Losing your home can be a painful experience. But for some Cabrini-Green residents, the demolition of the buildings that they once lived in isn’t just a wistful passing — it’s also a living.

Larry Walker grew up in 660 W. Division St., a William Green Homes high-rise where he lived with his mother since 1963 — a year after public housing residents began populating the development.

“They weren’t even finished building [the Green homes] when I moved in there,” said Walker, 50.

Nearly half a century since first moving into Cabrini, Walker now works as a laborer for Heneghan Wrecking Co., the firm hired by the Chicago Housing authority to take down the neighborhood’s infamous high-rises over the past decade.

The company is currently wrapping up demolition at 1230 N. Burling St., the last of the Green homes to come down. The 15-story building was home to several people in Walker’s family.

“I didn’t want to see it go, because that was basically my home,” he said.

CHA closed the building after evacuating its remaining residents last winter.

As part of his job with Heneghan, Walker operates the Bobcat loaders used to move the rubble from the buildings. A few of the other workers on the job are also Cabrini residents, he said, including his cousin, Maurice Edwards, who is vice president of Cabrini’s Local Advisory Council, the resident-led body that works with CHA on tenant-related issues.

Walker said that among the former high-rise residents on the crew, the memories of the Green buildings are bittersweet.

“We had a choice,” he said. “There were those who let the gang members come in the building and take over, and they pretty much pushed us off.”

From the early 1980s until last year, Walker lived in 1230 N. Larrabee St., the second-to-last high-rise in the Green development to be razed as the part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation. Along with Edwards, he was among the last of the residents to leave the building when it was emptied by CHA last summer.

Today, Walker lives in a home on the Northwest Side, using a Section 8 voucher to supplement his monthly rent. Before that, he briefly lived in public housing on the South Side.

Walker is among the minority of CHA residents that have left the Cabrini community since the fall of the high-rises, according to data from a recently published CHA report.

The study, which was released on April 14, is an update on the agency’s efforts to track residents that have been relocated since 1999, when CHA started work on the Plan for Transformation, a long-term vision that sought to redistribute the city’s public housing residents into communities of varying ethnic and economic degrees.

Of the 1,282 units in Cabrini that were occupied by CHA residents at that time, 1,059 households are reportedly still present in the area, residing either in CHA-owned units or subsidized housing within the Near North Redevelopment area, which is bound roughly by North Avenue, Lake Michigan, Kinzie Street and the Chicago River.

Of those that have remained, 444 families currently reside in the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses, according to the report.

Maurice Edwards and his 21-year-old son Maurice Jr. reside in River Village, a CHA mixed-income development that sits on the far west side of Cabrini, along the North Branch of the Chicago River.

When CHA first announced its plans to take down the giant towers, Maurice Jr., then a resident of 1230 N. Larrabee, was among the residents who actively fought the decision.

In spring 2005, he helped lead a resident march in protest of the ongoing demolition; the procession of about 100 included a drum line made up of youth and adults from the community.

But all the while, the reality of losing his home had yet to sink in.

“I wasn’t really thinking too much about my building being demolished,” he said. “I was under the influence that it was never going to happen.”

Eventually, Maurice Jr. found himself working for a as a laborer on the Heneghan crew that was tasked with tearing down 1230 N. Larrabee. While sifting through the materials left in the bulldozer’s wake, he had hoped to find a memento by which to remember his childhood home.

“Honestly, I was looking forward to finding something,” he said, “but I didn’t find anything.”

The eight buildings that made up the towering Green apartments — once reviled by outsiders as a haven for crime and drug activity in the city — now exist only as piles of rubble awaiting removal. Demolition at 1230 N. Burling, which began in late March, is expected to be completed this week.

Meanwhile, CHA’s redevelopment efforts in the area have consisted of a partial rehabilitation of the rowhouses to the south and ongoing construction on a series of new buildings intended for public housing residents, Section 8 voucher-holders and market-rate tenants alike.

Walker said he liked the mixed-income model being implemented at the Parkside of Old Town development, where 107 families currently reside in CHA-owned units.

“That’s what it should have been all this time, from day one,” he said.

Maurice Jr. said he was shocked to hear the recent news that CHA was considering a land deal with Target Corp. for the property where his home on Larrabee once sat.

“If the only reason for us is to be relocated is for them to put a Target in the area … that’s just a question mark, that’s crazy,” he said.

Above all else, Walker said he wants to keep working in the neighborhood that he calls home.

“Hopefully, I’ll get on the crew to help rebuild Cabrini,” he said. “I’m looking forward to that.”