The last time I saw Izora Davis, a We The People Media board member, neighborhood activist and my good friend, was during a black-out that left much of the South Side without power on the first day of August.

Izora Davis

Izora was leaning on her walker in the heat in front of 3983 S. Lake Park, a high-rise public housing building that she had saved more than a decade before.

When the electricity failed the previous evening, Izora and her neighbors were evacuated from the building by the fire department.

They stood around in the dark for hours until city officials working with Commonwealth Edison decided that repairs would still be going on for some time, and offered to take all the blacked-out South Siders to a hotel where they would be given food and drink.

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For years, the resident leaders of the South Side CHA Bridgeport Homes public housing complex said that Legum and Norman, the private property management firm for the public housing site, were poor managers.

The resident representatives at the complex often reported to the CHA officials the concerns and problems they were experiencing with the management company. Residents’ complaints range from long-standing work orders that were not addressed, to poor roofing work done in a rows of units housing seniors during the winter, to allegations of mismanagement of public funds by former property managers of the company, to one manager’s alleged violation of federal rules by granting a prison inmate permission to live with his sister at the CHA site currently under rehabilitation. Because of the residents’ continued complaints about the private property management company, Legum and Norman, a Virginia based company, also came under scrutiny for their campaign donations. Legum and Norman’s only business interests in Illinois seem to be in Chicago and the company made their only political donations in Illinois to the 17th Ward Democratic Organization, where there is no public housing or redevelopment activity. “A Questionable Connection,” an investigation done by Residents’ Journal in collaboration with the Better Government Association and published in the last issue, detailed an analysis of the Illinois State Campaign Contribution Disclosure Forms and CHA contract agreements which showed that Legum and Norman gave before and after receiving contracts from the CHA. But they made no campaign donations to any other wards since working in Chicago. The 17th Ward is currently home to CHA CEO Terry Peterson, who was also the former alderman of the ward. Current 17th Ward Alderman Latasha Thomas confirmed in “A Questionable Connection” that Peterson remains actively involved in 17th Ward affairs.
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Building Improvements Uneven
Harold Ickes Homes can now boast that one building has the honor of having seven floors with brand new blue tiles in the hallway of each level. It is truly lovely to see. I wonder when our nine story building will be on the receiving end.

Yes, in our building we have iron pipe hand railings, new push plates on the front and back doors, but the doors are beat up and falling apart, so the new plates are not even adhering to them. One side of our double front door fell off of its hinges somehow overnight.

At least the glass blocks that grace the front of the building have been replaced, thank you. So some upkeep work has been done.
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Many of the poorest of the poor in Lawndale feel as if they have been exploited for years by Cecil Butler and his company called Lawndale Restoration as well as U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

Until last year, no one paid close attention to the cries of the people in the Lawndale community. People only started to cast their eyes to this West Side neighborhood when one of Cecil Butler’s apartment buildings’ roofs caved in, endangering the safety of residents.

Pictured here in September, 2004, a dismantled ceiling in one of Cecil Butler's dilapidated buildings. Photo by Beauty Turner

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The living situation many relocated CHA residents are facing is like an Easter egg without the yolk – pretty on the outside but with nothing on the inside. They are living in an extremely fragile housing situation that could leave them homeless if their problems are left unaddressed.

Fontain Fleming, a young, single mother of nine, relocated from the Robert Taylor Homes to Englewood in 2002. One of her children is 16 years old and disabled. This young lady is also the mother of a one year old child, who lives within the Fleming household, bringing the total number of people in the household to 11.
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Two years ago, the Chicago Housing Authority proposed to renovate all of the senior citizen buildings. It’s now 2004 and the restoration is nearly finished. At Las America Racine Apartments, a senior building located Southwest of downtown in the Pilsen neighborhood, CHA hasn’t finished yet.

Here’s a partial list of work that has been done. The outside walls of the building have been scraped and tuck pointed. Contractors have rejuvenated the roof and the front yard, removing the old brick walkways and replacing them with new concrete sidewalk paths. The brick wall that was in the front of the yard on the west side of the building near the sidewalk was removed. They put in twelve new benches and planted five new trees. The grinding and the scraping and all of the other irritating noises and clouds of white dust that surrounded the building has ceased.
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For hundreds of CHA residents who have been promised better living conditions as a result of onsite renovations, there have been reoccurring disappointments. Time goes by and not much upgrading has taken place in Ickes, Dearborn Homes, the Ida B. Wells extension and many other developments.

On the other hand, Archer Courts, located at Cermak Road and Archer Avenue, has been renovated from A to Z and presents a stunning picture of just what can be done to change poor housing conditions into tip-top, safe, comfortable dwellings. My initial visit had me in awe from the moment I arrived on the grounds.
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There’s one thing for sure you can always count on in Harold Ickes Homes. Common conveniences such as a public laundry room, an elevator that works and work orders being filled in a timely manner are things you will never get.

For years, our Local Advisory Council President, Gloria Williams, has been urging each management group that replaces the last one to simply supply the residents with clean, safe, essential laundry facilities.

To this date, we have no such facility, which causes residents to own and operate their own personal washers that, while in use, spinning away dirty water, flood other residents’ apartments, hallways and stairwells.
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Residents of the Cabrini-Green development are turning up the heat on the CHA-picked private management company that replaced resident managers and is now leaving them out in the cold–literally.

In the windy city, where winter temperatures can reach rock bottom, in early January Cabrini management company H.J. Russell and the CHA scrambled to explain to residents why they have to heat up pots of hot water and turn the knobs on their gas stoves up a few notches in order to stay warm.

Cabrini-Green Homes resident Ray Wood, 19, points to an open stove and a pot of boiling hot water that his family used in an effort to keep warm while the gas was shut off by CHA in mid-January. Photo by Beauty Turner

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We were summoned to a meeting on March 19. It was a Home Management Seminar.

When we are relocated it will help us if we have our Certificate of Completion, which we received the same day. The certificate states that we have completed to their satisfaction the Good Neighbor Workshop.

Our attendance was required as a part of us being lease compliant. The speaker was Phillis Davis. She, along with Shirley Hammond and Martha Marshall explained to us how we can be a good neighbors. Phillis asked us, “what would we do if our neighbor was sick and her house were in disarray (dirty)?” Read more »