Instead of castigating the Chicago Housing Authority and its head, Joseph Shuldiner, for cutting a “stupendously ill-advised deal” in giving Cabrini-Green residents a majority voice in planning the area’s renewal (Editorial, Aug. 3), the Tribune should be congratulating them for adopting an innovative and potentially visionary approach that might overcome many of the pitfalls that have bedeviled public housing over the years.
Experience in every facet of human endeavor demonstrates that people take better care of things over which they enjoy ownership prerogatives. A sense of powerlessness, which burdens many residents of public housing, is exacerbated when the shape of their neighborhood is determined by strangers, virtually all of whom reside elsewhere and live in an entirely different socioeconomic world. Housing projects decline as the aspirations of those who occupy them decline, thus perpetuating a permanent underclass. The CHA’s plan courageously seeks to reverse this negative dynamic.
The Tribune alleges that tenants would subordinate the “general interests of the community” to their own “narrow interests.” Do owners of luxury high-rise co-ops along Lake Michigan do any differently? And as for the charge that a tenants council doesn’t represent all the residents equally, is there an elected official or official body anywhere that doesn’t give preference to those who are active in the political process?
There’s a double standard at work here, one that is particularly disturbing because almost all of Cabrini-Green’s residents and their leaders are African-American or Hispanic.
If the law requires that the Habitat Corp. be involved, so be it. But it would be tragic if preconceived notions and, yes, prejudices were permitted to block a plan that sparkles with the spirit of Chicago-style bold innovation. Is it risky? Of course. But has anyone else found a better way?
