Cabrini-Green

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Cabrini Green
1999 photograph looking northeast on Cabrini-Green housing project
Location	Chicago
Coordinates	41°53′47.74″N 87°38′25.97″W / 41.8965944°N 87.6405472°W / 41.8965944; -87.6405472Coordinates: 41°53′47.74″N 87°38′25.97″W / 41.8965944°N 87.6405472°W / 41.8965944; -87.6405472
Status	Mostly demolished
Constructed	1942–1962
Governing Body	Chicago Housing Authority

Cabrini-Green is a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA)12 public housing development on Chicago's North Side, bordered by Evergreen Avenue on the north, Sedgwick Street on the east, Chicago Avenue on the south, and Halsted Street on the west. At its peak, Cabrini-Green was home to 15,000 people,^[1] living in mid- and high-rise apartment buildings. Over the years, gang violence and neglect created terrible conditions for the residents, and the name "Cabrini-Green" became synonymous with the problems associated with public housing in the United States.

As of 2008, around 4,700 residents remained in Cabrini-Green.^[2] Most of the buildings have been razed and the entire neighborhood is being redeveloped into a combination of high-rise buildings and row houses, with the stated goal of creating a mixed-income neighborhood, with some units reserved for public housing tenants. Controversy regarding the implementation of these plans has arisen.^[3]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Buildings and residents 1.2 How problems developed 1.3 Tenant activism 1.4 Reputation 1.5 Brother Bill 2 Recent history and future plans 3 Education 4 Chronology 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Buildings and residents

Cabrini-Green was composed of 10 sections, built over a twenty-year period: the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses (1942), Cabrini Extension North and Cabrini Extension South (1958), and the William Green Homes (1962) (see Chronology below). The construction reflected the "urban renewal" approach to United States city planning in the mid-twentieth century. The Extension buildings were known as the "reds," for their red brick exteriors, while the Green Homes, with reinforced concrete exteriors, were known as the "whites." Many of the high-rise buildings originally had exterior porches (called "open galleries").

According to the CHA, the early residents of the Cabrini rowhouses were predominantly of Italian ancestry.^[4] By 1962, however, a majority of residents in the completed complex were black. White flight from the complex escalated over the following decade; by the 1970s, its population was almost entirely black.

[edit] How problems developed

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Poverty and organized crime have long been associated with the area: a 1931 "map of Chicago's gangland" by Bruce-Roberts, Inc. notes Locust and Sedgwick as "Death Corner": "50 murders: count 'em".^[5] At first, the housing was integrated and many residents held jobs. This changed in the years after World War II, when the nearby factories that provided the neighborhood's economic base closed and laid off thousands. At the same time, the cash-strapped city began withdrawing crucial services like police patrols, transit services, and routine building maintenance. Lawns were paved over to save on maintenance, failed lights were left for months, and apartments damaged by fire were simply boarded up instead of rehabilitated and reoccupied. Later phases of public housing development (such as the Green Homes, the newest of the Cabrini-Green buildings) were built on extremely tight budgets and suffered from maintenance problems due to the low quality of construction.

Unlike many of the city's other public housing projects like Rockwell Gardens or Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini Green was situated in an affluent part of the city. The poverty-stricken projects were actually constructed at the meeting point of Chicago's two wealthiest neighborhoods, Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast. Less than a mile to the east sits Michigan Avenue with its high-end shopping and expensive housing. The buildings' proximity to these affluent areas made Cabrini-Green a lucrative site for illicit drug sales; in the absence of other employment opportunities, intense competition in this underground economy fostered gang formation and violence. Specific gangs 'controlled' individual buildings, and residents felt pressure to ally with these gangs in order to protect themselves from escalating violence.

During the worst years of Cabrini-Green's problems, vandalism increased substantially. Gang members and miscreants covered interior walls with graffiti and damaged doors, windows, and elevators. Rat and cockroach infestations were commonplace, rotting garbage stacked up in clogged trash chutes (it once piled up to the 15th floor), and basic utilities (water, electricity, etc.) often malfunctioned and were left unrepaired. On the exterior, boarded-up windows, burned-out areas of the façade, and pavement instead of green space—all in the name of economizing on maintenance—created an atmosphere of neglect and decay. The high "open galleries" were enclosed with steel fencing the entire height of the building to prevent residents from throwing garbage over the edge, from falling, or from being thrown off (giving the visual appearance of a large prison tier, or animal cages, which further enraged community leaders).^[6]

[edit] Tenant activism

In response to the various problems associated with living in Cabrini-Green, residents have organized over the years both to pressure the city for assistance and to protect and support each other.

