Sara Olkon

Long before a little boy was crushed and killed by a falling gate at a public housing project on the Near North Side, inspectors repeatedly warned the Chicago Housing Authority...

With the rain and gray skies dampening spirits everywhere, I turned to a bit of healthy indulgence. MORNING I started my day with a chai tea, a spicy black tea...

Even as it continues to demolish the city's notorious public housing high-rises, the Chicago Housing Authority is quietly chipping away at another civil rights-era institution: the tenant councils that were...

For Ernest Ricketts, Super Tuesday brought back memories of the high school talent show in Park Ridge where his tone-deaf friend Hillary Rodham was asked to mouth the words to...

In the center of Logan Square, artists eat tofu scrambles, joggers wear iPod nanos and pet walkers escort small dogs past million-dollar homes. About a mile west in the same...

Jacqueline Straight put up a Christmas tree this year for the first time in her life. At 32, she is no longer a crack user raising her daughter in homeless...

During his two tours in Iraq, Army Sgt. Chris Williams has been in many firefights, but a battle with military brass over a leave extension as his newborn son clings...

Josephine Grabowski did not expect, at age 86, to be pulling herself precariously out of her wheelchair to change her son's soiled bedsheets. In fact, she did not expect her...

For Anand Tiwari, time stopped on Aug. 11. That Saturday afternoon, police would later tell him, his wife murdered their two young children and killed herself by igniting a fire...