The Chicago Housing Authority recently went on the defensive after a toddler was killed in the Cabrini-Green row houses in June.

The housing authority reacted to media reports stating that the agency was warned by federal housing inspectors about the potential threat of physical harm posed by some rod iron gates and fencing at the North Side public housing development.
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In the North Side development Cabrini-Green, residents were busy going to vote and expressing their views on the election when I stopped by on the morning of Election Day. The question was simple: who would penetrate the hard concrete public housing walls, a Cannon or a Steele? Which one would be the winner?

Residents that reside in Cabrini live in potentially the most valuable properties in Chicago. Kelvin Cannon, who has resided in a Cabrini-Green high rise for over 38 years, challenged community activist Carol Steele for her seat.
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Many of the residents in the Cabrini-Green public housing development are up in arms after receiving a 180-day notice from Chicago Housing Authority to vacate their buildings.

Residents in Cabrini feel that the CHA notices have been served out like pieces of cake, as if it’s something good for the low-income residents.

“The reason we served those 180 day notices is because those buildings are in the worst shape and are unsafe to live in,” Derek Hill, a CHA spokes-person said.
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Deidre Brewster

You can sense warmth and happiness from former Cabrini-Green resident Deidre Brewster, a wife and mother of three, when you first meet her. This lends her an air of straightforwardness that probably makes it easier her to be such a helpful person in her former community.

Former Cabrini resident Deidre Brewster. Photo by Crystal Medina

Deidre Brewster is a relocated resident of Cabrini Green waiting for more low income housing to be built. She is also an activist. What motivated her to fight for the residents in the first place was that she was concerned that Chicago was turning into a city for the rich.
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Residents of the Cabrini-Green development are turning up the heat on the CHA-picked private management company that replaced resident managers and is now leaving them out in the cold–literally.

In the windy city, where winter temperatures can reach rock bottom, in early January Cabrini management company H.J. Russell and the CHA scrambled to explain to residents why they have to heat up pots of hot water and turn the knobs on their gas stoves up a few notches in order to stay warm.

Cabrini-Green Homes resident Ray Wood, 19, points to an open stove and a pot of boiling hot water that his family used in an effort to keep warm while the gas was shut off by CHA in mid-January. Photo by Beauty Turner

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I‘m hot on the trails of the hottest candidates in this lukewarm election. Though many incumbents are running unopposed, some sparks are flying in the Windy City wind when it comes to this year’s municipal race. One of the races that is sure to be hot and sizzling and may cause a Chicago fire is the mayoral race. Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his bid for re-election in the last year, according to his campaign spokesperson, Julian Green.

“Gun Smoke” doesn’t have anything on Cabrini-Green this summer. On June 13, gunslingers dueled in the streets and sheriffs tried to restore order in the North Side development.

“Girl X Settles With CHA for $3 million.” That’s the way the headlines appeared in the April 18 daily newspapers and how the story was announced on several television and radio news stations.

The settlement was the result of a lawsuit filed on behalf of 15-year-old Toya Currie. Currie was given the title ‘Girl X’ after her attack at 1121 N Larrabee in CHA’s Cabrini-Green public housing development in January 1997. Currie was nine years old at the time of the attack.

Another, possibly unauthorized Cabrini-Green resident, Patrick Sykes, was convicted of the assault and sentenced to 120 years in prison this past July. Read more »

I don’t know about you, but I feel as if I’m looking down the barrel of a loaded summer. In addition to the usual challenges that we face as public housing residents, it is apparent this summer, more than ever before, that we face a new challenge: the redevelopment of public housing.

This redevelopment process started over eight years ago under then-CHA Chairman Vincent Lane, with a federal program titled Hope VI, suggesting the arrival of hope for the hopeless residents of public housing. Today, the process has simply become the redevelopment of public housing and is moving at a much faster pace, offering little hope for too few residents.
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I covered the recent trial of the man accused of raping Girl X in room 400 of the federal court building downtown.