Olander Homes are now Lake Parc Place, the latest twist in CHA chairman Vincent Lane’s audacious plan to reclaim public housing for law-abiding tenants. As a boy, Lane watched enviously from a cold-water flat as families graduated from a nearby housing project to home ownership. Public housing then was a steppingstone, not a destination. Today the CHA houses 26,000 families whose incomes average $3,500 a year, cut off even from contact with the exalted ranks of the lower middle class. The families who will begin moving into Lake Parc this week will be the vanguard of an economically (although probably not racially) integrated community in which half of the 282 apartments will be permanently set aside for working families. He hopes that they will provide role models for the poorer tenants and create the kind of stable environment that will enable all to move on and up in life. “Lane is using all the positive threads lost over the last 15 years to weave the fabric of public housing that works,” says Harry Spence, a public-policy specialist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s a brave and important thing to do.”
Using a pilot-project federal grant that came to $60,000 per apartment, the CHA covered old walls with bright sand-textured paint, installed new appliances and hung handsome oak cabinets. Outside, a tall wrought-iron fence will encircle the whole site, including landscaped play areas, splash pools and garden plots. Lane has hired private managers to run Lake Parc and screen prospective tenants according to HUD guidelines, which permit taking into account such factors as references from previous landlords, credit histories and criminal records. Avoiding the pitfall of other mixed developments, where tenant populations were so far apart economically that they rarely interacted, the CHA will attempt to integrate desperately poor families with those earning 50 to 80 percent of the median Chicago-area income (or $23,450 to $37,500 for a family of four.) Rents will vary with income to a maximum of just $463–roughly half the market rate for similar lakefront units.
Of course, even if the Lake Parc experiment works, it would take decades to duplicate in all 155 high-rise family-occupied buildings run by the CHA. With little hope of attracting middle-class tenants to such notorious projects as Cabrini-Green or the Robert Taylor Homes–both of which witnessed gang killings in recent days–the authority is trying to make life better for the thousands who live there by “sweeping” them of gang members and drug dealers who have taken over vacant–or even occupied– apartments.
The “sweeps” are intentionally dramatic events, aimed at demonstrating CHA’s commitment to reclaiming its property. A force of nearly 200, including police and security officers, lawyers, housing inspectors and construction workers, descends unannounced on a single building at 9:30 a.m. While the cops wait in the hallways, teams of inspectors visit each apartment in turn, checking the occupants against the tenants named on the lease. Anyone else present is escorted down to the lobby, where workers are already building barricades to seal all but one entrance, secured by a guard posted in a “visitor’s center.” Lawful tenants are given identity cards. Visitors who show up at the lobby must be individually approved for entry by a tenant–an adult tenant, not a teenager.
One thing the police can’t do is search apartments for drug or guns–unless, of course, they have a warrant. Officers can, however, seize contraband in plain view. In such a case the tenants are not only arrested by slapped with an eviction notice under a provision of CHA leases prohibiting weapons in apartments. These Draconian measures have managed to unite the ACLU of Illinois and the National Rifle Association in opposition. But they get quick results: the fruits of typical sweep are a windfall of pistols being chucked out the upper-story windows, followed by a small harvest of marriages by live-in boyfriends making lawful tenants of themselves.
But do the sweeps get lasting results? The jury is still out on that until the entire system can be swept, the sweeps tend simply to relocate crime from one building to another. Overall, the CHA says reported crime in the projects rose last year, although not as fast as in the rest of the city. But in about 55 high-rises that have been swept so far, anecdotal evidence suggests that tenants’ lives have improved considerably. In eight buildings of Rockwell Gardens, the only project to have been swept entirely, tenants used to keep their children in all summer and sometimes made them sleep in bathtubs, because the windowless bathrooms were the only place secure from stray gunshots. Today, says Local Advisory Council president Mary Baldwin, the project is home to “decent people who can live just like people do in nice apartments on Lake Michigan.”
And, on Lake Michigan itself, the test of whether big-city public housing can be permanently reclaimed for the decent people gets underway this week. The two Lake Parc high-rises now renovated will soon be joined by four others. Lane also wants to build 564 mixed units of low-rising housing and bring job-training programs and other social services to the site.
There are skeptics, naturally. “It’s an interesting experiment, but I can’t get excited about it,” says Ed Marciniak, head of the Institute of Urban Life at Chicago’s Loyola University. “We’re still talking about renters not that far from poverty line.” Viewed differently, that is also Vincent Lane’s point. The CHA is betting that high-quality housing will attract high-quality people. Lane aims to prove that the latter are distinguished by their aspirations, not their incomes.
