Monday, June 27, 2011

Part 2: Sun-Times features the Chatham community

The Sun-Times series of articles by Mary Mitchell continues with part 2.

There have already been several (at least 71) comments on part 1.  (However, several of them have also been marked "under review"). There's a lot of hostility that reminds me of the anonymous comments you'd see on Uptown Update.

Here's the beginning of part 2 of this 3 part series:
It used to be that, to live in Chatham, you practically had to know someone. As a mother with no husband — despite having a 9-to-5 — my chances of finding a landlord who’d rent me an apartment in one of Chatham’s immaculate three-flats were slim.

The landlords there could afford to be picky. Few of them would rent to you just because you told them you were a mom desperate to move to a neighborhood where you didn’t have to worry about gangs and guns.

That’s another thing that’s different about Chatham these days.

It is interesting to note that in this article, Mary Mitchell mentions the fact that about 10% of  units even as far back as 1990 were vacant.
In 1990, 10 percent of the 17,234 housing units in the neighborhood were vacant, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2009, the number had grown to 13.5 perent of what were, by then, 18,017 housing units.
So it seems major change was happening, even during the Eugene Sawyer era.

Another interesting note in the story:

According to a recent study by the Chicago Housing Authority, as of 2010, 117 families with housing vouchers had been relocated to Chatham after being displaced by the tearing down of the city’s public housing high-rises. That number represents less than 1 percent of the available housing in Chatham. But as anyone who has ever lived next door to a house where there was gang or drug activity going on knows, it only takes one bad house to ruin a block.
So what's going on with the other 99%?

What are your thoughts on the stories so far?

1 comment:

  1. I saw the comments for part one since you mentioned it. They are nasty. But I know one regular from the FB page and how he writes and pretty sure he's writing most of the incendiary crap for that article.

    BTW, the recent Aldermanic campaign was about values. Either the values that are important to the Chatham neighborhood. I think we're seeing that theme in spite of all the other issues such as class or what not.

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