habitat officials said.

“We’ve been dumped on for a long period of time,” said Larry Ligas, chairman of Logan Square Concerned Citizens, a community group. Until the residents resisted, Habitat had a “very cavalier attitude toward our neighborhood.”

Latino communities need affordable housing, but with public housing, “you have to scatter them around the city,” said Joy Aruguete, executive director of the Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp., a non-profit community development corporation at 2550 W. North Ave. in West Town. “There are many communities that have not taken any,” she added.

Since the protests, however, Habitat has placed more housing in white neighborhoods. Of the 131 units in predominantly white neighborhoods, more than 63 percent were built in the past three years. Dates of construction were not available for 18 units.

Lawrence E. Grisham, vice president of Habitat’s scattered-site program, said he was “not conscious of any connection” between the protests and Habitat’s move to build more units in white areas.

Once the 53 remaining scattered-site units are finished, Habitat officials said, the decades-old effort will end.

Leah Bobal, James Boozer, Nicolette L. McDavid, Billy O’Keefe, Chanel Polk and Stephanie Williams helped research this article.