Public housing tenant leaders recently chided the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) for trying to deny thousands of former residents their right to return to public housing.

CHA officials admitted in the summer of 2009 they didn’t know the whereabouts of 3,200 families who were relocated under the Plan for Transformation, the 10-year-old effort to demolish most of the city’s public housing developments and replace them with mixed-income communities.

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CHA’s new mixed-income communities could wind up with few–or even no–public housing units, under a “doomsday clause” in federal housing law being inserted into redevelopment plans across the city, according to lawyers for residents.

But, though members of the Central Advisory Council and lawyers for residents alike voice concern, no action is planned in the near future to fight the unit conversion option.

“We’re not crazy about the concept period,” said attorney to the CAC Robert Whitfield after a recent CHA Board of Commissioner’s meeting.
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All is apparently not well on the home front for many public housing residents who are undergoing the Chicago Housing Authority’s massive $1.6 billion plan to turn its public housing properties into mixed-income communities.

A recent independent study of the housing plan by a renowned attorney, hired by the public housing agency to do the study, discovered that some residents did not have enough time and/or opportunity to secure units in the private market using Housing Choice Vouchers, while others moved into rehabilitated units within CHA that were “substandard and decrepit.” Read more »

Robert Taylor Homes residents aren’t the only ones getting charged about their high electric bills. As RJ has reported over recent months, many of the residents in Robert Taylor Homes have electric bills in the amounts of $500 to $22,000, and in some cases more. These unpaid bills are a problem for those residents who are being relocated under the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation.

The Chicago Housing Authority announced in June that they would meet with former residents who didn’t receive the contract, which gives them the right to return to their old neighborhoods. A number of residents who moved between October 1999 and March 2001 did not receive the Relocation Rights Contract, which gives them the option of returning to a mixed-income community after they are built on the site of old developments.

Under the CHA Resident Relocation Rights contract, all residents who were lease compliant in October 1999 have a right to return to a new or rehabbed unit after redevelopment. Residents who relocated with Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as a Section 8 voucher or certificate) in late 1999, 2000 and early 2001 did not receive a Relocation Rights Contract because the contract was not put into effect until March 2001. Read more »

Elected public housing resident leaders and lawyers representing residents demanded changes to the Chicago Housing Authority Plan for Transformation in recent letters, press releases and phone calls to Mayor Richard M. Daley and CHA officials.

Letters to the mayor and CHA Chairperson Sharon Gist-Gilliam state residents’ complaints that CHA is neglecting to maintain occupied units, violating the relocation rights contract and closing down buildings too quickly. The late March and early April letters also state that CHA is asking residents to make choices on where they want to relocate without including information on whether they can stay on-site. Read more »