There used to be a 16-story open-gallery high-rise building at 6215 S. Wabash Ave. in the Washington Park neighborhood on the South Side.

Closed CHA building at 6215 S. Wabash awaiting demolition in 1998. Residents' Journal archive photo by Mary C. Piemonte

The Chicago Housing Authority imploded the building in 1998 and the space where it stood remains vacant to this day. That was the first public housing building my children and I lived in after leaving the private housing market in 1989.

The building was also the focus of my first article that I wrote as a professional journalist with Residents’ Journal back in the summer of 1997. Read more »

Public housing tenant leaders were pleased with Tuesday’s announcement from the Chicago Housing Authority that it has dropped plans to drug test all residents. CHA Board Chairman James Reynolds abruptly proclaimed that the Board would not try to approve the drug testing policy during the Commissioners public meeting today at the Charles A. Hayes Family Investment Center, 4859 S. Wabash Ave.

“We killed it,” he said.

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After a breach of the public trust, Chicago Housing Authority CEO Lewis Jordan decided today to resign his 4-year-old tenure, following media coverage of his and other CHA staff members’ use of credit cards to charge thousands of dollars on expenses such as upscale restaurants and red light tickets.

CHA CEO Lewis Jordan tries to calm distraught tenants at the Charles A. Hayes Family Investment Center June 2, during a public hearing to comment on the agency’s plan to drug test all public housing tenants. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

Since the investigation from other media came to light, new Mayor Rahm Emanuel took away Jordan’s use of two CHA cars and the police officers assigned to drive them, and ordered a full audit of how city officials and other staff had been using credit cards.

In an e-mailed statement, Jordan listed his accomplishments at the agency, but said that “over the past two weeks, questions about the propriety of credit card use have overshadowed the good and important work of the CHA.”

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Officials from the Chicago Housing Authority have been under fire recently for proposing to drug test all tenants. But for over a year, CHA pushed a new policy that would have required tenants to turn over their children’s report cards and other school information as a condition for remaining in public housing. CHA’s proposal was fiercely resisted by the tenants’ representatives and their lawyers, and the CHA eventually backed down.

“This is appalling, and is not, and never has been authorized by Federal statute, or the regulations issued by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); nor is it contained as an exception in the CHA’s Moving to Work (MTW) Agreement,” declared Robert Whitfield, the attorney for the Central Advisory Council, the elected leaders of CHA tenants, in one of the back and forth emails to CHA General Counsel Scott Ammarell on December 8, 2010, which Residents’ Journal obtained from Whitfield.

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Residents’ Journal’s video coverage of the June 1, 2011 public hearing on the Chicago Housing Authority’s plans to drug test all tenants, including seniors and those with disabilities as well as their plans to take away the tenants’ defense provision in their lease, for criminal activity committed by a family member or friend, unbeknown to them.

Low-income people from across the city held two days of protest last week against the Chicago Housing Authority’s plans to drug test of all tenants, including tenants of senior buildings. CHA residents and their allies also were protesting the agency’s efforts to limit tenants’ ability to avoid eviction.

On June 1, angry tenants and their advocates from the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization gathered in front of CHA’s downtown headquarters and said the agency’s proposed changes would violate the US Constitution’s 4th Amendment protecting citizens from unreasonable search and seizure.

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Residents’ Journal’s video coverage of tenants and their advocates’, rally outside the headquarters of the Chicago Housing Authority on June 1, 2011, in protest of their plans to drug test all public housing residents, including seniors and those with disabilities.

Publisher’s Note: Regular readers might have noticed a change in the by-line of our Editor-in-Chief, who was formerly known as Mary C. Johns. Mary got married last month and changed her name to her new husband’s family name. On behalf of the board and staff of We The People Media/Residents’ Journal, congratulations Mary!

Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel being sworn into office by the Honorable Timothy Evans, chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County as his wife and children looks on, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, on May 16, 2011. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

“Today, more than any other time in our history, more than any other place in our country, the city of Chicago is ready for change,” said new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at his inaugural ceremony before a massive crowd at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park today.

“For all the parents who deserve a school system that expects every student to earn a diploma; for all the neighbors who deserve to walk home on safer streets; for all the taxpayers who deserve a city government that is more effective and costs less; and for all the people in the hardest-working city in America who deserve a strong economy so they can find jobs or create jobs – this is your day.”

Emanuel said he was dispensing with “old ways and old divisions…New times demand new answers; old problems cry out for better results…I am proud to lead a city united in common purpose and driven by a common thirst for change.”

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Residents’ Journal’s video coverage of low-income Woodlawn youth and their advocates’, march and rally at University of Chicago Medical Center on April 21, 2011.

“U of C is Whack! Bring the Trauma Center back,” was the chant of protestors as they marched from 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue to the University of Chicago Medical Center at 58th Street and Maryland Avenue on April 21.

The protestors were stepping up their fight for “the human right to health care,” demanding action for a South Side trauma center. Members of “Fearless Leading by the Youth” also known as FLY, a division of Southside Together Organizing For Power (STOP), rallied outside the medical center, chanting “While the U of C ignores, we’re dying at their door.”

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On April 14, Chicago Housing Authority CEO Lewis Jordan announced the results of an “exhaustive tracking process and data analysis” that looked at where its former residents are and how they are doing.

In releasing the information, Jordan said he was aiming to correct misimpressions of agency’s progress on its 12-year-old Plan for Transformation.

Chicago Housing Authority CEO Lewis Jordan talking to reporters about his knowledge of where relocated tenants are, during his press conference resident relocations under the Plan for Transformation, at CHA downtown headquarters on April 14, 2011. Photo by Mary C. Johns

“There’s a myth out there that we don’t know where our families are,” Jordan said. “We do know where these families are.”

When the CHA’s Plan for Transformation was launched in 1999, the agency pledged to demolish its high-rises, re-build mixed-income communities where the developments once stood, and allow former residents to move back. To ensure former tenants could return, CHA also pledged to keep track of them. There were approximately 25,000 residents in the family developments, scattered site housing, and senior buildings when the Plan for Transformation began, according to the CHA.

But if Jordan’s press conference was intended to dispel the notion that CHA doesn’t know where its former families are, his own numbers didn’t quite back him up. On page 3 of CHA’ report, it states that “(2,202) have not responded to CHA outreach and thus their location is unknown.”

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Disability advocates from organizations around the city want to hold accountable a company that operates nursing homes which has had a troubled facility for children closed by the state.

The advocates said they want to make sure current residents of the troubled children’s Alden Village North Nursing Home, 7464 North Sheridan Road, are given better options, and that the Alden Management Company is held accountable for fines already levied against it.

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