Chicago Housing Authority boots more residents from Cabrini

Rowhouse residents have 180 days to leave, CHA says

09/07/2011 10:00 PM

By IAN FULLERTON
Contributing Reporter

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The Cabrini-Green rowhouses are a mixture of rehabilitated buildings and structures worn by decades of use and neglect.
File 2010/J. GEIL

Maurice Edwards stood pensively as he watched residents and Chicago Housing Authority officials slowly filter into the makeshift conference room of a Cabrini-Green residential development last Thursday afternoon.

As a member of Cabrini’s Local Advisory Council, Edwards had been called to the meeting by CHA that day to discuss the future of the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses, a 584-unit low-rise public housing complex on the Near North Side.

Bordered by Larrabee and Oak streets, and Hudson and Chicago avenues, the rowhouses have gotten a partial rehab in recent years, but work on the development had stalled as of late, spurring resident speculation as to the agency’s plans for the properties.

“There’s no telling what’s going to happen,” said Edwards. “It’s the Wild West in here.”

But Edwards had more of a hunch than he led on, and a few minutes later CHA officials confirmed his assumptions: Citing safety concerns over what they called “persistent criminal activity” in the area, CHA planned to hand out 180-day relocation notices to tenants in 33 households at the rowhouses later that night.

Those residents set to receive notices were the last remaining occupants of the 73-year-old development’s 438 unrehabbed units.

The agency said in a press release that the decision to vacate the units was motivated by recent criminal incidents around the rowhouses involving illegal firearms and drug trafficking. According to CHA spokesperson Kellie O’Connell Miller, 31 of the 88 individuals currently residing in those un-rehabbed households are children.

CHA interim CEO Carlos Ponce said that the notices were a necessary precaution.

“This is not a safe environment,” he said. “If something should happen, whether it’s an injury or it turns into a fatality, that’s on my watch.”

Ponce said that despite the agency having implemented additional security, police patrols and cameras at the rowhouses in recent months, the area has proven too dangerous for continued occupancy.

Edwards said that the LAC took issue with the agency’s decision on a number of points.

Until last year, Edwards was a resident of 1230 N. Larrabee, one of the last Cabrini-Green high-rises to be demolished as part of CHA’s Plan for Transportation, a long-term vision for redistributing the city’s public housing stock into mixed-income communities.

When Edwards received a 30-day emergency eviction notice from the building in May 2010, he argued that the development’s safety issues were nothing that couldn’t be remedied by more productive policing and additional security resources.

The same goes for the rowhouses, he said.

“By no means do these facts fit what is actually happening down here,” said Edwards.

Edwards said that the recent crimes in the area had not been definitively linked to the rowhouses, and called the current police presence at the development “ineffective.”

He further stated that CHA’s delivery of the notices was in violation of the Relocation Rights Contract, a 2009 agreement which stated that all planning for the redevelopment of Cabrini must be done in the context of a resident-represented working group.

That discussion never happened, Edwards said.

“Obviously we are going to see CHA in a court room,” he said.

Richard Wheelock is an attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, a firm that has represented Cabrini residents for over a decade.

He said that CHA did err in moving to pass out the rowhouse evictions without convening with resident leadership.

“They have to earnestly engage the LAC — make a proposal and have a back and forth discussion,” he said. “It doesn’t require CHA to reach agreement, but it requires them to make a good faith effort to try to reach agreement.”

As with all relocation notices, CHA has stated that it will assist residents with relocations efforts, and according to an agency press release, lease-compliant families can choose to return to Cabrini “once a decision on the future of the property is made.”

After the meeting, CHA General Counsel Scott Ammarell said that opposition to the notices was expected, but insisted that the agency’s motives were in the residents’ best interest.

“Each time we’ve closed a building in this area, we’ve had people who have resisted,” he said. “Contacting them afterwards when they are in their new place, they can’t even imagine going back.”

CHA rehabbed 146 of the rowhouse units in 2009, all but about twenty of which are currently occupied.


1 Comment - Add Your Comment



By Boyee from Mid-North in Lincoln Park
Posted: 09/08/2011 4:15 PM

YES to less CHA housing downtown!