Posted on 01/05/2011 5:23:44 AM PST by 1010RD
CHA closes last building at notorious Cabrini-Green; demolition set to begin in early 2011
All families received relocation assistance that included counseling and moving services; families can have an option to return once property is redeveloped
CHICAGO (Dec. 9, 2010) – The Chicago Housing Authority announced today that the last high rise at its north side Chicago Cabrini-Green development is closed.
The occupancy of 1230 N. Burling had dropped to the single-digits in recent days, as lease-compliant families have taken advantage of their considerable relocation options: either moving to a public housing unit in a new mixed-income or rehabilitated public housing community; or accepting a Housing Choice Voucher, which would allow them to move into an apartment that is managed by a private landlord.
A team of CHA and social service professionals ensured that the remaining families understood those options, and took great care in making the emotional and sometimes difficult transition as comfortable as possible.
All families received relocation assistance that included housing counseling and moving services and all families can elect to have an option to return to the Cabrini area once the property is redeveloped. A Working Group, composed of community residents, stakeholders, Aldermen, and CHA is currently discussing the redevelopment plan for the area on which 1230 N. Burling sits.
Demolition on 1230 N. Burling is expected to begin in early 2011.
“We are certainly empathetic to the families who have called Cabrini-Green their home for so many years,” CHA CEO Lewis A. Jordan said. “Change is not a simple proposition, and having to leave decades of memories behind cannot be an easy thing. However, CHA is confident that these families will find brighter futures in their new homes – whatever their choices happen to be. The reality is that 1230 N. Burling is in disrepair and CHA, in good conscience, could not allow good people to stay there any longer than what was necessary.”
At its peak, 1230 N. Burling housed 134 families. But 1230 N. Burling – like the recently closed 1230 N. Larrabee and the Cabrini Extensions - began falling into disrepair in the 1970s, about the time the Cabrini development became enveloped by crime and drugs. In the end, the structures were a shell of what they were decades ago.
As part of its “Plan for Transformation” – the largest redevelopment/rehabilitation of public housing in the history of the United States - CHA has worked to steadily relocate families from the older, dilapidated public housing buildings into suitable, newly constructed or rehabbed properties.
Brenda Lockett lived in the Cabrini high-rises for 40 years before moving six months ago to a rehabilitated unit in the nearby rowhouses.
Originally, she wanted no part of the move. She was reluctant to leave the only home she had ever known. “It was the fear of the unknown,” Lockett said.
“You can live at a certain place for so long that you can get complacent. You get comfortable with what you have become accustomed to. But I didn’t realize when I moved out of the high rises and moved somewhere else that things would begin to look different."
And now?
“It’s been like a rebirth,” Lockett said. “It’s like a new beginning for me and my family and I can just see great things down the road.”
Note that:
Unlike many of the city’s other public housing projects like Rockwell Gardens or Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini–Green was situated in an affluent part of the city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini-Green
A little more background:
During the worst years of Cabrini–Green’s problems, vandalism increased substantially. Gang members and miscreants covered interior walls with graffiti and damaged doors, windows, and elevators.
Rat and cockroach infestations were commonplace, rotting garbage stacked up in clogged trash chutes (it once piled up to the 15th floor), and basic utilities (water, electricity, etc.) often malfunctioned and were left unrepaired. On the exterior, boarded-up windows, burned-out areas of the facade, and pavement instead of green space—all in the name of economizing on maintenance—created an atmosphere of neglect and decay.
The high “open galleries” were enclosed with steel fencing along the entire height of the building to prevent residents from falling or being thrown off to their deaths (giving the visual appearance of a large prison tier, or animal cages, which further enraged community leaders).[5]
Frankly, common sense dictates you attempt to keep them away from the well-behaved and law-abiding producers of society, and all in one place so as to effectively police a demographic that is very difficult and expensive (per capita) to control.
But our elite masters do not operate using common sense. They operate according to their agenda.
Exactly, disbursing them into low poverty communities simply creates low poverty, high crime communities that people move out of.
Then we get the myth of white flight.
Have you seen the history of Gary Indiana?
So they can destroy those properties? Cabrini-Green is what it is because of the people who lived there. Moving them to new housing will only ensure that they ruin that housing as well.
That’s the core problem. We cannot admit that there is a mode of behavior that leads directly to material poverty and spiritual vacuity because that would imply a God.
80% or so of poverty is directy related to teen motherhood. I deal with a young black woman who has three children out of wedlock. She’s recovering from drug addiction and recently came down with a flesh eating bacteria. She spent two weeks in the hospital and may lose use of her kidneys.
Doctors told her it started at her anus. There is a consequence to immorality that never gets reported or properly disseminated. The Father of Lies prefers it that way.
"Spreading the wealth" I suppose.
Wards of the gubernment. Shuffle them from failed gubernment housing to their next location. Be sure not to mess up the deliveries at the new address of all gubermint checks and refilling EBT foodstamp cards.
The last time I checked, pushing a broom, keeping your home clean, putting food put away to prevent cockroach infestations and picking up trash from your lawn or apartment building area requires nothing more than a little elbow grease. Poor or not, there's no excuse not to live responsibly except for pure laziness.
Used to hate having to drive by that place. They had a stop sign in the middle of the street there and I swear the only reason was to make it easier for the car jackers and snipers.
You should have seen Turtle Creek a low-middle class apartment development in Palatine in the 80s. It was an FHA subsidized development that targeted Palatine because it was too white, too low crime, too education. Up to that point it had been farmland, but was being developed rapidly and was affordable, but had no bus service. So of course they’re racists.
The development failed and went bankrupt, so FHA/HUD populated it with Section 8 recipients who brought their hoodlum boyfriends/babydaddies and children out with them. The Palatine police were totally unprepared for the gang activity that followed.
Maybe we should stop pretending that poverty is simply the absence of material goods?
Which is exactly why such people should NOT be moved out of housing projects and into better neighborhoods for them to destroy. These policies have made most cities and inner-ring suburbs completely unlivable.
The lazy and useless people will always be with us. These people should not be rewarded with high quality housing, over and over and over again, while they routinely trash it and contribute nothing for the good of society. Keep them all in the projects and away from productive people who work for a living.
In a more ideal world, these types of apartments would be put where all the rich liberals live. Let them be with their people.
We agree. The reason it would imply a God is that the poor violate the Ten Commandments in every aspect of their lives. That’s not a reason not to love them or want them to improve, but it does point out that there are direct moral consequences to human behavior.
If there is “sin” then there must be a God. If there is no Law, then there can be no sin and no God. Does that make sense?
The poor need to take responsibility. Sadly, they’re tricked by an industry that parasites them. Worse, they are enormous consumers of pop culture and when a multimillionaire snorts coke or breeds out of wedlock the consequences are masked by wealth. This is misleads people as well.
But what about Good Times? Dy-no-MITE!
Exactly.
Just screwing up new neighborhoods. Making new Cabrini-Greens wherever they go.
We live in a world where the upper class of every political belief likes to cripple the middle class whenever they get the chance.
Yep, Richard J Daley understood integration and neighborhoods. He was a real Democrat.
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