The Habitat Company has long been an influence in shaping the Chicago Housing Authority’s plan to redevelop the city’s public housing stock. Now the organization may send one of its own to lead the agency into a new era.

Earlier this month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel named four candidates for consideration in his appointment of a new CEO for the housing authority.

That post was vacated in June by former CHA head Lewis Jordan, who resigned amidst speculation about his personal use of agency money. Jordan was appointed to the post by former Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2007.

Emanuel’s short-list for Jordan’s replacement included public housing leaders from three East Coast cities. Atlanta Housing Authority CEO Renee Glover was floated as a possible contender for the position, as was Keith Kinard from the Newark Housing Authority and Charlotte Housing Authority head Charles Woodyard.

Also on that list was Lawrence Grisham from the Habitat Company, a Chicago-based residential property management and development firm that has had a hand in numerous urban renewal projects in the city and the Midwest over the past four decades.

The company has played a unique role in the city’s vision for public housing — in 1987, a federal judge appointed Habitat in a receivership to oversee CHA’s scatter-site program. The appointment was the product of Gautreaux v. the Chicago Housing Authority, a 1966 landmark case that accused the agency of racial discrimination practices and of segregating of the city’s low-income residents.

Since then, the firm has monitored the development of over 4,000 public housing units in the city, in addition to serving as property manager at a number of CHA sites.

Grisham has served as Habitat’s senior vice president of community development since 1998. He previously worked for Bethel New Life, a community development corporation in Chicago, and was appointed to serve on the board of directors of the city’s Low Income Housing Trust Fund by Mayor Daley in 2006.

The potential competition for Jordan’s seat thinned shortly after Emanuel’s announcement.

An Atlanta Housing Authority release sent out the following morning stated that Glover had no interest in leaving the city for the post in Chicago. Newark Housing Authority Policy Advisor Lauren Hudock told Skyline last week that Kinard, though flattered by the nomination, would also not be pursuing the position.

Unless Emanuel comes up with additional candidates, that leaves Woodyard and Grisham as the only contenders for CHA’s top spot.

Woodyard did not return calls for this story, and a spokesperson for Habitat said the Grisham would not be commenting on his candidacy for the appointment at this time.

CHA’s next leader will face a myriad of challenges, not only from staggering real estate plans but also the need to strike a balance with a reworked resident population.

The agency is now rounding the final turn on its Plan for Transformation, a decade-spanning redevelopment vision that sought to reestablish public housing by integrating Section 8 tenants with market-rate owners in mixed-income and scatter site developments throughout the city.

According to a recent report by Affordable Housing Finance Magazine, CHA has presently completed 20,480 of the 25,000 units that the agency has promised to redevelop in the city. That tally includes 3,064 public housing units set in mixed-income developments.

Public housing advocates and residents have called on the mayor to hand the CHA over to a local figure — someone who understands the ins and outs of the city’s development arena.

“When you have an inside track, you can get more done,” said resident leader Francine Washington.

Washington is a member of the Central Advisory Council, a group made up of resident leaders from public housing developments across Chicago. She leads a resident council for the Washington Park development, at the site of the former Stateway Gardens high-rises on the city’s South Side.

She said that Habitat served well as an overseer for CHA’s redevelopment plans, but the company’s track record as a property manager, on the other hand, has not been spotless.

CHA currently has property management contracts with five companies.

“None of them are spectacular,” said Washington.

Given the choices, said Washington, she would like to see Grisham take the reins.

“I think he is a decision maker; I think he’ll be good because he knows the city and he knows the politics — he’s in-house,” she said.

While approval for the mixed-income model in Chicago has been nearly unanimous, Habitat has often found itself at ends with public housing residents.

In the Near North Side neighborhood of Cabrini-Green, tenant leadership spent the better part of a decade fighting in and out of court to ensure that CHA’s redevelopment vision for the area contained a decent share of public housing.

Habitat’s popularity among Cabrini residents dwindled when it pushed for a 30 percent cap on CHA-owned units in the new developments.

“That was the major bone of contention in trying to settle that particular lawsuit,” said Richard Wheelock, an attorney who represented Cabrini residents. “It was their interpretation of what they thought the [Gatreaux] order required.”

The agency and residents eventually found common ground in a consent decree that guaranteed housing priority in Cabrini for misplaced residents.

Wheelock said that while relations between Habitat and residents had at times been frosty, it was hard to say how Grisham’s history with the firm could affect his choice as a CHA leader.

“I don’t know how he would proceed wearing the hat of the CEO,” he said.

Following Jordan’s departure, CHA appointed board member Carlos Ponce as interim chief while Emanuel finalizes his selection.