On their first full day as landlord to some of Chicago’s poorest residents, federal housing officials promised to reshape the landscape by speeding demolition of high-rises, the most visible symbols of public-housing’s failures.
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros sketched a hopeful scenario in which many residents would move out of public housing with the help of federal rent vouchers, but he sidestepped the volatile issue of moving some residents to middle-class neighborhoods.
Cisneros made it clear that HUD’s efforts to turn around the Chicago Housing Authority are being watched nationally. Echoing the views of public-housing experts, Cisneros said: “The national system of public housing is on trial in Chicago.”
As with many previous promises for improving life for more than 86,000 CHA residents, Cisneros may not be able to deliver. His department faces major budget cuts, not to mention the long-standing resistance of many Chicago-area neighborhoods to public housing.
CHA developments marked for swiftest action include Cabrini-Green and Henry Horner Homes.
In the South Side sprawl that includes Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens, one of every three high-rises could be razed, Cisneros said. Demolition could begin for some buildings as early as this summer.
At the same time, Cisneros outlined plans to take on the unwieldy CHA bureaucracy, vowing to break it up into smaller “management teams” led by private firms and residents. He indicated job and pay cuts at CHA’s central office also are likely.
“Pay scales are out of kilter with other governments,” Cisneros told the Tribune’s editorial board. “There are people working in the (CHA’s) legal department who make more than the mayor.”
HUD officials noted a silver lining in CHA’s long history of mismanagement: When the board voted to resign last week, it left $421 million in unspent funds that had accumulated over several years.
Cisneros joined Mayor Richard Daley and former CHA Chairman Vincent Lane at a morning news conference, where he introduced HUD’s temporary management team, including HUD Assistant Secretary Joseph Shuldiner and Kevin Marchman, a top Cisneros aide who will be the CHA’s acting executive director.
The search continues for Lane’s permanent replacement. Rich Monocchio, Shuldiner’s spokesman, confirmed that the “top candidate” is Claire Freeman, the head of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority in Cleveland.
Rosanna Marquez, the mayoral aide who is helping HUD search for Lane’s replacement, said Freeman is “the only one we’ve looked at so far,” but “she has not been offered the job.”
Threatened funding cuts will make Cisneros’ prescription for success difficult. He envisions giving more rent vouchers to tenants as “the principal instrument we will use” to help CHA residents find other housing.
But the Senate and House budgets for 1996 provide no new money for vouchers, Monocchio said. “We’re looking at an era where new vouchers are in jeopardy,” he said.
Critics also noted that many private landlords are unwilling to accept such vouchers.
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As for tearing down high-rises, Cisneros figures HUD can limit the number of residents that CHA demolition displaces by moving them to nearby vacant units, about 6,200 at last count.
“The mathematics works,” he insisted.
In addition, HUD officials hope to replace the razed buildings with “on-site” town homes that will attract some working-class residents, although Shuldiner acknowledged there are limits to that approach.
The CHA’s State Street corridor, for instance, is “not attractive enough for working families,” he said.
Recognizing the deep mistrust many CHA residents have for plans to demolish high-rises on potentially valuable land, Cisneros promised tenants: “We will not approve sales of CHA land for private development.”
Cisneros and Shuldiner emphasized the need to better screen tenants. Shuldiner mentioned a program in Charlotte, N.C., where police help screen residents. But he said he didn’t know if Illinois law would permit that approach.
HUD’s action spares Daley from the political heat connected with demolishing many high-rises. It also gives Cisneros, who faces a special prosecutor looking into his personal affairs, an opportunity to portray himself as a take-charge administrator despite his legal problems.
Endorsing the HUD takeover, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) said it should not be seen as a slap at Lane’s leadership. Moseley-Braun said HUD gave the CHA several chances to solve its problems.
“As a normal rule of thumb, one would want to have government closest to the people making those kinds of management decisions,” she said in her Loop office.
“However, in the case of the CHA, those problems are so intractable that HUD is stepping up to the plate to try to address some of these problems.”
At the City Hall news conference, Lane was portrayed as committed to CHA residents, but no one praised his management skills.
For Daley, the key issue about public housing is not management of a corrupt system, but what to do with poor black residents who would need new homes if Cisneros is successful in “selective demolition” of CHA high-rises.
The mayor does not want those residents to be moved into the white ethnic wards that form his voting base.
And if the Clinton administration hopes to capture either bungalow or suburban voters in the 1996 election by showing how it reshaped moribund bureaucracies such as the CHA, it probably would not associate itself with such a policy.
Cisneros said he wanted to expand the so-called Section 8 voucher program throughout the metropolitan area.
But in a clear message to the mayor, Cisneros added: “My guess is that here, what you’ll see most of is redevelopment on site.”
“Daley’s problem is that nobody wants public housing or scattered-site or whatever in their wards-black, white, Hispanic or what have you,” said Ald. William Beavers (7th). “I don’t want it in mine either. But now the CHA isn’t running things. HUD’s in charge.”
Last week, Cisneros said that federal investigations of CHA contracts, Lane’s private business ties to Nation of Islam affiliates, and allegations of mismanagement contributed to the takeover.
But at City Hall, Cisneros backed away from those statements.
“Let me make clear that none of those individual things, or even taken collectively, was a precipitating event for this action,” Cisneros said.
Even so, it was clear that as Lane prepares to return to private life, he faces other troubles, including a legal battle with some of his real estate partners.
Since March, Lane’s partners in one venture have been attempting to collect $42,517 from him by garnisheeing his wages, his credit union assets, his checking account and some of his other business operations, according to court documents.
Lane was sued in 1993 by his partners in a federally funded housing project known as Grove Parc at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.
The lawsuit accused Lane of appropriating $300,000 of the project’s operating account “without the permission” of the partners.
One of Lane’s firms, Urban Services Realty & Management Group, repaid all but the $42,517, prompting additional legal action in the case to collect the balance, according to court records.
Meanwhile, the landlord of an office building at 20 S. Clark St., where another of Lane’s firms rents space, filed a lawsuit May 9 to evict the firm for failing to pay rent.
The firm, American Community Housing Associates, manages a large nationwide real estate portfolio. The suit contends that the firm owes $8,820 in back rent.
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