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September, 2007 Running scared While public housing residents from demolished high-rises have been moved to the Chicago Housing Authority's designated "relocation resources," the number of occupied units at those developments have declined steadily since 1999. > Read More	September, 2007 Poorest of the poor Among Chicago Housing Authority developments with at least 300 occupied family units, the Harold Ickes Homes have the lowest average annual household income. The average income at the Ickes is slightly more than half the average income for all CHA family dwellings. > Read More	September, 2007 Dumping Grounds "We lost a lot of people last year," said Christopher Curtis, 36, a lifelong resident of the Harold Ickes Homes. "You don't ever hear about it in the news." Curtis knows the development---and its residents---well. Most days, he might be found coaching an Ickes youth soccer team, rounding up residents on a school bus for neighborhood police meetings or fretting endlessly about how the... > Read More
September, 2007 Feeling flat With two working parents and an annual income of $36,000---about three times higher than the average family at the Altgeld Gardens-Murray Homes complex at Chicago's southern end---Anita Williams and her family would appear to be ideal role models for public housing. But Williams, her husband and their two adult children aren't sure whether it's worth sticking it out at Altgeld-Murray.... > Read More	September, 2007 Inside and Out While the teardowns of high-rises has dominated talk of the Chicago Housing Authority's sweeping transformation of public housing, more than half of the agency's buildings will not be torn down. Many changes to public housing are occurring through rehabs of existing developments. Nearly all of the CHA's scattered-site and senior developments have been rehabbed. And, during the past year, the... > Read More	September, 2007 Risk-Ridden Homes High-risk lead ZIP codes in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area mostly include suburbs that have significant Latino and black populations and low median household incomes. This trend holds true for Chicago; though the whole city is considered high-risk, its most-affected areas are black and Latino neighborhoods on the West and South sides. Note: The state of Illinois designates high-risk ZIP... > Read More
September, 2007 CHA Tenant Evictions Jump As Buildings Fall The Chicago Housing Authority is stepping up evictions in buildings it has targeted for redevelopment–"a move that reduces the number of public housing tenants the agency must provide with replacement housing, an investigation by The Chicago Reporter shows. From Jan. 1, 1995, to Aug. 31, 1998, the CHA evicted 1,003 families from the 13 developments the agency wants to "revitalize," according... > Read More	September, 2007