Conclusion the Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing

Abstract

On August 1, 1998, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo held a press conference on Chicago's West Side to dedicate the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA) newest project. The setting offered a stunning juxtaposition of the past and future of public housing, as two CHA projects sat on either side of Leavitt Street: one a recently completed collection of three-story townhouses; the other a group of abandoned fourteen-story high-rise buildings, the remnants of the Henry Horner Extension project. The new project appeared nothing like the CHA's previous efforts. It included front stoops, small lawns, iron gates, and the incongruous name “The Villages of West Haven,” a marketing tactic by the CHA and developers that revealed much about their ambitions to remake Chicago's West Side. Comparing the new and the old, Cuomo told the audience that CHA high-rise projects such as “the Robert Taylor Homes, the Cabrini-Greens, the Horner Homes are public housing developments of the past.”