Chicago mayoral candidate Patricia Van Pelt Watkins told Residents’ Journal in an interview that she felt a sense of responsibility to run for mayor, and she would carry the voice of the people into decision making of the city.

If elected mayor, Watkins said the people of Chicago can expect an “open government with transparency,” Watkins said during a visit to Residents’ Journal’s offices.

Chicago Mayoral candidate Patricia Van Pelt Watkins, talking to Residents' Journal reporter Quintana Woodridge, on January 1, about her plans to service low-income people of the city, if elected Mayor this February 22. Photo by Mary C. Johns

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Incentives or mandates: which tool will increase affordable housing in Chicago? On the one hand, Mayor Richard M. Daley wants to use density bonuses as incentives for developers to build affordable housing units. On the other side, several alderman are proposing strict mandatory requirements to ensure affordable units and better meet the needs of low-income residents.

At a May 26 press conference, the Mayor announced zoning changes that he says will have an impact on affordable housing in Chicago.
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When Francine Washington noticed hordes of police officers outside U.S.

Cellular Field this spring, she walked toward the ballpark and counted them. The stadium, home of the Chicago White Sox, sits about three blocks west of the Stateway Gardens public housing development where she lives with her husband of 23 years.

“I went out there twice. The first time I counted 105 police officers out there. The next time I counted 107 officers,” said Washington, president of Stateway’s local advisory council, an elected tenant body.
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Approximately a year and a half ago, the Sinai Health System started a new program called Sinai Senior services. They are offering their services free of charge to seniors living in the Chicago Housing Authority buildings and low-income dwellers in Chicago and surrounding communities, near or far, north, south, east, and west.

Men and women 55 years of age and older are welcome to participate in the Sinai Community Institute Program called Premier Years. You will have access to all the medical benefits and social activities they have.

The people living in CHA buildings and low- income neighborhoods are their first priorities. The healthy, sick and the reclusive. They want the seniors that are afraid to leave their apartments and the ones that fear standing on the corners waiting at the bus stops. Read more »

Advocates for public and subsidized housing tenants provided residents and activists with new information about HUD and CHA at a conference April 28 in downtown Chicago. The conference was held in the beautiful surroundings of the Holiday Inn located on the corner of Columbus and Ohio streets. This conference in many ways resembled the one held March 16 by the Chicago Rehab Network at the Palmer House Hotel. This conference was far more interactive that the March 16 event; participants attended various workshops.

The workshops were geared towards the distribution of new information. Due to the workshops’ small size, the atmosphere was that of an intense training ground for activists. It was an atmosphere in which everyone appeared excited and eager to get involved. Everyone – whites and Blacks, rich and poor, scholarly and unlearned harmonized. Read more »

The last battle of the Cold War is being fought in the neighborhoods of Chicago. Echoing the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the victorious forces of freedom are tearing down the last bastion of failed New Deal and Great Society pseudo-Socialist programs – the city’s infamous public housing high-rises.

Lost in the general acclaim for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s $1.5 billion redevelopment effort, however, is that the tens of thousands of low-income families who will be displaced by this effort will likely end up in circumstances even worse than those they are leaving behind. Read more »