Introducing The View From The Ground

[Eads, David A.]

Announcing The View From The Ground
** www.viewfromtheground.com **

The View From The Ground is an occasional publication of the Invisible
Institute--a set of relationships and ongoing conversations grounded at the
Stateway Gardens public housing development on Chicago's South Side. Our aim
is to deepen public discourse about "the transformation of public housing"
and related issues by providing reliable information about conditions on the
ground.

On May 18, we introduced The View From The Ground as an e-mail publication.
The response has exceeded our expectations. It has confirmed our belief that
there is a hunger for clear, accurate reporting from and about Chicago's
public housing communities.

The View is available on the web at www.viewfromtheground.com. You can read
the most recent View From The Ground and see our past issues in our archive.
You can also sign up to receive The View in your email.

We believe that The View From The Ground offers a fresh approach to digital
divide issues by employing Stateway residents in producing our publication,
by turning information technology into a tool that we bang on and play
around with in the course of our daily activities, and by using technology
to show the human side of situations and processes that are usually
discussed in disconnected abstraction and generality.

Enclosed is a text only version of our introductory piece, The Chicago
Housing Authority (CHA) Plan: A Defining Moment.  It is available on the web
at http://www.viewfromtheground.com/index.cfm?vftg=12 with photography and
more.

Please extend this invitation to visit our website and subscribe to The View
>From The Ground to your friends and colleagues.

David Eads
eadsd at northpark.edu

---------------------------------------

The CHA Plan: A Defining Moment

The demolition of a public housing high-rise is a dramatic process that
unfolds over several months. It begins slowly. The building, at once
monumental and doomed, resists the first blows from the wrecking ball. It
doesn't give way easily. Then, gradually it is laid open, exposing the
intimate domestic spaces of the families that once lived there. At a certain
point in the process, as rebar breaks through concrete like bones through
flesh, the scene evokes images of Beirut and Oklahoma City. Toward the end,
oddly shaped remnants stand like the ruins of a dead civilization. They mean
something, but what? Finally, the rich, intricate weave of a singular
community is reduced to several piles of materials: concrete to be recycled,
metal with salvage value, a miscellany destined for the dump. Its work done,
the demolition crew departs, leaving behind an expanse of urban prairie. New
perspectives open up. The city appears in a different light. And, if we
don't avert our eyes, absence begs questions about the fate of fellow
citizens for whom this place was home. Where did they go? How are they
faring?

This scene has been repeated many times in Chicago neighborhoods over the
last few years. And it will be repeated many more, as the Chicago Housing
Authority moves forward with its "Plan for Transformation." Under the Plan,
all 55 high-rises in family developments across the city are to be
demolished. Thus far, some 30 have been razed. And developers have been
selected to transform various developments into mixed income communities.

This restructuring of the city dwarfs the urban renewal of the 1950s and
60s. It can only be compared to the period after the Great Fire of 1871. It
will entail the relocation--in many instances the forced relocation--of as
many as 14,000 families, some of whom will be called upon to move at least
twice. It has profound implications not only for public housing residents
but for all Chicagoans. Yet we do not begin to have a public discourse
commensurate with its importance.

When HUD approved the Plan for Transformation, it granted a series of
waivers from federal regulation that, taken together, give the City
substantial local control. With local control comes local accountability.
There are, however, few mechanisms in place to enforce that accountability.
No elected official consistently speaks on behalf of public housing
residents. Press coverage is, at best, intermittent. Academics have shown
little interest. Non-profits and philanthropies have been largely
ineffectual in deepening public understanding of what is at stake.

The upshot is that the most marginalized, disenfranchised citizens in the
city confront great concentrated political and economic power with virtually
no mediating structures. At the same time, the absence of vigorous
democratic discourse also handicaps honorable public officials within the
CHA. It is one of the ironies of democratic practice that public officials,
who often go to great lengths to deflect public scrutiny, are among its
greatest beneficiaries. Sustained public debate provides them with
information they would not otherwise have and can serve to enlarge as well
as constrict their freedom of action.

Our present discourse about public housing, by contrast, is largely innocent
of facts. It is governed by a crude symbolic equation: CHA high-rises
represent assorted urban evils, and the wrecking ball represents "progress."
This symbolism eclipses a series of questions about the implementation of
the Plan for Transformation--about the facts on the ground--that demand
sustained public inquiry and discussion:

Insofar as the Plan involves dispersal of CHA residents through the Section
8 program, does the private real estate market have the capacity to absorb
those who exercise this option? How is the Section 8 program being monitored
to avoid abuses at both the individual and community level?

Insofar as the Plan involves redevelopment on site, does the CHA have a
viable financing strategy to insure that the promised redevelopment takes
place? It has demonstrated that it can raze buildings, but can it rebuild on
the scale required?

The relocation process is procedurally complex. It demands high levels of
competence and care in implementation. Will the private management companies
and CHA asset managers charged with implementing the process honor these
standards? If they don't, how will we know?

Is there an adequate infrastructure of supportive services in place to meet
the needs of the thousands of families affected by the Plan? If not, how can
CHA justify going forward with the relocation process until there is?

Does CHA have the capacity to keep track of those who are relocated? One
measure of this capacity is past performance. The benefits of the Plan for
Transformation are available to those who were lease compliant as of October
1, 1999. Does CHA know the whereabouts of those who satisfy these
requirements and have moved out of CHA developments since October 1, 1999?

As the CHA diverts funds to redevelopment, can it provide sufficient
resources to maintain safe, decent living conditions for residents in
currently occupied buildings?

<p>There has been much debate over the last few years about the merits of the
Plan. Some have argued that it is a land grab disguised as enlightened
social policy. It is, they claim, less a strategy for addressing the
consequences of failed policies than for disappearing the victims of those
policies. Others have argued that it is a pragmatic, well-conceived effort,
necessarily limited in scope, to transform public housing in ways that will
benefit current residents as well as other interests. After extended
negotiations, the resident leadership of CHA, Congressional representatives,
and various civic organizations supported the Plan on the condition that it
be implemented in a manner consistent with its stated goals.

This is a defining moment. If the CHA goes forward with the relocation and
redevelopment processes without having put in place adequate procedural
safeguards, supportive services and capacity to track residents, it will
have disclosed something essential about the character of the Plan. Whatever
its stated goals, the operational meaning of the Plan will be clear: the
replacement of high-rise ghettoes of concentrated public housing with an
invisible ghetto of vulnerable, inadequately housed families conveniently
relocated outside our field of vision.

This need not be the outcome. But hope is a strenuous discipline. It demands
that we acknowledge the history of abandonment that created present
conditions and that we openly confront present realities. In the end, the
greatest danger posed by our impoverished discourse about public housing is
that we will fail to see and so will waste opportunities for humane,
pragmatic strategies that are well within our reach.

- Jamie Kalven

www.viewfromtheground.com - A publication of the Invisible Institute

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