CHA seems to be washing its hands of city's 'bad' poor people
He meant it as a challenge. Part of the beauty of the new mixed income CHA developments is that you aren't supposed to see a difference between the new public housing residences and the other new brick construction condos, town houses and apartments springing up around the city.
The first time he said it we were in a condo building overlooking a United Center parking lot, located in what used to be the Henry Horner projects. One-third of the building's units are set aside for public housing residents, but to tell the difference, you have to get inside the apartment.
Peterson was right. I couldn't tell, even though I'd been driving past some of the buildings for months now, assuming that the flurry of activity was just part of the continued gentrification of some inner-city neighborhoods. In the condo building by the United Center, the giveaway is the floor covering. Public housing residences have carpet, while the market rate units selling for $155,000 to $300,000 have hardwood floors.
Public housing residents may still have problems fitting into the community at large, but it won't be because they've all got a big bull's-eye on their front door.
Given the dismal history of public housing in our city and nation, the folks at the CHA should probably be ecstatic with such a grade, which is certainly an improvement over decades of failure.
But it's probably making Peterson grumpy.
Peterson had invited me on the tour during what turned out to be one of his waning days on the job before taking over as Mayor Daley's campaign manager. I guess Peterson thought I'd been unfairly critical in some columns regarding the CHA. I didn't think so and still don't, but welcomed the chance to learn more about what the CHA is doing.
It was an eye-opening experience, I have to admit, and not just because of how seamlessly the new CHA developments are blending into their surrounding neighborhoods (for which, by the way, I'll create a new category on the report card and give them an A.)
I think this was the first time I came to understand how Peterson expects the new CHA to be conceptually different than the one it's replacing. Even though I've read about his vision in many of these stories about the so-called Plan for Transformation, it hadn't sunk in all the way.
The new CHA has rules and plans to enforce the rules, making room only for those who can follow them. It's as if the city's desperately poor have split between the good poor people and the bad poor people, and the CHA is washing its hands of the bad poor people.
Arguably, there are sound reasons for taking this approach. Some say this is the way public housing was in the beginning, before the gangs and the drug dealers took over.
"I don't think it's too much to ask of people to engage in activities to move forward in life," Peterson told me. "What we're trying to do is break the cycle of poverty. I don't want another two generations growing up in public housing."
I agree, and I think he's made great strides. But I point this out because I keep asking myself what happened to all the people who used to live in those CHA high-rises. Some of them have moved back into those nice new apartments that don't look like public housing, and many more of them are using housing vouchers to rent apartments in the private market. But others are just falling through the cracks.
They weren't on the lease in the CHA apartment where they used to live, or they haven't gotten off the drugs or made enough of an effort to get a job. And if you're saying to yourself, "Right on, people like that don't deserve subsidized housing," I understand.
But these folks haven't just dropped off the face of the earth, and at some point, I'm afraid we're going to look up and find that CHA isn't the problem anymore, but that poor people in need of housing are still the problem -- just not the CHA's problem.