The Cabrini high-rises were, to some, towering testaments to
how Chicago public housing couldn't safely give shelter to the poorest of the
poor. But to the final group of residents being rousted from the last building,
Cabrini-Green was simply home.
The 70-acre (28-hectare) development was initially hailed as
a salvation for the city's poor that was emulated nationwide. But it quickly
decayed into the kind of place where little boys were gunned down on their way
to school and little girls were sexually assaulted and left for dead in
stairwells.
With just one building set to fall, mixed-income townhouses,
shops and other redevelopment will go up in Cabrini-Green's place, erasing from
the landscape the island of poverty that the high-rises had become. Cabrini
sits literally in the shadows of downtown's gleaming skyscrapers. A few blocks
east or west, handbags sell for more money than Cabrini residents pay in rent
for a year.
The Cabrini-Green development began on Chicago's North Side
in 1942 with row houses named for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the Roman
Catholic patron saint of immigrants. A few years later, high-rises and
mid-rises were added.
Eventually Cabrini housed as many as 13,000 people.
But the buildings weren't well-maintained, and crime, gangs
and drugs soon became rampant.
The complex drew nationwide attention in 1981, after a gang
war killed 11 residents in three months. Then-Mayor Jane Byrne and her husband
moved into a Cabrini apartment for three weeks to publicize her efforts to
clean up the area.
In 1992, a Cabrini resident hiding in a vacant 10th-floor
apartment shot and killed 7-year-old Dantrell Davis as he walked to school
holding his mother's hand. Five years later, a 9-year-old girl known as Girl X
was found raped, choked, poisoned and left in a stairwell with gang graffiti
scribbled on her body.
The Chicago Housing Authority developed a sweeping plan to
overhaul public housing and move away from the high-rise model of warehousing
the poor.
Along with changing the city's public housing system, the
transformation plan has brought the political legacy of the powerful Daley
family full circle. The elder Mayor Richard J. Daley is blamed for overseeing
development of the high-rises decades ago, while his son, the current Mayor
Richard M. Daley, has spent the last decade tearing them down and relocating
residents.
A federal judge has given the two remaining families at
Cabrini's last high-rise until Dec. 10 to move out, and the 134-unit building
is slated for demolition in January or February. The Chicago Housing Authority
originally gave them until January to move, but the date was shifted back as
families moved and the building dropped below what officials consider to be a
safe occupancy level.
Alther Harris, 67, has lived in Cabrini for more than 30
years and considers it home. She moved to Cabrini's last high-rise a year ago
from a building that has since been demolished. She said the series of recent
moves have been “very, very stressful.” “You can't clean up right, you can't
cook right, you can't eat right because you know that day is coming,” said
Harris, who lives with her daughter and three grandchildren. “It keeps a
person's mind confused not really knowing what's coming next.” The housing
agency said in a statement late Tuesday that it was “continuing to work with
the remaining families” at the last building, including those who have resisted
the move.
Harris is being moved to a nearby public housing townhome
with three bedrooms. She said it's too small for her family, but she doesn't
have much choice.
Former Cabrini residents also have been offered vouchers for
private apartments. And housing officials said they would be able to return to
the Cabrini area once the new buildings are done.
Kenneth Hammond said the townhome he was offered wasn't done
being rehabbed and had boards on its door and cracked windows. The private
apartment he and his family were shown looked nice during the day, but the
neighborhood turned unsafe at night, he said.
“What we as residents want to do is be accommodated right
and leave the building with pride and dignity,” Hammond said. “We just want to
be treated fairly.” Brenda Lockett can sympathize with residents who don't want
to leave the high-rises behind. She remembers being terrified when first told
that she'd have to move, and she pledged to hold onto the building's beams as
it was being demolished.
But six months after moving into a townhome with her husband
and three youngest children, she said she couldn't be happier.
“We moved from the pit to the palace,” she said. “I can live
here until I get old and gray.”