A resident of a Chicago public-housing project is likely than other citizens to be murdered, often in a gunfight among drug dealers who have taken over vacant-or occupied-apartments. One building at a time, the Housing Authority is attempting to reclaim its property from the gangs-and attract working-class families.
title: “Chicago Housecleaning” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Carla Jenkins”
Olander Homes are now Lake Parc Place, the latest twist in CHA chairman Vincent Lane’s audacious plan to reclaim public housing for law-abiding tenants. As a boy, Lane watched enviously from a cold-water flat as families graduated from a nearby housing project to home ownership. Public housing then was a steppingstone, not a destination. Today the CHA houses 26,000 families whose incomes average $3,500 a year, cut off even from contact with the exalted ranks of the lower middle class. The families who will begin moving into Lake Parc this week will be the vanguard of an economically (although probably not racially) integrated community in which half of the 282 apartments will be permanently set aside for working families. He hopes that they will provide role models for the poorer tenants and create the kind of stable environment that will enable all to move on and up in life. “Lane is using all the positive threads lost over the last 15 years to weave the fabric of public housing that works,” says Harry Spence, a public-policy specialist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s a brave and important thing to do.”
Using a pilot-project federal grant that came to $60,000 per apartment, the CHA covered old walls with bright sand-textured paint, installed new appliances and hung handsome oak cabinets. Outside, a tall wrought-iron fence will encircle the whole site, including landscaped play areas, splash pools and garden plots. Lane has hired private managers to run Lake Parc and screen prospective tenants according to HUD guidelines, which permit taking into account such factors as references from previous landlords, credit histories and criminal records. Avoiding the pitfall of other mixed developments, where tenant populations were so far apart economically that they rarely interacted, the CHA will attempt to integrate desperately poor families with those earning 50 to 80 percent of the median Chicago-area income (or $23,450 to $37,500 for a family of four.) Rents will vary with income to a maximum of just $463–roughly half the market rate for similar lakefront units.
Of course, even if the Lake Parc experiment works, it would take decades to duplicate in all 155 high-rise family-occupied buildings run by the CHA. With little hope of attracting middle-class tenants to such notorious projects as Cabrini-Green or the Robert Taylor Homes–both of which witnessed gang killings in recent days–the authority is trying to make life better for the thousands who live there by “sweeping” them of gang members and drug dealers who have taken over vacant–or even occupied– apartments.
The “sweeps” are intentionally dramatic events, aimed at demonstrating CHA’s commitment to reclaiming its property. A force of nearly 200, including police and security officers, lawyers, housing inspectors and construction workers, descends unannounced on a single building at 9:30 a.m. While the cops wait in the hallways, teams of inspectors visit each apartment in turn, checking the occupants against the tenants named on the lease. Anyone else present is escorted down to the lobby, where workers are already building barricades to seal all but one entrance, secured by a guard posted in a “visitor’s center.” Lawful tenants are given identity cards. Visitors who show up at the lobby must be individually approved for entry by a tenant–an adult tenant, not a teenager.
One thing the police can’t do is search apartments for drug or guns–unless, of course, they have a warrant. Officers can, however, seize contraband in plain view. In such a case the tenants are not only arrested by slapped with an eviction notice under a provision of CHA leases prohibiting weapons in apartments. These Draconian measures have managed to unite the ACLU of Illinois and the National Rifle Association in opposition. But they get quick results: the fruits of typical sweep are a windfall of pistols being chucked out the upper-story windows, followed by a small harvest of marriages by live-in boyfriends making lawful tenants of themselves.
But do the sweeps get lasting results? The jury is still out on that until the entire system can be swept, the sweeps tend simply to relocate crime from one building to another. Overall, the CHA says reported crime in the projects rose last year, although not as fast as in the rest of the city. But in about 55 high-rises that have been swept so far, anecdotal evidence suggests that tenants’ lives have improved considerably. In eight buildings of Rockwell Gardens, the only project to have been swept entirely, tenants used to keep their children in all summer and sometimes made them sleep in bathtubs, because the windowless bathrooms were the only place secure from stray gunshots. Today, says Local Advisory Council president Mary Baldwin, the project is home to “decent people who can live just like people do in nice apartments on Lake Michigan.”
And, on Lake Michigan itself, the test of whether big-city public housing can be permanently reclaimed for the decent people gets underway this week. The two Lake Parc high-rises now renovated will soon be joined by four others. Lane also wants to build 564 mixed units of low-rising housing and bring job-training programs and other social services to the site.
There are skeptics, naturally. “It’s an interesting experiment, but I can’t get excited about it,” says Ed Marciniak, head of the Institute of Urban Life at Chicago’s Loyola University. “We’re still talking about renters not that far from poverty line.” Viewed differently, that is also Vincent Lane’s point. The CHA is betting that high-quality housing will attract high-quality people. Lane aims to prove that the latter are distinguished by their aspirations, not their incomes.
A resident of a Chicago public-housing project is likely than other citizens to be murdered, often in a gunfight among drug dealers who have taken over vacant-or occupied-apartments. One building at a time, the Housing Authority is attempting to reclaim its property from the gangs-and attract working-class families.
