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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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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In this article, I’ll continue to describe the deplorable conditions we live in at Ogden Courts. There are two buildings in Ogden Courts at 2610 and 2710 W. Ogden Ave. Our buildings are only seven stories high. This means they won’t be torn down in the transformation of the CHA complexes I learned this at the last meeting we had to meet our new manager. They finally fixed the second opening to the lobby. They fixed up many empty apartments but they rented them to new tenants. Read more »

The violent death of 10-year-old Rita Haskins on May 3 was heart breaking, unconscionable and unnecessary. Rita was a sweet, loving, inquisitive, caring child, a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a student, a friend, a neighbor and a child of God.

I am working with RJ Assistant Editor Beauty Turner on a study of the relocation of the people in public housing high rises.

My residence is Ogden Courts. The Local Advisory Council election is over and the new officers are installed. I hadn’t heard anything about our relocation and I found out that neither had any of the other tenants. So I went to ask the LAC officer in my building, Marie Jones.

Jones told me she was being blackballed and no one was telling her anything. She told me to go to the LAC president in the next building, La’Tresha Green. I went to ask when would we be having a meeting to let us know when we would have to start our relocation. Read more »

The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), the new managers of the Harold Ickes Homes, is struggling to do a good job of managing the regular management-resident connections. Take, for instance, the monthly rent statements. I have regularly received mine five to ten days past the first of the month. I wait and hold on to my money order but it doesn’t come. I pay my rent and get a receipt without the rent statement to attach to my money order. I think, “Oh well. Maybe next month.”

With many low-income Chicagoland residents being affected by a housing crunch, a number of government officials, housing developers, bankers, clergy and community activists put forth proposals and strategies for protecting already available affordable housing and to develop new generic cialis housing at the “Valuing Affordability” conference at the Palmer House June 27-29.

The conference was sponsored by the Chicago Rehab Network. All the participants were not on the same level in terms of what they already knew and what they had yet to learn. Therefore, the first days’ workshops centered around training and focused on a variety of subjects.
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U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Andrew Cuomo came into Chicago Aug. 1 to announce that HUD has removed the Chicago Housing Authority from the list of Troubled Housing Authorities and will return control of the CHA to the City of Chicago within eight months.

The transition back to local control began in mid-August and a new Housing Authority Board of Commissioners will be appointed in seven to eight months, Cuomo said during a visit to Henry Horner Homes.

“For the first time since we began the current rating system for housing authorities in 1979, the Chicago Housing Authority is not on HUD’s list of trouble public housing authorities,” Cuomo said. “This major achievement shows that the partnership HUD formed with Mayor Daley and with CHA residents and staff to turn around the Authority has succeeded. Together, we’ve improved living conditions for residents and created new opportunities for them to get education, training and jobs that will help more become self-sufficient.

“This isn’t the end of the process, it’s the beginning,” Cuomo said. “The tenants, the new, hard-working management and the people of Chicago don’t think this is as good as it gets and neither do I. Now that the CHA is no longer on HUD’s list of trouble housing authorities, we can move forward to begin returning control of the CHA where it belongs – to the people of Chicago. This city has earned the right to run its own housing authority.”

The federal government took control of CHA in May 1995. Joseph Shuldiner, then the second in command at HUD, was charged with administering the day-to-day affairs at CHA while Edwin Eisendrath, then the HUD Secretary’s regional representative, took the role of a one-man board.

CHA scored 64.69 out of a possible 100 points on HUD’s new Public Housing Management Assessment Program. When HUD took control of CHA in 1995, CHA’s score was just 51.

Under the rating system, which measures performance by public housing authorities in eight areas, any authority scoring below 60 is classified as troubled. HUD classifies only 51 of the nation’s 3,400 public and Indian housing authorities as troubled. The Public Housing Management Assessment Program measures the performance of public housing authorities in the following areas: 1) Percentage of vacant apartments and the time it takes to fill vacant apartments. 2) Management of the modernization program to upgrade apartments. 3) The success of rent collection efforts. 4) Performance of repairs and general maintenance on apartments. 5) Adequacy of physical inspections of apartments performed by a housing authority. 6) Overall financial management. 7) Programs to help residents become self-sufficient by providing such things as education, job training and child care. 8) Anti-crime efforts, including use of HUD’s Drug Elimination Grants, working with local police and carrying out the One Strike program to keep criminals out of public housing and remove those already there. HUD is providing operating subsides of almost $184 million to the CHA this year.

Cuomo’s other major announcement Aug. 1 was that Rosanna Marquez has been appointed the Secretary’s Representative for the Midwest Region, replacing Edwin Eisendrath.

“Rosanna Marquez brings a wealth of experience and dynamic leadership skills to the position of Secretary’s Representative for the Midwest,” Cuomo said. “In this position, Rosanna will assure that HUD works as an active partner with local government, the private sector and non-profit groups to tackle the many challenges facing the region.”

Marquez is a native Chicagoan with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. She most recently worked as a Cabinet-level senior advisor to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Cuomo said Marquez spearheaded several initiatives, including efforts that lead to Chicago’s designation by the Clinton Administration as one of six federal Empowerment Zones. She also served for the last three years as Mayor Daley’s representative on CHA’s five-member Executive Committee.

“I am very grateful to Secretary Cuomo and President Clinton for giving me the opportunity to serve the people of this six state region,” Marquez said.

“These are very exciting times for our Department, with many challenges ahead. I will work to deliver on the Secretary’s efforts to make HUD a results-driven agency that works proactively with state and local governments, community groups and the real estate industry at large.”

Marquez lives in Chicago with her husband. She is a graduate with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and of the Harvard Law School.

Cuomo became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in January 1997. During his tenure, Cuomo has cracked down on landlords who collect money improperly from HUD. As a result, the amount of HUD money recovered from landlords rose from $18 million in 1996 to $25 million in 1997. Cuomo produced a study in 1998 of “worst-case” housing needs that found about 12.5 million very low income people pay over half their incomes for rent or live in severely substandard housing. Cuomo has made it a priority to strengthen HUD’s partnerships.

These are some of the programs that have poured out HUD in the last year and a half. But as Cuomo said after visiting Robert Taylor Homes, there is still a lot more to clean up. As long as people are still living in filth and fear, our job is not even close to being complete.

“Age is a question of mind over matter! If you don’t mind it really doesn’t matter” – Legendary baseball pitcher Satchel Paige.

Changes at Orchard Park, the for-sale, market-rate town homes built around the Flannery Homes Senior Towers continued at an accelerated pace over the summer.

Cement foundations for new town houses are all completed and building is now in progress. The cement foundations are water barrier-sealed, under the guidance of a new town-house contractor/ developer Tropic Construction. Superintendents David Graf and Mark Hawkins as well as foreman Carey Overstreet are showing they definitely know what building is all about.

Anita Scheer, sales manager for Garrison Partners, is handling the marketing of the new town homes. Read more »