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The Chicago Housing Authority

Divided Agenda: The Chicago Housing Authority

The Chicago Housing Authority is an agency that is at odds with its own true nature and goals. It is an agency committed to managing the welfare of the poor and disenfranchised. At the same time it is an agency with a commitment to the city of Chicago to "take care " of the Black poor problem. "Taking care" in this instance seems to mean by any means necessary. Whether Blacks are shuttled about from one part of the city to the next, stacked on top of each other like prisoners, or out and out murdered there seems to be an unspoken agenda to get rid of the problem. The dichotomy I see is that while some of the politicians and more upwardly mobile citizens of Chicago want to help poor people. They also want the problem to disappear.
African Americans first migrated to Chicago during the Great Migration of the 1920's. They were seeking employment, schooling, and a better quality of life compared to the poverty of the rural south. With almost all mass migrations of poor people Ghettos' were formed very soon after. The tenements previously inhabited by ethnic whites, such as the Irish, were giving way to Black Ghettos'. The housing was typical of the urban Ghetto's of the time. Ramshackle dilapidated buildings, disease, and crime.
The Chicago Housing Authority came about as a means to manage the large amount of poor Black residents. " In 1949, Congress, in addressing a postwar housing crisis, had authorized loans and subsidies to construct 810,000 units of low rent housing units nationwide" (p.21, Kotlowitz). During the 1950's the first of these new developments were constructed- The Cabrini homes were some of them. These first developments were only one or two stories and were well received by the city and its residents. Then the Chicago Housing Authority hired architects who designed a new type of development. A high-rise building (known as a project) with each unit having at least 15 to 19 floors, and approximately...