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CHA Launches Initiative to House Women Ex-Offenders

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Ex-offenders rights advocate Willie J.R. Fleming commends CHA Board members during a recent meeting to discuss creating housijg for women ex-offenders. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

Women ex-offenders who formally lived in Chicago public housing will get a second chance to get supportive housing under a plan announced this week by the Chicago Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

At their Aug. 16 public meeting at the Savoy Square Community Center, 4448 S. State St., the CHA Board authorized interim Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ponce to contract with the Viceroy Apartments on the Near West Side to set aside 17 units of subsidized housing for formerly incarcerated women who once lived in public housing.

The Viceroy Apartments is a six-story brick hotel that was constructed in the 1920s and is located at 1519 W. Warren Blvd. Heartland Housing is redeveloping the structure to include historic preservation of the façade and a total rehab of the interior and its 89 studio apartments, according to an Aug. 10 letter from CHA staff to the board that was e-mailed to Residents’ Journal. The letter indicates that 72 units in the building will for homeless women or those at risk of being homeless. The CHA waiting list will be the primary source of referrals for these 72 units. The remaining 17 units will be master-leased to St. Leonard’s Ministries to provide permanent supportive housing to women ex-offenders. The City of Chicago is donating the property, while Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) funds and other sources will be used to complete the rehab. Rent will be set at approximately $685 per month.

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RJ Publisher on “Chicago Newsroom”

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This week, I was honored to appear on “Chicago Newsroom,” hosted by veteran broadcaster Ken Davis, along with fellow guests Art Golab, Database Editor with the Chicago Sun-Times, and Charlie Meyerson, a regular voice on Chicago radio. We discussed the progress of new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the ouster of Chicago Housing Authority CEO Lewis Jordan, the future of the Taste of Chicago and other issues.

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CHA Board Appoints One of Their Own Interim CEO

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The Chicago Housing Authority Board of Commissioners Friday appointed one of their own as interim CEO of the agency. Carlos Ponce, 61, was selected by the Commissioners at a special board meeting early in the day. Ponce will serve on a temporary basis, said agency spokesperson Matt Aguillar: “The search is ongoing for a permanent CEO.”

Carlos Ponce. Photo courtesy of CHA.

Ponce was added to the CHA Board in 2003 by then-Mayor Richard Daley. He currently runs a management consulting firm called Resonance Management and Technology Solutions. Ponce previously was the chief human resources officer for the Chicago Public Schools, commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of General Services and executive director of the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association.

Ponce replaces Lewis Jordan, who resigned June 14 after being snared in a media investigation that found he used his CHA credit card to charge meals at Gold Coast restaurants and pay for items such as red light tickets. Jordan also had been under fire from public housing tenants and their allies for attempting to install a policy which would have required drug testing of all residents. After Jordan’s resignation, Board Chairman James Reynolds cancelled the effort to install the drug testing policy.

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CHA Land Remains Vacant for Over a Decade (Commentary)

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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 »

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Special Investigation: CHA Wanted Kids’ Report Cards

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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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An Afternoon of Good Times

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The second annual National Public Housing Museum fundraiser, billed “An Afternoon of Good Times,” was attended by a sold-out crowd of cheering guests, eager to applaud the hard-working hosts and their choice of honorees, former public housing resident luminaries and their achievements. The welcome address by Chicago Housing Authority officials Joyce Chou and Scott Ammaral was a smooth take-off into an illuminating program.

Next, Ald. Walter Burnett (21) graciously introduced Bern Nadette Stanis aka “Thelma” from the popular 1970s television sit-com “Good Times,” which brought Chicago’s own Cabrini Green public housing development into focus nationwide. She is the national spokesperson for the museum and was the mistress of ceremonies for the event. Stanis’ background includes a past of actually living in the Brownsville Housing Development in Brooklyn, N.Y.

