At a recent gathering of public housing tenants on the South Side, a Chicago Housing Authority official did not mince words in describing a thorny problem that threatens the success of its plan to relocate thousands of residents from high-rises and into neighborhoods across Chicago and the suburbs.
“When you get to your new home, you cannot just throw your child’s dirty diapers over the balcony,” explained Jackie Davis, a coordinator of the CHA’s Good Neighbor program, mouthing some of the worst fears about public housing residents, waving her hands for emphasis during a small gathering of Stateway Gardens residents–many of them public housing lifers.
“Don’t vandalize your new house or apartment. You are not to loiter in front of your new home.”
It is a crash course in socialization skills that the housing agency says is needed to prepare tenants for life outside public housing. It was started, they add, to help residents learn that certain behavior, so part of life in troubled high-rise complexes such as Stateway Gardens, will become a distinct disadvantage for them once they are resettled into residential neighborhoods.
“Yes, some of our families are challenged, and we are trying to help them address that,” said CHA Chief Executive Officer Terry Peterson.
And the crunch is on. The nation’s third-largest public housing agency is accelerating its plan to demolish high-rises, tripling the number of tenants it plans to relocate into residential settings by year’s end.
No longer will large numbers of public housing residents be concentrated under the same roof. The agency plans to demolish all 53 of its high-rise developments by 2005, home to about 36 percent of the authority’s 130,000 residents.
By 2010, the authority estimates, about 25,000 units of replacement housing will have come online, either as new or renovated units. Some of them will be in mixed-income developments, with public housing residents living next to those paying market rate.
With 52,000 people on the agency’s waiting list, it’s imperative that the CHA find a way to expand subsidized housing. Easing tensions between its relocated residents and their new neighbors is the key, officials say.
For the 25 residents gathered for the Good Neighbors program at Stateway Gardens on this afternoon, some are puzzled. Others are groaning softly.
But everyone is listening, while being handed quarter-inch-thick pamphlets to read. The topics: how to clean a stove. A sink. A toilet. Placing trash in a receptacle. And the importance of using a vacuum–not a mop–to clean a carpet.
Though such skills have been taught by the CHA for years, it’s only recently that the agency has folded such training into a six-hour course. Attendance is mandatory for CHA residents wanting a housing voucher, their ticket to leave.
No one is listening more intently than Dolores Nurse, 73, as the topic shifts from housekeeping to why residents should not openly spank their children once they settle into their new digs.
Nurse raised six children at Stateway during her 42 years there, and she does not plan to change her housekeeping or social habits when she gets a new apartment.
“Well, I do think some of the people in this room need a few lessons,” Nurse said, her eyes darting across the room. “Nobody wants to admit they need this out in the open. But if you look around, you can see these buildings are in pretty bad condition. You can see some people have been doing some things wrong.”
In Humboldt Park, one of the first neighborhoods to absorb the exodus of Cabrini-Green residents, some homeowners have not fully embraced their neighbors, primarily, they say, because the units tend to be among the most neglected in the neighborhood.
“You have to take care of the property, that’s the first thing people need to know,” said Raoul Garcia, who lives in the 1500 block of North Talman Avenue, adjacent to a handful of subsidized units.
Sometimes residents of these units work on their cars in the alley and leave old car parts for others to pick up, he said.
“All of them are not bad. Not at all. But some don’t care about keeping the neighborhood clean.”
Timuel Black, a longtime open housing advocate, said CHA has been nudging people out of public housing for years. Those who are left are among the most chronically unemployed or those with serious problems that prevent them from moving on.
Educating them is a good idea, he said.
But just as important, Black explained, is ensuring that the CHA does not simply find them housing in the same neighborhoods, re-clustering these residents in large concentrations all over again.
“It’s going to take these residents years to fully understand all that is expected of them in these new areas because what’s unfolding is a clash of cultures,” said Black, a longtime activist for African-American issues. “Many of them come from a culture of neglect.”
It’s the prospect of such behavior that frightens homeowners once they learn public housing residents are moving in, explains Joy Aruguepe, director of Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp., a firm that has developed about 850 units of affordable housing for low-income people in Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and West Town.
Property values concern everyone, she said.
“Unfortunately, people look at affordable housing as part of a problem,” Aruguepe said. “They associate it with decline in some instances. In reality, that is certainly not the case.”
Back at Stateway Gardens, residents of this Good Neighbor course point out that getting along with their new neighbors is not entirely up to them. Harmony is a two-way street.
They’ve heard stories of relocated CHA tenants who don’t like their new surroundings because they’ve lost a sense of community. Or their new neighbors look upon them with disdain.
“I don’t want to go from a bad situation, and into a worse one,” said Tanisha Harris, mother of three small children. “I want to get along with people. It’s just that you have no way of knowing whether your new neighbors are going to be nice people or not. I’m not going to hurt anyone or damage my new home.”
Jackie Davis, a Good Neighbor counselor, said the course has helped prepare residents for what they will encounter once they are relocated.
“I tell them, it’s a first step. The rest they just have to use common sense and observe.”
