Dear Resident,

Welcome back, welcome back to us all. I say “to us all” because since the last edition of Residents’ Journal I had quit resolving never to write for RJ again. I quit because I had become disillusioned with RJ and the direction which it seemed to be taking. For me, RJ began in a small room, with a small group of residents with big visions for RJ. Residents Journal, “a publication for and by the residents of Chicago Housing Authority.” I must have been euphoric to the point of being naive to believe that RJ would be a resident driven publication, without many of the same problems as the other CHA programs, projects and proposals of the past which seem to benefit the people outside of public housing more than the people in public housing. The most disillusioning thing for me is that while RJ reaches individuals across the city, state, country and even overseas, it is not reaching what I consider to be a reasonable majority of CHA residents. In my development, Cabrini-Green, only people who walked into the management office and noticed the papers or those to whom I gave copies actually had seen it. Read more »