The sparkle and promise of Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation have yet to take hold at the Harold Ickes Homes on the Near South Side.
As the city promotes the plan’s mixed-income communities and work requirements elsewhere, “the Ickes” is a throwback to the kind of public housing that made Chicago notorious, a place critics say has become a magnet for drug dealers and squatters who can’t or won’t move to new developments.
The midrises that line South State Street from Cermak Road to 25th Street are marked by unkempt lobbies and broken-down elevators that reek of ammonia and vomit. Anger toward the police punctuates everyday conversation. Residents have learned to shrug off shootings and drug addicts slumped in the hallways.
On top of all that, Ickes, which was built in 1955, lives in limbo; CHA officials have not made a decision on whether the project will be rehabbed or demolished.
The influx in recent years of displaced tenants — plenty of whom are living or spending time at Ickes without CHA permission — and the shuttering of entire sections of the complex have added to the uncertainty for many residents.
“During the late ’80s and early ’90s, it felt a lot safer,” said Aaron Boyd, 35, a lifelong resident of Ickes. “There were a lot of families around. There was a lot of grass-roots creativity.”
Boyd is a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the city and the Police Department. In the suit, residents allege they are threatened with arrest if they don’t regularly give their names, addresses and ages on “contact cards” for officers.
Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said the contact cards are voluntary and the act of refusing to complete the cards is not cause for arrest. She said Boyd has a history of run-ins with the police, but no convictions.
“If individuals are there and do not reside and are there to move their drug enterprise, that is a challenge and it’s a delicate challenge,” said Bond. “Many individuals purport to be a resident and they are not. The majority of offenders are there to sell drugs.”
The homes were in the news again recently when Rev. Jesse Jackson summoned the media to Ickes several times and spent the night in an apartment there — an effort to highlight the complaints of police harassment and what he sees as a pattern of neglect.
“This is a plan to drive people out of here,” Jackson said Tuesday night inside the two-bedroom apartment of Vernice Saunders, a resident of Ickes since 1973.
Saunders moved into the complex when she was nine months’ pregnant, recovering after she was shot in the stomach by a drive-by gunman (her daughter survived). Back then, Ickes felt like a haven, she said.
“It got worse,” she said dryly.
Now 55, she said she stays in part because of her ties to the remaining residents. She also worries about how a move will affect her roommate and younger brother, Wyatt, 50, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has a job nearby.
Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) expressed frustration that residents haven’t gotten a straight answer over whether Ickes will be rehabbed or razed. Of the 11 nine-story buildings, three are shuttered; just 225 of Ickes’ 740 units are leased for occupancy, according to CHA officials.
“Not knowing the future creates a sense of instability,” Dowell said. “Either you are going to rehab these places or you are not. That’s a primary question.”
Sharon Gist Gilliam, CEO of the CHA, said agency staff is also frustrated.
“We have gone back and forth on Ickes,” she said in a telephone interview Friday. She said the downturn in Chicago’s housing market has contributed to the indecision.
Gilliam said for at least the next 18 months, Ickes will remain open.
She said the CHA has a $4.2 million maintenance budget for the Ickes homes, including half a million dollars set aside to care for the elevators.
“To some degree, what we have to do is recognize that the tenants themselves have to take some responsibility,” she said.
Jamie Kalven, a community activist, said Ickes owes some of its decline to an influx of drug dealers, who lost their turf when the Robert Taylor Homes and much of Stateway Gardens were demolished.
“It’s not just the old days of public housing — it’s actually significantly worse,” he said, adding that the lack of electronic security or lobby guard adds to a sense of lawlessness.
Gilliam said it is cost-prohibitive to retrofit the building with the sort of wiring necessary for an electronic security system or to hire guards. Police say they are adjusting to new conditions.
“It’s a transition time for the drug dealers,” said Chicago police spokeswoman Bond. “Unfortunately, the community suffers.”
Residents are ambivalent about the police presence. They want the drug trade eliminated, but some also say Chicago police officers continually harass law-abiders and search units without warrants or probable cause.
“They don’t got no respect for us,” said Vernice Saunders. “They step on us like we dirt.”
But Bond said many Ickes residents value the police presence.
Robyn Stoner, 13, is one of them.
“They need to be stricter,” she said in a soft voice inside her family’s two-bedroom apartment. “They need to get rid of the drug dealers.”
“And the guns!” chimed in her 11-year-old sister, Ashaki.
They, like their mother, have lived in Ickes all their lives.
Inside their home, Clara Stoner, 36, has lined the walls and crammed the tabletops with photos of her three daughters. Near their portraits are colorful athletic and citizenship ribbons her girls have won.
She has nailed a wooden cross near the front door and has a copy of the religious book “The Purpose Driven Life,” by Rick Warren, on the dining table.
Stoner said she was ordered to move last December from one of the now-shuttered Ickes buildings, leaving behind a place in which she’d invested $700 in floor tiles and paint. She said she wanted to make her place a haven from the outside.
She works full-time as a lunchroom attendant and is training in food preparation to make more money, in hopes of moving to a mixed-income development.
“When the kids come outside, you don’t know what they face,” she said.
Indeed, early on Tuesday morning, a man in his 30s was shot to death in the play lot outside her lobby.
A few days later, Jacob Ranson, 33, who now lives in the Chatham neighborhood, visited a childhood friend. He said kids at Ickes today appeared practically like castaways compared to his upbringing in the complex.
“It wasn’t just my mother checking on me, it’s the mother on the second and third floor,” he said. “There was guidelines and discipline.”
In 4th grade, Ranson said, he was caught lifting a pastry from the convenience store across the street. The reverberations, including “whuppings” by his family and neighbors, lasted for days. He said the lesson — and shame — was unforgettable.
He also recalled summer camp at a nearby community center, nature field trips and skate and swim lessons.
“Now kids don’t learn anything but hustle,” Ranson said.
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About Harold Ickes
Harold L. Ickes was a prominent member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration, serving as Secretary of the Interior and helping to shape the nation’s public housing policy. A former Tribune reporter, he left newspapers for politics and often sparred with Tribune editor and publisher Robert R. McCormick. He died in 1952. His son, Harold M. Ickes, became a senior aide to former President Bill Clinton.
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IN THE WEB EDITION: Residents of Harold Ickes Homes discuss their concerns with houseguest Rev. Jesse Jackson in a video at chicagotribune.com/ickes