GOOD Magazine: Two tales of one city

The federal HOPE VI program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has established as a goal the de-concentration of poverty by replacing the failed public housing model with medium-density, mixed-income development.

In GOOD Magazine, writer Siobhan O'Connor uses the example of Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing projects to ask: When you get rid of the slums, where do you put the people?

While some residents are happy that the blighted towers have been replaced, research has shown that two-thirds of Housing Authority tenants are having their applications denied.

Others, who didn't want to wait years for a new home, accepted Section 8 vouchers and moved to areas of Chicago that are even worse than the projects had ever been.

And many who could stay are being priced out by new development and a change in the neighborhood business mix - not to mention losses suffered by the severing of crucial social networks.

The redevelopment of Cabrini-Green will include 20 percent affordable units and 33 percent public housing, with the remainder selling at market rate.

When the Chicago Housing Authority completes its public housing overhaul, more than 25,000 units will have been rehabilitated or razed.

Locally, where have the former residents of our demolished West End projects gone? How many now live in City West, now that the public housing there is largely complete? What about Huntington Meadows and English Woods? Does the CMHA even know?