Scattered-site public housing was intended to be a safe and sane alternative to the Chicago Housing Authority`s high-rise ghettos, and for some fortunate tenants, it is. But in too many neighborhoods the scattered-site program actually created new problems by displacing residents en masse from occupied apartment buildings and allowing the properties to deteriorate into hazardous eyesores.
A court-appointed advisory committee headed by Nancy Jefferson, a West Side community activists, and Ed Marciniak, director of Loyola University`s Institute of Urban Life, recently cited the failures of the scattered-site program and the many ways it is ”playing into the hands” of its worst critics. The CHA board has been slow to give a formal response to the advisory committee`s report, but some of its recommendations already are being put into effect, indicating the CHA has learned some valuable lessons the hard way.
The scattered-site program was beset by problems from the start. A 1979 court order directed the CHA to purchase 1,092 homes in racially integrated neighborhoods and reduce its concentration of low-income families in all-black highrise projects. Federal housing officials earmarked $100 million for the program. But racially motivated opposition stalled the program until the authority was forced to go on a buying spree to meet the court-ordered deadline. The authority emptied buildings and relocated hundreds of tenants to make room for families on the CHA waiting list.
Today, almost a third of the apartment units bought since 1979 remain unrehabilitated. Boarded-up CHA-owned buildings attract vandals, derelicts and brick thieves. Some have had to be demolished at CHA`s expense. Some were poorly repaired by inept contractors.
CHA officials hope to rehabilitate all the remaining buildings by the end of the year, according to Zirl Smith, CHA executive director. Some of the work is to be done by CHA maintenance crews and the rest by outside contractors with more accountability than those who performed substandard work in the past. The CHA also has changed its policy so that rehab work in buildings the authority purchases in the future will be conducted in stages so as many residents as possible will be allowed to remain in their units while work goes on in other parts of the buildings.
These were the types of sensible reforms the advisory committee recommended. The CHA also should make every possible effort to buy housing in truly ”scattered sites,” not in ”clusters,” and to comply with court rulings that call for 50 percent of the subsidized tenants to come from the local community. This will help ease the concerns of those who fear the program will disrupt their neighborhoods.