CHA tenant leader Francine Washington (right) is joined with actress Bern Nadette Stanis, also known as "Thelma" on the "Good Times" television sitcom, and Keith McGee, director of the National Public Housing Museum, after receiving an award from the museum during their "An Afternoon of Good Times" event at the Chicago Cultural Center on April 10, 2011. Photo by Jacqueline Thompson

As a part of the afternoon’s theme honoring former residents through the “Telling Our Stories” Award, she shared with the audience the important message from her father that gave her the confidence to grow naturally, by understanding that, “What’s around you does not have to be in you.” The sound inspiration coming from within her home life gave her strength and courage “to do better than what ‘they’ said my future could only be. Thank you.”

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Where are CHA’s Residents?

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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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We The People Media’s Coverage of the Chicago Mayor’s Race

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Dear Friends:

In the next few hours, voters in Chicago will decide on a new mayor as well as the City Council and other citywide offices. Among the issues the successor to Mayor Richard M. Daley will face will be the housing crisis for the city’s poor. Last year, when the Chicago Housing Authority opened its waiting list for the first time in years, more than 200,000 families registered for just 40,000 slots – on the waiting list. The new Mayor will have to decide how to fulfill his predecessor’s pledge to rebuild mixed-income communities on the sites where the infamous high-rises once stood.

Since the beginning of the mayoral race, We The People Media has covered the contest from the perspective of those who see Chicago’s low-income families as an underutilized resource. As you make your decision, we offer you an easy way to read all of our articles and videos. These reports include exclusive interviews and comments with the candidates.

Please don’t hesitate to write to us and let us know what you think – about our reports as well as about the mayor’s race itself!

Click here to read all of our coverage of the Mayor’s race, beginning with our first pieces in December:

https://wethepeoplemedia.org/tag/chicago-mayoral-candidates/

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Cabrini Rowhouses Update

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The Chicago Housing Authority said last month they have not made a final decision about the fate of 300 public housing row houses at the Cabrini Green public housing complex.

A police patrol car strolls past many vacant row-houses, located on Cambridge Street, at the Cabrini-Green public housing complex in June 2010. The row-houses were still awaiting the Chicago Housing Authority's decision to continue to rehabilitate them or not. Photo by Mary C. Johns

“There currently aren’t any definite plans for the remaining, non-rehabbed row houses. At this time, there is a working group in place to analyze and make a recommendation on the future of the remaining row houses,” states an e-mail from CHA spokesperson Matt Aguillar.

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Three Chicago Mayoral Candidates’ Take on Public Housing

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In this news video, three of the four candidates who participated in the Chicago Mayoral Forum on Education at Walter Payton College Prep High School on December 15, 2010, talked to Residents’ Journal after the event about their plans for public housing, if elected next year. Pastor and state Sen. James Meeks said, “We need to make them better.”

Former Ambassador and US Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun said, “I believe we should stop tearing them down,” and cited the still-standing Lathrop Homes development on the North Side as an example of a development that should be made into environmentally sound, “green” housing.

“We can provide both public housing and public safety without running (residents) out to the suburbs or forcing them to go hunting for someplace to live,” Moseley-Braun said.

City Clerk Miguel Del Valle said, “We need more affordable housing in Chicago.” Del Valle emphasized that the Chicago Housing Authority’s current plans to redevelop Lathrop Homes do not provide enough affordable housing. “The foreclosure crisis has hit us very hard.”

The future of Chicago’s public housing will continue to be in front of the mayoral candidates all through the election.

The National Public Housing Museum recently announced that in January, they are inviting the mayoral candidates to participate in a “Conversation on Public Housing in Chicago.”

The discussion will take place January 11 from 5 pm to 7 pm at the Chicago Cultural Center. Public housing residents and media figures will have the opportunity to question each of the candidates to learn how they will “ensure public housing to be a significant part of their agenda,” if elected.

In a press release, National Public Housing Museum Executive Director Keith L. Magee stated, “It is essential for the residents of Chicago to know exactly how the incoming Mayor will handle this delicate and important topic.”

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