In 1996, the federal government mandated the destruction of 18,000 units of public housing in Chicago (along with tens of thousands of other units nationwide). In response, some Cabrini-Green tenant activists have organized to prevent themselves from becoming homeless and to protect what they and their supporters see as a right to public housing for the city's poorest residents. The activists succeeded in obtaining a consent decree guaranteeing that some buildings will remain standing while the new structures are built, so that tenants can remain in their homes until new ones are available.^[7] The document also guarantees displaced Cabrini residents a home in the new neighborhood.

In 2001, a tenants group sued the CHA over relocation plans for displaced residents of Cabrini-Green under the city's Plan for Transformation, a $1.4 billion blueprint for public housing renewal. Richard Wheelock, an attorney representing the tenants, said the authority's demolition program had outpaced its reconstruction program, thus leaving families with few options beyond similarly or identically dangerous and segregated areas elsewhere in the city, or simply being forced out of the residences and becoming homeless.

[edit] Reputation

Though Chicago has had a number of notorious public housing projects, including the Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens on the South Side, and Rockwell Gardens and the Henry Horner Homes on the West side, Cabrini-Green's name and its problems were the most publicized, especially beyond Chicago. Cabrini-Green often gained press coverage for its chaotic New Year's Eve celebrations when gang members fired guns into the air causing police to block off nearby streets every year.

Several infamous incidents contributed to Cabrini-Green's reputation. In 1992, seven-year old Dantrell Davis was killed by a stray bullet while walking to school with his mother. In 1997, nine-year-old "Girl X," was viciously raped and poisoned in a stairwell, leaving her blind, paralyzed and unable to speak.^[8] Members of the infamous street gang, the Gangster Disciples, who controlled most of Cabrini-Green, were ordered by the gang's leaders to find the person responsible for the crime and brutally assault him. The attacker, Patrick Sykes (who was not a gang member), was later apprehended by police and sentenced to 120 years in prison. ^[9][10]

Cabrini-Green was so feared by the Chicago Police during the 1990s that many refused to enter the complex for fear of their lives. Several officers reported that once inside the complex they had been verbally abused and spat upon, and had rocks smashed through their patrol car windows. Many others had been shot.

An unanticipated result of the steel fencing installed to secure the previously open gangways was that it became difficult for police to see through the steel mesh from outside; in 1970, two policemen were killed by snipers.

In an effort to demonstrate a commitment to making the complex safer, then Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne moved into a fourth-floor apartment in 1981. Backed by a number of police officers and a substantial personal bodyguard detail, she stayed for only three weeks. This incident, too, contributed to public perception of Cabrini-Green as the worst of the worst of public housing. As a security measure, the rear entryway of the unit Byrne stayed in was welded shut. This had the unforeseen impact of creating a fortification for gang members when Byrne left. Many other gangs copied this technique in other units.

While many non-residents regarded Cabrini-Green with almost unalloyed horror, long-term residents interviewed by a Chicago Tribune reporter in 2004 described mixed feelings about the end of the Cabrini-Green era.^[11] They told the reporter that, in the face of their shared hardships, many residents had developed bonds of community and mutual support. They lamented the uprooting and scattering of that community, and worried about what would become of the residents who were being moved out of the old buildings to make way for new development.

[edit] Brother Bill

Since the 1980s a Catholic lay worker, William "Brother Bill" Tomes Jr frequently visited Cabrini Green in an effort to stop the violence. His efforts received national attention and he was interviewed by Time magazine and several television networks.^[12]

[edit] Recent history and future plans

While Cabrini-Green was deteriorating during the postwar era, causing industry, investment, and residents to abandon its immediate surroundings, the rest of Chicago's Near North Side underwent equally dramatic upward changes in socioeconomic status. First, downtown employment shifted dramatically from manufacturing to professional services, spurring increased demand for middle-income housing; the resulting gentrification spread north along the lakefront from the Gold Coast, then pushed west and eventually crossed the river. Then, in the 1980s, the Lower North Side industrial area (just across the river from the Loop, west of Michigan Avenue, and south of Cabrini-Green) was transformed into the "River North" neighborhood, a focus of arts and entertainment. By the 1990s, developers had converted thousands of acres of former industrial lands near the north branch of the Chicago River (and directly north, south, and west of Cabrini-Green) to office, retail, and housing.

Over time, Cabrini-Green's location became increasingly desirable to private developers. Speculators began purchasing property immediately adjacent to the projects, with the expectation that the complex would eventually be demolished.

