Public housing's island

Well public housing is changing in Chicago, but apparently the city still has a long way to go as far as the Trib is concerned. Most of I'm sure are familiar with Altgeld Garden that's about 130th Street and just directly west of the Bishop Ford (or I prefer Calumet) Expressway:

For all the talk of weaving public housing residents into the fabric of the city, the Chicago Housing Authority's ambitious Plan for Transformation includes this inconvenient fact:

When the plan is complete, nearly 1 of every 10 of those families will live more than 100 blocks south of the Loop, tucked amid landfills, industrial parks and a sewage treatment plant.

Mayor Richard Daley declared eight years ago that Chicago would end "the failed policies of the past." Yet a Tribune investigation found that the city has pumped hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars into housing complexes that preserve the very policies the plan was meant to reverse.

The largest is the Altgeld-Murray Homes, a sprawling 190-acre development built on the Far South Side for black factory workers during World War II. At that development alone, the CHA plans to spend $451 million rehabbing 1,998 barracks-style apartments, with politically connected Walsh Construction doing much of the work.

Altgeld sits in one of the city's most isolated areas. The nearest supermarket is miles away. Only one bus route serves the development. And it backs up to the Little Calumet River in an area once known as "The Toxic Doughnut" because of a long history of environmental problems.

Crime is another challenge. Open drug markets thrive at Altgeld, and shootings occur frequently enough to keep residents on edge.

"You guys are an island out here, cut off from everyone else," John Ball, the local police commander, noted during a recent community meeting with residents.

Well you should have seen Obama on 60 Minutes last year. Indeed I'm sure that his work as a community organizer on that part of town has been chronicled in his books. The Tribune especially makes mention of where he worked as a community organizer in his youth.

Another question to be asked here is if Altgeld is an island unto itself how can they integrate with the rest of the community. Also there's another aspect of transformation that hasn't reached its goal as of yet:

The CHA pushed to preserve the project as part of a strategy to sell the plan to tenants and housing advocates. The agency already was razing thousands of apartments, and it had vowed to deliver 25,000 new or rehabbed homes, enough to accommodate all residents living in public housing as of Oct. 1, 1999.

When the Plan for Transformation is complete, Altgeld will make up nearly 2,000 of the 25,000 units, more than any other development.

At first the CHA said the remake of Altgeld would be finished this year. But only about a third of the units have been completed, and the deadline has been pushed back by six years to 2014.

Those who support the rehab effort at Altgeld say its two-story row houses along winding streets are fundamentally different than the infamous high-rises that once symbolized all that was wrong with public housing.

"Out here in Altgeld, we don't call it a project," said Gertte Smith, site operations director for East Lake Management, the private firm run by Daley backer Elzie Higginbottom that manages Altgeld for the CHA. "We like to think of ourselves as the housing development in the suburbs."

That image, though, is clouded by lingering environmental concerns. Some of the region's biggest sources of toxic air pollution surround Altgeld, according to the most recent federal data examined by the Tribune.

The CHA contends the area is safe for families, but the environmental problems add another hurdle to the agency's already difficult job: persuading public housing residents to move to Altgeld.

Crime figures prominently in this story and while there isn't much mention of doing anything about any environmental problems that may exist down that way. At least there is a plan in the works to work on the issue of crime:

Some fear that when Altgeld is filled up, crime will worsen. "Once it starts to be occupied, [crime] will soar right through the roof," said Whitfield, the tenants lawyer. "Has there been some magic spray that has changed everything? The gangbangers aren't going anywhere."

But the local police commander, Ball, is hoping to prevent that. In August, he met with Altgeld residents to discuss crime. Ball told them the development is not as bad as other parts of his district.Even so, he said he's planning to reopen a substation that was closed a few years ago, install more police cameras and assign a dedicated sergeant and additional officers to the development.

Residents met Ball's initiatives with suspicion and loud jeers, but he pressed his point with those who would listen.

"With all the money and all the resources that are out here now, we want to maintain this and make it stronger," he said. "Do you know how lovely this could be if we could make it work?"

From the back of the room, resident Liquita Saulter scoffed under her breath. "Pipe dream," she said.

This is a story worth your time if you're interested in the plans for public housing.