The Chicago Housing Authority still hasn’t completed building new homes on the land it cleared as part of its Plan for Transformation. The initiative to remake public housing launched 25 years ago. How did this landmark decision to tear down public housing actually transform Chicago?
On today’s podcast, Block Club’s Mick Dumke and the Sun-Times’ Natalie Moore discuss the unfinished plan.
A Timeline of the Plan For Transformation
1992: The shooting of Dantrell Davis
When seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed while walking to school in the Cabrini-Green housing complex, the city was outraged. At that point, CHA properties saw about 160 slayings per year.
After fumbling in the immediate aftermath — and neglecting to appear at Davis’ funeral — then-Mayor Richard M. Daley suggested tearing down certain CHA buildings as part of a “long-term master plan for public housing in Chicago.”
1995: The first buildings come down
Demolition of the Cabrini-Green high-rises began in 1995, though it would not complete until 2011. The same year, the federal government seized control of the CHA due to mismanagement and poor living conditions. (At the time 11 of the 15 poorest communities in the U.S. were in CHA housing.)
2000: The CHA launches the Plan for Transformation
A year after local control returned to the CHA, the agency launched the most ambitious public housing makeover in U.S. history: the Plan for Transformation. It proposed to demolish 18,000 “obsolete” public housing units in favor of new, mixed-income communities.
2001-2011: Many demolitions
CHA projects demolished during this period include Robert Taylor Homes on State Street; Ida B. Wells in Bronzeville; Stateway Gardens in Bronzeville; Henry Horner Homes on the Near West Side. Today, CHA has about 16,000 fewer public housing units for families than before the demolitions.
2022: Mission accomplished?
Twenty-two years after the Plan for Transformation began, CHA said it had “achieved the goal” of revitalizing 25,000 housing units. However, ProPublica found that number was padded by including types of housing not included in the original plan. Those fudged units make up more than a fifth of the 25,000 total.
“The math does not add up,” Dumke told City Cast Chicago. “Certainly not in the way that it was laid out in the actual plan,” which included redeveloping communities where public high-rises once stood.
2025: Vacant land remains
Impact for Equity recently found that more than 100 acres of CHA-owned land and buildings remain vacant. Meanwhile, the city’s housing commissioner says Chicago needs another 100,000 affordable units to address need.
Some progress? Recently, ground broke on one phase of Legends South, a mixed-income, affordable housing complex at the former Robert Taylor Homes site. Lathrop Homes, near Bucktown, is also being redeveloped into a mixed-income rental community, with two phases now complete.
