Chicago Housing Authority residents are still waiting for a transformation

I’m the youngest of 13 children. My father used to tell me, “You’re the smallest so you need to speak up.” So, I started speaking up and I haven’t shut up yet.
 
As president of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Central Advisory Council and a lifelong CHA resident, I speak my mind and I don’t take guff because I care and I understand what needs to be done. CHA leadership, property managers, and developers come and go. But residents stay.

And I speak on behalf of residents.           

January 2025 marks 25 years since the CHA’s Plan for Transformation was introduced. That was an important moment in CHA’s history. But so is right now. Enough time has gone by that we can look back and see what has worked. And there have been enough mistakes made to know what hasn’t.

We have to do better.

When I first heard about the Plan for Transformation in the late 1990s, I felt uneasy. Initially, it sounded good. CHA residents would be living side-by-side with people who were paying full price in “mixed-income” communities.

But even then, there were gaps — especially when it came to explaining how these new communities would be funded.

Even so, my hope was that all residents would be treated fairly and would eventually get a decent place to live. The problem was that some leadership at the time had no interest in bringing residents to the table.

It was discouraging, but we went along with the program and we did what we had to do, which was move out of the places we once called home.

Back then, I was the Local Advisory Council president at Stateway Gardens and we made the smoothest transition out of all the buildings (including Cabrini-Green, Harold Ickes and Robert Taylor Homes.) All of us building leaders met with every single resident in the 1,644 units. Sometimes it was standing-room only in those meetings. We got it done.

And we never lied to the people. If someone had a problem, we helped them out; in return, they trusted us. I was the last person to leave Stateway. I wasn’t going to leave my people there. It showed me that communication and truth earn trust.

The Plan for Transformation changed public housing in Chicago and changed the look of the city. Most of CHA’s high-rise family buildings were knocked down and some were replaced with mixed-income communities. Others weren’t.

Some families returned home just like the CHA said they would. Others didn’t. And large blocks of land that were supposed to have new housing are still sitting empty.

Not all of that was CHA’s doing. No one could have predicted the housing crash that happened a few years into the plan.

Lack of communication

But the truth is that CHA’s issues since the launch of the Plan for Transformation have as much to do with the lack of communication, truth and trust as anything.

 Yes, there have been some high points and some hope. Plenty of CHA employees are working hard and getting it done — but it’s not enough.

Money has not been reinvested back into CHA developments. Property managers aren’t being held accountable. And too many developers think they have it made.

Good things can still come from the ideas in the Plan for Transformation. CHA still needs to keep its promises. But 25 years have passed, and the CHA needs a new plan for how it’s going to get it done. The vision needs to be reset. And it needs to be done differently this time.

Most importantly, as we move into this new era, the CHA needs to change the way it does business.

Our new leadership needs to take the needs and voices of the residents seriously. They can’t sit behind their desks downtown ruling from corporate headquarters.

They need to be on the ground, watching, talking with residents and understanding their issues. And they need to do it with respect and understanding.

There are some promising signs. CHA is launching a resident survey and its new website will have more information. More voices will be included in the next CEO search. And there are strong efforts to increase collaboration with the city of Chicago under the Johnson administration.

It’s early but maybe a true transformation is still possible.

For 25 years we’ve said that CHA is rebuilding communities. In 2025, CHA has to start rebuilding trust.

Francine Washington was appointed to the Chicago Housing Authority Board of Commissioners in June 2014. She is president of the Central Advisory Council.

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