Editor’s Note: The following article was written by a youth reporter who is a graduate of the Urban Youth International Journalism Program.

My name is Paris L. Haynes. I was born July 19, 1990 at Michael Reese Hospital. My parents are Takila Lawson and Dwayne Haynes. I graduated from Wells Prep grammar school. I have lived in the Wells all of my life. Now, I’m 15 and I’m in the tenth grade. I attend Dunbar Vocational Career Academy. When I was about two or three years old, my father’s mother and father both passed in a hour fire. Now that I’m a little older, it really hit me because I didn’t get a chance to know them. From the time I was a baby up until I was eight or nine years old, my family lived on the rock block (37th Place) in the Wells. We moved from there to Vincennes and then to 38th and Rhodes. Now we live in the Ida B. Wells extensions.
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Ickes Rumor Mill

The Redevelopment of public housing creates new dangers
Nicole Wright thought her new home in Englewood would be safer than the Robert Taylor Homes. Last fall, her family was displaced from the dilapidated high-rise at 4037 S. Federal St., one of dozens demolished under the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation.

Her new neighborhood is filled with blocks where trees shade homes with big porches, and neighbors sit out and enjoy the pleasant weather. But this area is also plagued by drugs and gang violence. Like many relocated out of public housing developments, Wright had a teenage son, Kemp, 16. Teenagers can be dangerous for families leaving public housing, even if they are not members of a street gang. And gang members in Englewood looked upon the Wright family with suspicion.
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Public housing agencies nationwide risk losing their federal funding for redevelopment projects if their projects are not on schedule, according to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department recently.

Residents of the Chicago Housing Authority are not alone in their efforts to find housing. Recent reports by housing advocacy groups and news outlets across the United States show there is a severe shortage of housing for working and non-working, low-to-moderate-income people, including those with disabilities and HIV/AIDS. The reports find bad news for all of those who are affected by the nation’s housing crisis. But many of the groups also offer strategies that can help house Chicagoans and others who need a place to live.
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Friday, Oct. 4, was the last day for the residents of 4525 S. Federal St. in the Robert Taylor Homes to be neighbors. The building was being closed in preparation for demolition. The Chicago Housing Authority closed a number of buildings in Robert Taylor this fall to make way for a new mixed-income community they have promised to build in its place.

The surest evidence cialis soft tabs of our national housing crisis can be found under the city’s viaducts, or in the city’s emergency shelters, or in the nooks and crannies of the newly rehabbed Lower Wacker Drive, where the encampments of homeless men and women have become semi-permanent. Evidence of the national housing crisis can even be found, however, in well-off suburbs like Highland Park, an upscale community of luxurious, expansive homes and manicured lawns located on Lake Michigan’s North Shore.

The situation in places like Highland Park, moreover, can help explain why the Chicago Housing Authority seems to be having so much trouble relocating its tenants under the agency’s “Plan for Transformation.” Public housing tenants, low- and middle-income families are all being forced to compete over a shrinking supply of affordable housing. Like a game of musical chairs, those who are not quick enough will end up without a home of their own. Read more »

The December 1999 RJ first revealed that the residents of 2233 S. Federal St. would feel some of the pain of progress.

Things have changed dramatically here in Ickes. On one hand, they remain the same. But some things have gotten worse.

When I was a kid growing up in the Robert Taylor Housing Projects, my dream was that one day my family would get a Section 8 and we would be able to move into a nice apartment in a much better neighborhood. It was my mom’s dream too, that someday she would be able to move her family out of the projects.

Long after I grew up and moved out on my own, my mother was finally given the chance to realize at least part of this dream.

The demolition of Robert Taylor meant that after 25 years of living in the projects and raising five kids, she would be given a Section 8 voucher to find a better place to live. Read more »