Public Housing HELL demolished

[ovidsen]

File this under the best laid plans section.

Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes are being erased. What was once touted as the World's Largest Housing Project (my caps) is being levelled. Far worse than it's North Side cousin, Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor stretched for half the length of the Dan Ryan Expressway (check out the map). It was nothing but ugly, squat brick midrise people-warehouses, surrounded by dirt. You didn't ever, ever want to go there, even if you lived there. And it's almost history.

Good riddance.

By the way, this is primo land for redevelopment. It sits between 2 El lines and the Ryan, and only about 5 miles from downtown, and somebody's going to make a fortune. But who?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cha07.html

Lives, dreams lost at 'warehouse of the poor'

January 7, 2006

BY LESLIE BALDACCI Staff Reporter

The second-to-last high-rise in the notorious Robert Taylor Homes is being reduced to rubble, leaving just one building inhabited on a two-mile stretch of land where 28 monoliths once lined up like enormous dominoes along the Dan Ryan Expy. (snip)

It was a place where swingsets lacked swings and lawns had no grass; where elevators were always broken and scorched bricks reminded of old fires. Children fell out of windows there. Gang-bangers busted through apartment walls with sledgehammers to create escape routes, sometimes building expansive suites on vacant floors.

[ret5hd]

1. as much as i applaud demolishing these poverty-prisons...

i wonder where the people have gone. Have they been provided other housing?

[elehhhhna]

3. scattered.

[elehhhhna]

2. GOOD RIDDANCE. It was a "good" idea gone wrong--

High rise housing w/ lake views, for families. In reality it was a poorly maintained series of warehouses for the poor.

[demnan]

4. Where do people go when they eliminate affordable housing?

I mean it might be ugly, but to somebody it was home. Where is home now?

[ovidsen]

6. Scattered, mixed-use developments

The Chicago Housing Authority has been overseeing development of townhouses and low rise apartment buildings where families live in mixed market-rate and subsidized units. Private landlords accepting Section 8 are also helping to house people. Generally, you can't call these luxury units, but they're a hell of a lot better than the old projects.

Unlike New York or San Francisco, Chicago doesn't have a critical low or middle income housing crunch. Housing for most working families exists.

[KingFlorez]

5. Thank God

These high-rises have been coming down for over 10 years now and I am glad

[Laughing Mirror]

7. What about the thousands of poor people bulldozed away into oblivion?

This article says not one word about them.

[ecstatic]

8. Believe me they are much better off now in mixed income housing

with economic diversity. Children will be exposed to another way of life now, thank goodness.

[Laughing Mirror]

10. I have no doubt they will be

My point was that this news article did not even think to mention them, or what would happen to them, and I would not have known had other posters not supplied that information.

[Gormy Cuss]

9. Robert Taylor Homes is a HOPE VI program site.

In a nutshell, HUD's HOPE VI is intended to help authorities tear down high-density, older, troubled public housing developments and replace the buildings with fewer ones in lower density configurations. Generally these units are built on the same property as the old ones but not always. The total number of units is reduced significantly but often this does not mean tenants must be displaced because troubled housing developments usually have large numbers of mothballed units. When the replacement units are too few to accommodate the existing tenants at the old development the housing authority is obligated to find alternate subsidized housing such as Section 8.

Robert Taylor homes had over 4000 units when it was built, IIRC. It's a classic of bad design in public housing. The HOPE VI program has been a good mechanism for moving old, poorly designed public housing out of inventory. Like all such programs, there have been failures and controversial plans, but for the most part this is considered one of the better rental housing rehab programs in recent years.

[ovidsen]

11. Thanks for this info. Thanks for HOPE n/t