Finally, in May 1995, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development took over management of the CHA and almost immediately began demolishing vacant "reds" buildings in Cabrini Extension, intending to make Chicago a showpiece of a new, mixed-income approach to public housing. Shortly thereafter, in June 1996, the city of Chicago and the CHA unveiled the Near North Redevelopment Initiative, which called for new development on and around the Cabrini-Green site. Under a ten-year Plan for Transformation officially enacted in 2000, the city plans to demolish almost all of its high-rise public housing, including much of Cabrini-Green (except the original rowhouses, which will remain).^[13] Demolition of Cabrini Extension was completed in 2002; part of the site was added to Seward Park, and construction of new, mixed-income housing on the remainder of the site began in 2006.

Subsidized development of mixed-income housing on vacant or under-used parcels adjacent to Cabrini-Green, including a long-shuttered Oscar Mayer sausage factory, the former headquarters of Montgomery Ward, and an adjacent senior housing project named Orchard Park, began in 1994. New market-rate housing now almost completely surrounds the remaining public housing.

Cabrini-Green once housed 15,000 people but as noted above, this number is now down to around 4,700 (plus an unknown number of squatters occupying vacant apartments that are slated for demolition). New housing built on the 70-acre (280,000 m²) Cabrini-Green site will include 30% public-housing replacement homes and 20% "workforce affordable" housing, while many adjacent developments (almost all targeted at luxury buyers) include 20% affordable housing, half targeted as public-housing replacement, with a goal of 505 replacement units built off-site.

In February 2006, a unique partnership between CHA, Holsten, Kimball Hill Urban Centers and the Cabrini Green LAC Community Development Corporation began a 790-unit, $250-million redevelopment of the 18-acre (73,000 m²) Cabrini Extension site, to be called Parkside at Old Town. Plans for demolition and redevelopment of Green Homes are still under negotiation, while the original Cabrini rowhouses are currently undergoing rehabilitation.

The Plan for Transformation's relocation process was the subject of a lawsuit, Wallace v. Chicago Housing Authority, which alleged that many residents were hastily forced into substandard, "temporary" housing in other slums, did not receive promised social services during or after the move, and were often denied the promised opportunity to return to the redeveloped sites.^[14] The lawsuit was settled in June 2006, as the parties agreed to two relocation programs for current and former CHA residents: (1) CHA's current relocation program, encouraging moves to racially integrated areas of metropolitan Chicago and providing for case-managed social services, would be applied to families initially moving from public housing; and (2) an agreed-upon modified program run by CHA's voucher administrator, CHAC Inc., would encourage former CHA residents to relocate to economically and racially integrated communities as well as give them increased access to social services.^[15]

Some former CHA residents have moved out of Chicago, to nearby suburbs such as Harvey or to other housing developments in nearby cities, such as Maywood, Lombard, Aurora, East St. Louis, Gary, Indiana, or Danville, Illinois. New residents have successfully moved into CHA replacement housing, and to date residents of the mixed-income developments have reported fewer problems.

Crime has dramatically decreased as the area's population has shifted; in the first half of 2006, only one murder occurred. Since most of the new housing post-dates 2000, no census figures are yet available, but the area is no longer predominantly African American. Demolition of Cabrini-Green continues slowly and is expected to be completed by late 2008. Plaintiffs in Wallace and others allege that CHA's hasty removal of residents has exacerbated socioeconomic and racial segregation, homelessness, and other social ills that the Plan for Transformation aimed to address by forcing residents to less-visible but still impoverished neighborhoods, largely on the south and west sides of the city.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Education

Most of the Cabrini Green teenagers attend William H Wells High School CPS. Lincoln Park High School, operated by Chicago Public Schools, also serves area students.

Near North Career Magnet High School located at Larrabee and Segwick evolved from Edwin G. Cooley High and served area students from the 1980s until 2000.

At Cabrini Green's height when over 15,000 residents lived in the neighborhood, there were five neighborhood elementary schools operated by Chicago Public Schools serving the neighborhood: Byrd Community Academy, Jenner Academy of the Arts, Manierre School, Schiller Community Academy, and Truth School. As of 2008, only three of the schools remain in use.

During the 2003–2004 school year, fifth-grade students from Room 405 at one of the neighborhood schools developed a comprehensive action plan to push the City of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Education to fulfill an old promise of building a new school for the community. They cited that their school had no lunchroom, no gym, and no auditorium. The heat often did not work and students were forced to wear hats, gloves, and coats in the classroom, among many other inadequacies. As they researched reasons for the decrepit and shameful conditions of their school, they examined issues related to equity in school funding. To further their cause and implement their plan, the young activists wrote letters and emails, surveyed, petitioned, interviewed legislators, developed and produced a DVD, video documentaries, and a website [9] in an effort to "get the word out" and garner support in hopes of seeing the new school built. Their fight for the new building garnered local and national attention.^[16]

