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Getting to Know Rockwell

by  Assistant Editor

I recently investigated Rockwell Gardens, a 17-acre public housing development on Chicago’s West Side. In my quest to get to know Rockwell, I learned a lot about this family development.

Built in 1961, Rockwell Gardens housed 1,126 units of public housing before redevelopment began recently and it is just three miles from the Loop. When completed, the redeveloped site will house 823 units, 264 of which will be public housing, according to Chicago Housing Authority representatives.
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Thomas Sullivan Report Update

by  Assistant Editor

The problems with the city’s ongoing, ambitious plan to transform its public housing are weighing heavily on the city’s so-called “Big Shoulders.” The Chicago Housing Authority is trying to lift some of that burden by implementing some of the recommendations made by Thomas Sullivan, the independent monitor of the transformation process.

Last year, Sullivan, a former U.S. attorney, analyzed Phase II of the CHA Plan for Transformation and presented his results to the CHA and the Central Advisory Council. In a report which hit the Windy City like a tornado, Sullivan found that residents with Housing Choice Vouchers are moving into predominately African American areas that have a high concentration of poverty. Sullivan reported that some residents moved into CHA temporary replacement units in “deplorable” conditions. Sullivan observed the presence of gangs and drug dealers in many of the developments into which people are being moved.
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Homeless Not Hopeless

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How many Chicago public housing residents will be left homeless by the Chicago Housing Authority’s ongoing Plan for Transformation? The answer to this question should be ‘zero.’ The CHA is required by law, after all, to provide replacement housing for all public housing tenants that will be affected by the agency’s 10-year effort to demolish, rehab and redevelop the agency’s entire housing stock.

But CHA officials apparently have a different interpretation of their legal responsibilities, as indicated by the recently released numbers of residents who were relocated during 2002. According to those figures, a significant number of residents ended up outside of the public housing system altogether – despite CHA’s responsibility to house every relocated resident.

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