TERMS TO KNOW: Area Median Income: The middle point of an area’s household income distribution. AMI’s are determined differently by the income distribution of a given city and region.
The Chicago Housing Authority Explained
Segregation and public housing in Chicago go hand in hand.
BY GRACE DEL VECCHIO
O
riginally intended to replace overcrowded, deeply impoverished neighborhoods, Chicago’s midcentury public housing developments initially offered significantly better living conditions to residents, and for a time were, as author Dawn Turner told the South Side Weekly, “bastions” of stability that “conferred dignity on the residents.” But subsequent decades of disinvestment and neglect by federal and municipal authorities, combined with entrenched racism from the political machine and a police department with a long history of brutality, led many public housing developments in Chicago to become places where generations of Black families were trapped in poverty amid violence and extreme segregation. Federal and municipal agencies both had a hand in the decline of public housing in Chicago, as well as in the more recent attempts to reverse it. And at both the federal and local level, agency oversight of public housing—or the lack thereof—has consistently reinforced the city’s segregation. 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
EXTERIOR SCENES OF PEOPLE AT THE CABRINI GREEN HOUSING PROJECTS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 1974. ST-14001621-0011, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLLECTION, CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM
What is the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and what is its role?
all seventy-seven community areas. Currently, forty-four properties qualify as mixed-income.
Created in 1937, the Chicago Housing Authority is a municipal not-for-profit agency whose primary objective is to provide housing options for low-income families. It was founded under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration, which came about as part of the New Deal. As one of eighty public housing authorities to take part in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Moving to Work Program, CHA currently provides homes for more than 63,000 households in Chicago through four different types of public housing: family, senior, scattered site, and mixed-income. Currently, there are just under 7,000 family-specific units on fourteen different public housing properties. As for seniors, there are 9,000 units of housing on fortythree different properties throughout the city. CHA has 2,800 units of scattered site housing, which can be found in
An abridged history on the Chicago Housing Authority
¬ FEBRUARY 24, 2022
The CHA was created in 1937. Of the first three CHA developments whose construction began in the 1930s— Jane Addams, Julia C. Lathrop, and Trumbull Park Homes—Lathrop, on the Near North Side, and Trumbull, on the far South Side, still stand, having undergone recent renovations. By the late 1950s CHA owned over 40,000 units of housing, making it the city’s largest landlord. But even the early days of public housing were rocky. In 1937, the agency adopted the “neighborhood composition rule,” which required residents of public housing developments to be of the same race as residents in the neighborhood surrounding the development. The policy, which ostensibly was put in place so “that public housing should not disturb the pre-existing racial
Low-Income Housing: According to HUD, in order to be considered low-income and therefore qualify for public housing, households must make a gross income of eighty percent or less of the AMI for their local Housing Authority Mixed-Income Housing: Housing developments which include varying levels of affordability in the same property, including market-rate and affordable housing. Scattered Site Properties: Individual or small groups of public housing properties, rather than full developments. There are scattered site properties in all seventy-seven community areas of Chicago. The New Deal: A series of economic development programs started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. The New Deal was meant to stabilize the economy and offer relief to those most impacted by the Great Depression. Public Works Administration: An agency set up by President Roosevelt to oversee and carry out the New Deal. The PWA spent about $4 billion on education buildings, public health facilities, court houses, and sewage disposal, as well as roads, bridges, and subways. Housing Choice Voucher (or Section 8): Federal funding from HUD that helps families pay for rental housing on the private market. Participating families contribute thirty to forty percent of their income towards housing and HUD pays the remainder directly to the property owner.
