In a cramped community room of a Cabrini-Green high-rise, tenant leaders Tuesday night cleared the last major obstacle to a plan to begin remaking one of America’s most notorious housing projects.
Residents hugged after a 90-minute closed session during which they unanimously voted in favor of a consent decree settling a lawsuit that had blocked the Chicago Housing Authority and the City of Chicago from demolishing more buildings.
The suit, filed in 1996, created a striking visual dichotomy in the Cabrini neighborhood as CHA high-rises continued to decline next to new private and city-sponsored development.
Under the decree, which also requires the approval of two federal judges, the resident leaders agreed to end the gridlock and allow planners to demolish six more of the remaining two dozen high-rises at the Near North Side development, including the building in which they cast their votes. The CHA, city and private firms will redevelop an estimated 60 acres around the project.
In return, the CHA agrees to build 895 apartments for people who qualify for public housing. Of those units, 700 will have rents set at 30 percent of a family’s income. The other 195 units would be for families with incomes 40 percent of median income or below.
The decree also would commit the city to make a number of other apartments, including single-room-occupancy units, available to displaced Cabrini families.
Once redeveloped, the area will be a mixture of public and private housing–with about half market-rate.
Perhaps the most innovative element of the agreement would make Cabrini’s tenant council the “co-general partner for the development of all units” on the site of demolished buildings “with a 51 percent interest in the ownership of the general partnership.”
This would mean that the tenant council would get a cut of developers’ fees and profits–“provided it uses such fees and profits for not-for-profit purposes”–and a role in the selection of property managers and construction contractors.
“This means that now we have a chance to live in our own community, which they were going to demolish and build market-rate houses,” said Cora Moore, president of the Cabrini Local Advisory Council.
CHA Executive Director Joseph Shuldiner said that the proposed deal simply codifies offers that the authority and the city have made in the past.
Shuldiner said the CHA has $59 million to get started on the redevelopment. “We’ll need more money than we have, but clearly we have enough for the next several years,” he said.
Another striking provision of the decree would obligate private developers on nearby non-CHA land to set aside a portion of units for public-housing residents. That part of the agreement covers an area bounded by Chicago Avenue, Wells Street, North Avenue and the Chicago River.
“Anytime any developer builds near Cabrini, they must designate 30 percent for public housing,” said Bertha Gilkey, who has been consulting the resident leaders on the consent decree.