Calling All Champions: CHA's Mixed-Income Communities Depend on Citywide Partners for Success

• February 2, 2005

Mid-way through the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) 10-year Plan for Transformation – the nation’s largest effort to revitalize public housing – hundreds of new apartments, condominiums and homes, ranging from subsidized to market-rate, are springing from the ashes of torn-down high-rise developments.

While the CHA is firmly at the center of this ambitious plan, overseeing the construction of some 25,000 new homes – 6,205 of them in new mixed-income communities – the success of these new communities also rests on key partnerships with city agencies and neighborhood organizations. The Metropolitan Planning Council’s (MPC) latest CHA Progress Report examines the vital role these partnerships will play in establishing the quality schools and educational opportunities, commercial and retail development, job creation, and adequate parks, community centers and recreational facilities that all communities need.

“The CHA’s new mixed-income communities are wonderful in concept. To be wonderful in practice, the entire civic community needs to support this vision for neighborhood resurgence,” said Robin Snyderman, MPC housing director. “Many of the mixed-income sites will be located in areas still suffering from decades of disinvestment. They need quality schools and retail options, parks and community center, access to jobs, and safe streets.”

MPC’s Progress Report notes that civic engagement in the Plan for Transformation is especially important because in 2000, the CHA not only kicked off an initiative to revamp public housing, but under new leadership, it also reorganized internally. Once a 2,600-person agency struggling to manage objectives well beyond the purview of a public housing agency (such as policing, social service delivery, and property management), today the CHA is 500 employees, all aiming to fulfill the agency’s fundamental role as “asset manager.” Tasks once underperformed now are handled by private contractors or appropriate public partners – placing the responsibility of building strong, new communities in the hands of many Chicagoans.

“Now more than ever, champions from the public, private and nonprofit sector must support the CHA’s effort,” said Joseph Gregoire, regional president of National City Bank and co-chair of MPC’s Housing Committee. “Investments in local retail and commercial amenities and in job preparation are needed to provide low-income residents with the same opportunities as other Chicagoans – and, thus, with the means to reach self-sufficiency.”

In its report, MPC cites specific examples of encouraging collaborations already in place. For instance, Chicago Public Schools is launching its Renaissance 2010 plan, which will create 100 new schools throughout the city, many near mixed-income communities. The Partnership for New Communities, a grant-making entity co-funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Chicago Community Trust, has invested approximately $2 million in promoting economic development around the mixed-income sites, including an employer-assisted housing program linked to the new developments. And thanks to a philanthropic gift, a $140 million community center co-sponsored by the late McDonald’s Corp. heiress Joan B. Kroc and the Salvation Army is slated to be built on State Street between 47th and 50th streets, near the site where the Robert Taylor Homes once stood.

“More examples like these are needed if the city’s new mixed-income communities are to succeed,” said Bernard Loyd, president of Urban Juncture, Inc. and co-chair of MPC’s Housing Committee. “All Chicagoans – from residents to city agencies, developers to retailers, social workers to academics – have a stake in participating in this historic transformation. Its effects will be felt for generations.”

A full copy of the Progress Report is available on MPC’s Web site, http://www.metroplanning.org/resource.asp?objectID=2580.

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