Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Vince Lane tried Monday to soothe Cabrini-Green residents over the future of the Near North Side public housing complex.
Lane earlier this year proposed tearing down some of the crime-plagued development’s high-rises and building a mixed-income community in its place. A summit held Saturday to discuss the plan drew a small group of protesters.
Asked why some residents apparently do not trust the CHA, Lane replied: “I’m working against a 40-year backdrop of CHA administrations that have allowed the situation to deteriorate to the state it is today.
“Public policy has assumed that poor people can do nothing to help themselves, so the standard we have for poor people in public housing is no standard at all,” he said during a live broadcast of WBEZ-FM’s “Studio A” program.
Lane said that the protesters at Saturday’s meeting would agree with him that the disproportionate number of poor people in Cabrini leads to increased crime.
“You don’t have any resources within the community to help yourself,” Lane said. “There’s no normal infrastructure for kids to engage in constructive kinds of things. We’ve turned our children over to the gang members.”
The proposal calls for rehabilitating the complex and the surrounding neighborhood and reducing the number of welfare families in the complex from the current 90 percent to 15 to 25 percent. He said the area would be bordered by the Chicago River, Wells Street, North Avenue and Superior Street.
Over the next 90 days, the CHA will begin discussing similar plans for ABLA Homes, Henry Horner and Lathrop Homes, Lane said.
Lane assured residents that before demolition begins, the CHA would provide replacement housing. But that doesn’t mean all current tenants would stay.
“We won’t be able to save everybody,” Lane said.
Lane repeatedly referred to Lake Parc Place, two public housing buildings on the South Side, where 50 percent of the complex’s original families remained following the creation of a similar mixed-income community.
The CHA is in the process of applying for a $50 million federal grant from HUD to help pay for the renovation of 500 Cabrini units, Lane said. The application deadline is April 5.
Lane said he envisions five to 15 development projects at Cabrini that would be joint efforts between not-for-profit local organizations and private developers. Developers would be given incentives such as low-interest loans, real estate tax abatement and low-income tax credits.
Stringent minority hiring and contract rules would apply to the Cabrini redevelopment program, Lane said.
