Where did relocated public housing tenants go? CHA report details

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Since the Chicago Housing Authority began tearing down high- and mid-rise buildings and relocating residents a decade ago, 32 percent have returned to its new or rehabbed housing, while 25 percent migrated out of CHA to South and West side communities using vouchers, officials said Thursday.

That latter population — 4,097 families of the 16,500 living in family housing in 1999 — constitute 1 percent or less of all households in 63 of the 73 neighborhoods they migrated to, according to a long-awaited report from the CHA detailing the fallout of its ongoing “Plan for Transformation.”

And a meager 60 of the original public housing families used vouchers to relocate to the suburbs.

The findings, officials said, should dispel the notion that CHA has lost track of its residents, or that the CHA tenants have brought a huge increase in crime to some neighborhoods or suburbs.

“There’s a myth out there that we don’t know where our families are. We do know where they are. And there’s a myth out there that a majority of our families were forced out of the city, which is not true,” CHA’s CEO Lewis Jordan said at a news conference.

However, the deconstruction plan continues to have mixed reviews, particularly among the relocated.

Families like Charlene Jones and her three kids, who left the now torn down Ida B. Wells in 2005 and now owns her own home in Roseland, say it has wrought positive outcomes.

Others, like Maurice Edwards and his two children, who moved from the now torn down Cabrini-Green into replacement mixed-income housing last year, say it hasn’t been the boon promised.

The report was billed as the first comprehensive analysis of the movement and whereabouts of the 25,000 families living in public housing when the historic “Plan for Transformation” began.

“That the figures are as good as they are speaks well for what has been done in the last few years. It’s against the background of unhappy failures in relocations in the early years, when families were being moved into racially segregated communities with high poverty and bad schools,” said Alexander Polikoff, the attorney who filed the 1969 Gautreaux lawsuit resulting in a mandate that all new CHA housing be built in non-segregated city areas.

“The Plan for Transformation is still flawed in one respect,” Polikoff said. “The voucher relocation program should be regional, rather than confined to the city of Chicago.”

The relocated are found in most of the city’s 77 neighborhoods. Aside from the 63 where they’re 1 percent or less of households, there are nine areas, including East Garfield Park, Riverdale and Woodlawn, where they’re up to 1.8 percent, and one, Washington Park, where they’re 3.2 percent.

Jordan asserted residents have made their own relocation choices based on areas they’re familiar with, maintaining that despite many of the chosen communities being segregated, poor and plagued by high crime, conditions in them are better than what residents suffered in high-rise developments.

CHA’s report accounts for all 8,300 senior citizens living in senior housing when the plan started — 28 percent live in CHA or rent privately with vouchers. The rest died or left CHA completely.

It is the whereabouts of the 16,500 families in the family high-rises or scattered-site units at the time that have raised concerns. Of those, 20 percent have returned to developments that were rehabbed; 11 percent to mixed-income developments replacing those torn down.

And whether living in CHA or private housing, the report found tenants faring better — with 42 percent employed, up from 15 percent in 1999, and their average income now $19,000, up by $9,000.

But a disturbing 2,202 families are unaccounted for. Under plan they had the right to return to CHA, but the agency has now lost track of them and has no idea where they are.

“Over 2,200 families are living without a CHA subsidy and not responding to CHA and I think it’s because of how difficult CHA has made it to get into the mixed-income communities,” said attorney Richard Wheelock, who represents residents in their years-long battle over the relocations.

“A number of families, because of tough economic times and being unemployed have chosen not to apply, and this is intentional on CHA’s part. CHA has declared it is no longer the housing of last resort, no longer serving the poorest of the poor, and that begs the question, if not CHA, who?”

Wheelock also called problematic the number of tenants evicted for lease violations — 9 percent — which has one of residents’ ongoing point of contention with the agency.

Finally, of the original population, 7 percent have died; 7 percent await CHA housing while renting elsewhere with vouchers; and 8 percent have decided they no longer need CHA.

“The transformation has been a good thing, because it opened up my eyes to all these opportunities out there,” said Jones, 42, of Roseland. “Through CHA programs, I’ve gotten help buying my own home, and scholarships to go to college and am now working on my masters.”

Edwards, 43, of new Cabrini, disagreed.

“In the mixed-income developments we have market rate folks, affordable housing folks, and public housing folks, and it’s a daunting task trying to figure out how to mix the rich with the poor,” he said. “There’s been a lot of problems. It’s really not working as well as CHA is portraying it.”