A plan to transform Chicago’s public housing situation from run-down high-rises to newer mixed-income communities is long overdue, a top-ranking Chicago housing official said in a Wednesday night speech at Northwestern.
“People are living in filth, in deplorable conditions,” said Carl Byrd, director of development management for the Chicago Housing Authority. “This is the 21st century.”
Byrd discussed the CHA’s reform plan with about 90 NU students and local residents who gathered in Harris Hall. Byrd emphasized the importance of quickly demolishing dilapidated public housing.
“All you have to do is go into one of these buildings,” Byrd said. “We cannot tear down these buildings too fast.”
The CHA is in the midst of a 10-year plan for transformation that, supporters hope, will help the city’s low-income residents.
Members of OASIS, an NU volunteer group that promotes community service, brought Byrd to campus as part of the group’s “Awareness Week.”
The 10-year plan for transformation will allow current residents who remain eligible for public housing to receive brand new or fully revamped homes. The destruction of each of Chicago’s 53 public-housing high-rises also is part of the plan, as is moving concentrated populations of public-housing residents to communities with mixed incomes.
Byrd chronicled Chicago’s long history of public housing woes.
“The typical and historical form for public housing has been isolation: superblocks with 16- and 17-story high-rises, warehouses stacked on top of each other,” Byrd said. “Some of residents today have never been downtown or out of the half-mile area where they live. They’ve never seen the lake.”
Trends of isolation are still present, Byrd said.
“The stigma of crime, poverty, isolation … just continues.”
Byrd fielded questions from audience members concerned with the future of residents who have not successfully moved from their homes. In response, Byrd stressed the importance of “orientation sessions” for displaced residents.
“We knew there was a certain population that we were going to have to move,” he said.
After Byrd’s lecture, most audience members said they were satisfied with what he had to say.
“I wasn’t too knowledegable about the details of the plan and enjoyed getting more historical perspective,” said Greg Allen, a McCormick senior. “It seemed aimed at people who didn’t know much about the housing plan.”
But Chicago resident Emily Wilcox, an employee of the anti-poverty group Heartland Alliance, said she left with reservations.
“I came to hear about residents who were going through transitions,” she said. “Ten years is a long time to be in transition.”
OASIS co-president Darren Kinkead said Byrd’s speech was a great way to raise awareness about other large-scale society issues.
“I was impressed with the way he communicated and had students engaged in the issue,” said Kinkead, a Weinberg senior.
Despite being a vocal supporter of the plan, Byrd admitted there would be some long-term difficulties in trying to build mixed-income communities.
“Will it work in all places? Not without some growing pains,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
