Housing activists are calling on the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA)
Board of Commissioners to refrain from considering proposals that sell
or swap portions of vacant land to various entities, such as the city of Chicago. The land, protesters said, should instead be used to replace public housing that has been torn down under the agency’s Plan for Transformation.
Gathered
outside of CHA’s downtown headquarters Monday, roughly 30 activists criticized proposed development plans, such as tennis courts and a retail facility, on CHA-owned vacant land formerly occupied by public housing.
“There’s no plan to replace the housing that we know of,” said Roderick Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, and organizer of the protest.
“When the CHA came up with this Plan for Transformation to demolish
public housing and to rebuild and transform it, they promised
replacement housing that wouldn’t concentrate poverty. But where is it?”
The U.S.
housing recovery is gaining traction due in part to an increase in
multi-family housing construction and rising home prices, according to
the annual State of the Nation’s Housing report released Wednesday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
Despite
areas of improvement, the report found that millions of American homeowners
are still late on mortgage payments or owe more than what their homes
are actually worth, and low-income households face continued challenges
finding affordable housing.
The number of Americans shouldering severe housing cost burdens has also set a new record, according to the report.
A lawsuit was filed against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) on behalf of public housing tenants pressing CHA to keep the Cabrini-Green rowhouse units intact. It also calls on CHA to follow up on its promise to rehab some of the units.
Quanzina Haynes plans to pull her children from the Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) district if the Chicago Board of Education votes in favor
of closing their school, Graeme Stewart Elementary.
“The
closure for me would really mean a hardship for my family, because I
feel I have no choice but to enroll my kids in a Catholic school,” said
Haynes, 33, a single mother of two sons, ages eight and 10.
Opponents of a planned $220 million luxury residential building in Uptown were ignored and not permitted to ask the 46th Ward’s Zoning and Development Committee questions about the project at its meeting Monday night.
Members
of the advisory committee, put in place by Ald. James Cappleman (46th),
adjourned its monthly meeting at Weiss Memorial Hospital despite
multiple people who had waited patiently with their hands raised to comment on the plan, which calls for 842 mostly high-income
units.
“We are totally opposed to this plan,” Marc Kaplan of Northside Action for Justice shouted as some committee members quickly filed past him out of the the hospital’s auditorium.
Minimum wage workers in Illinois must work 82 hours per week — more than double the hours of a standard work week — and 52 weeks a year, in order to afford to rent a safe, reasonable apartment unit, according to a recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
An
Illinois renter must earn $17.02 per hour to
afford the Fair Market Rent (FMR) price of $885 for a two-bedroom
apartment,
according to the report. That translates to $2,949 per month in income, or $35,392 annually, to ensure the renter spends less than 30 percent of their income on housing.
But
the minimum wage in Illinois is $8.25. Meaning, minimum wage workers
must work a staggering amount to avoid destitution.
According
to the report, for every 100 extremely low-income households in
Illinois, there are only 28 available and affordable rental homes. In
Illinois, a family of four is considered extremely low-income if their
annual income is less than or at $21,650, which is 30 percent of the area median
income.
Extremely low-income renters typically spend more than half their income on rent, according to researchers.
“When
you are paying 60 or 70 percent of your income toward your housing
costs, there’s not much money left for the other necessities of life,
such as food, medical costs or investing in your education,” said Bob
Palmer, policy director for the statewide housing coalition, Housing
Action Illinois.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan yesterday for which the
city will spend $2.5 million a year to help its homeless residents.
AFSCME Council 31 public employees union is upset about the plan because the strategy
will outsource the city’s overnight homeless transport service.
Privatization
plan aside, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless says that Emanuel
has at least taken steps toward identifying the scope of the homelessness problem in the city.
Housing activists are calling on the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA)
Board of Commissioners to refrain from considering proposals that sell
or swap portions of vacant land to various entities, such as the city of Chicago. The land, protesters said, should instead be used to replace public housing that has been torn down under the agency’s 
The U.S.
housing recovery is gaining traction due in part to an increase in
multi-family housing construction and rising home prices, according to
the annual 
Quanzina Haynes plans to pull her children from the Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) district if the Chicago Board of Education votes in favor
of closing their school, 
Opponents of a 
Minimum wage workers in Illinois must work 82 hours per week — more than double the hours of a standard work week — and 52 weeks a year, in order to afford to rent a safe, reasonable apartment unit, according to a recent 
Illinois’ extremely low-income renters are in dire need of affordable housing, according to a recent 
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan yesterday for which the
city will spend $2.5 million a year to help its homeless residents.
AFSCME Council 31 public employees union is upset about the plan because the strategy
will outsource the city’s overnight homeless transport service.