Everywhere else in the city, high-rise towers housing low-income residents are being torn down. Meanwhile, in Uptown, Helen Shiller's plan to recreate those towers in Wilson Yard marches grimly on.Yesterday, on a former Cabrini-Green high-rise site, a new development opened to much fanfare. "Parkside Of Old Town" combines market-rate, affordable and public housing units, the new model for public housing.
Mayor Daley called the new development "a major step toward ending decades of isolation and segregation."
Apparently it's fine to end them in the Gold Coast and move them to always accommodating Uptown instead. What's the difference, Mr. Mayor?
I heard about this yesterday and it certainly gave me pause. My favorite part of the article was this little tidbit. "It will also create a new neighborhood with good schools, jobs and shopping, Mayor Daley said. "
ReplyDeleteI am not sure why we are a bunch of bad apples when we ask for the kind of developments that are able to be built elsewhere. I guess the answer lies somewhere in the fact that the total amount of units is 776. Since the development is mixed, it doesn't replace anywhere near the number of units that were lost in Cabrini. Most certainly, these residents were displaced to other areas of the city. WY may have to be all subsidized because if we were to build a mixed income development, WY wouldn't be doing very much to solve that problem.
Of course, no one is allowed to point out the fact that this neighborhood already takes on more than any other neighborhood's share of subsidized and transitional housing. If you were to point that out, you would be called a...
More information on "Parkside of Old Town":
ReplyDeleteCondos from the $300,000s
Townhomes from $499,900
Kimball Hill Urban Centers, Holsten Real Estate Development, and Cabrini-Green LAC Community Development (a CHA tenants’ group) helped to develop this property.
The two faces of Daley and Holsten.
ReplyDeleteSo these condos and townhouses are being sold (for profit) at the same price Holsten has projected the cost to build all subsidized low-income housing??????
How come this housing could be be for so much less? And be true mixed-income?
Boy, has Holsten got a racket going with our TIF money. Holsten is the poster boy when Carol Marin said, "TIFs are corporate welfare."
Remember, Cabrini Green had
3,500 subsized housing units.
Uptown, in roughly the same area,
has almost 6,000 subsidized units.
Well they cleaned up Lincoln Park and Lakeview by displacing the problems into Uptown. It worked so well, Daley probably figures it will work to clean up Cabrini Green west of the Gold Coast too. Why run a different game when the one he's been using works so well for him?
ReplyDeleteRemember the old Democratic Committeeman's saying:
Daley got votes by building low income housing in poor neighborhoods and saying, "See that. You wouldn't have that here if it wasn't for me."
Then he would go down the street to a richer neighborhood, point at the same low income housing project and say, "See that. You'd have that here if it wasn't for me."
Daley Junior is just following in Daddy Daley's footsteps and running the same plays.
Right anon 6:28. And instead of actually challenging the segregation of this city and pointing a finger at the political powers that have played a role in perpetuating it, Helen Shiller enables it. It is as if she and her cronies drew a line in the sand and said, "we'll concede Lincoln Park but you won't get Uptown without a massive fight." That unspoken? agreement lasted for a long time. My take on it was that the Daleys were fine with that because A) it wasn't worth the continued national attention and B) it allowed them to focus on other areas of the city. I am sure they thought, "hey, if those people want to live like that up there then so be it."
ReplyDeleteOver time it appears to me that they realized that this was a great place to sweep city & region-wide problems under the rug. Centralizing much of the poverty and mental illness also made it more efficient for the do-gooders to do their thing. Has anyone here ever read any Michel Foucault? Centralizing poverty in Uptown helped the do-gooders better "govern" poverty.
hey you suckers that voted for richie and helen deserve this - richie daley and helen are two of the most evil people in chicago - and that is saying a lot
ReplyDelete