[edit] Chronology

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• 1850 - Shanties first built on low-lying land along Chicago River; population predominantly Swedish, then Irish. Acquires "Little Hell" name due to nearby gas refinery, which produced shooting pillars of flame and various noxious fumes. By 20th century, known as "Little Sicily" due to large numbers of Sicilian immigrants.
• 1929 - Harvey Zorbaugh writes "The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side," contrasting the widely varying social mores of the wealthy Gold Coast, the poor Little Sicily, and the transitional area in between. Marshall Field Garden Apartments, first large-scale (although funded through private charity) low-income housing development in area, completed.
• 1942 - Frances Cabrini Homes (two-story rowhouses), with 586 units in 54 buildings, completed. Initial regulations stipulate 75% white and 25% black residents. Holsman, Burmeister, et al., architects. (Named for Frances Cabrini, an Italian-American nun who served the poor and was the first American to be canonized.)
• 1958 - Cabrini Homes Extension (red brick mid- and high-rises), with 1,925 units in 15 buildings, is completed. A. Epstein & Sons, architects.
• 1962 - Green Homes (1,096 units, north of Division Street) is completed. Pace Associates, architects. (Named for Great Society era congressman William J. Green.)
• 1966 - Gautreaux et al. vs. Chicago Housing Authority, a lawsuit alleging that Chicago's public housing program was conceived and executed in a racially discriminatory manner that perpetuated racial segregation within neighborhoods, is filed. CHA was found liable in 1969, and a consent decree was issued in 1981.
• April, 1968 - In the days immediately following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, constant gunfire from snipers, positioned on the upper floors of Cabrini-Green caused many casualties and much property damage. The sniper activity would return periodically throughout the 1970s.
• July 17, 1970 - Sergeant James Severin and Officer Tony Rizzato of the Chicago Police Department are fatally shot.
• 1974 - Television sitcom Good Times, set in the Cabrini Green projects, and featuring shots of the structure in the opening and closing credits, debuts.
• 1981 - Mayor Jane Byrne moves into Cabrini-Green as part of a publicity stunt.
• October 13, 1992 - Dantrell Davis was holding his mother's hand, on his way to school, when he was fatally shot by a sniper.
• 1992 - Candyman is released, the story taking place at the housing project.

• 1994 - Chicago receives one of the first HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) grants to redevelop Cabrini-Green as a mixed-income neighborhood.
• September 27, 1995 - Demolition begins.^{[citation needed]}
• January 9, 1997 - Nine-year-old "Girl X" found in a seventh-floor stairwell at 1121 N. Larrabee Street after being raped, beaten, choked, poisoned with insecticide and scrawled on with gang symbols. Her attacker allegedly stepped on her throat. She was left for dead but survived, though the attack blinded her. [10]
• 1997 - Chicago unveils Near North Redevelopment Initiative, a master plan for development in the area. It recommends demolishing Green Homes and most of Cabrini Extension.
• 1999 - Chicago Housing Authority announces Plan for Transformation, which will spend $1.5 billion over ten years to demolish 18,000 apartments and build or rehabilitate 25,000 apartments. Earlier redevelopment plans for Cabrini-Green are included in the Plan for Transformation. New library, rehabilitated Seward Park, and new shopping center open.

[edit] See also

• Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago
• Frances Xavier Cabrini

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Cross The Bridge" by author- and Cabrini resident: Pete (K-SO G) Keller.
• Room 405 Website Fifth-grade students in Room 405 fight for a new school for the Cabrini Green neighborhood
• Residents' Journal (written, produced & distributed by Chicago Public Housing residents; archives contain many articles on activism at Cabrini-Green, particularly around the plans for redevelopment).
• Chicago Coalition to Protect Public Housing
• Photos, Paintings and Discussions about Cabrini-Green
• Voices of Cabrini (Documentary film)
• Ambrose-Van Lee, Doreen. Diary of a MidWestern Getto Gurl. PublishAmerica. ISBN 1424146763.  (memoir of a childhood at Cabrini-Green)
• Ambrose-Van Lee, Doreen. Raised in Da Sun: A Gettogurl's Story. PublishAmerica. ISBN 1424123151.  (poetry by a former resident of Cabrini-Green)
• Cabrini-Green in Words and Pictures (book, 2000) ISBN 0-942986-80-6
• CBS News: Tearing Down Cabrini-Green
• Chicago Tribune: Cabrini-Green Columns
• North Town Park site plan (redevelopment of Cabrini Extension site)
• Special Issue on Cabrini-Green Walter Payton H.S. The Paw Print, Feb. 2009.
• Map of Cabrini-Green Area at Google Maps

The Encyclopedia of Chicago has very detailed background information on the history of public housing and the Near North neighborhood:

• Encyclopedia of Chicago entry on Chicago Housing Authority
• Encyclopedia of Chicago entry on Near North Side