Seniors Protest Rent Rise
by Editor-in-ChiefMichael Green has lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a Chicago Housing Authority building at 1531 N. Sheridan Avenue on the North Side for the past 14 years. The 55-year-old used to receive disability aid but he now works at a hospital. He wants to own a condominium of his own but says that dream will now be more difficult to achieve. The reason: CHA raised his rent by $415, from $322 to $737 a month.
“If they hadn’t went up on me … my next step would have been in a condo,” Green said. “I was setting my sights on a condo. But now they’ve hindered me from doing that.”
Green’s rent rose due to a rent policy change the housing authority implemented in 2006. CHA now demands residents decide whether their rent will be a “flat-rate rent” based on market rates or an “income-based rent” calculated according to family income.
At the March CHA board meeting, residents said the rent changes are making it harder for residents to move toward self-sufficiency, a big part of CHA’s $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation.
Gone is the “ceiling rent,” a cap on how much a resident would have to pay for their unit. The changes are angering many residents and their leaders, forcing some, as Green put it, “between a rock and a hard place.”
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