A reader writes in:"Can you please publish the link to this story in the Tribune today? At the bottom of the story is the email addresses of the writers. I have already sent them an email asking them to do a similar story on WY. I am betting a lot of your readers would like to read this and email them as well."
Read the story here.
A quick MLS search revealed 416 homes scattered all over the City that are in Forclosure staring at $10,000.00. The City could spend $50,000.00 a pop to fix these homes, and let people live there for free. That was only a quick search, if I go City wide there are too many places on the MLS. Then people can get an ownership interest, and it would revitalize those communities instead of concetrating everyone into Wilson yard at $377,000.00 a pop. Even if they spent $100,000 per house it is a still a better deal. This post isn't exactly related to this story, but it goes with a general theme.
ReplyDeleteI REALLY ENCOURAGE EVERYONE to email the writers of this story. As was mentioned, their email addresses are at the end of this article. Perhaps we can finally get some press from the TRIB about the Wilson Yard hellhole
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just found 50 in Uptown that are under $150K. Many are way cheaper and in foreclosure. The City Could buy those and house tons of people. It would aactually help the housing market also to get all these foreclosures off the Market.
ReplyDeleteBut no, lets build a new Uptown ghetto instead. I wonder if maybe they just don't think about it?
"Wilson Yard Hellhole?"
ReplyDeleteSo far, nothing's been built on that site!
Thank you captain obvious.
ReplyDeleteLase Side Management. That's da mare's buddy Higgenbottem(sp). He had gotten millions in interest free loans from the city. He owns the mid-rise behind the McDonald's at Wilson and Sheridan. He's known in the black community as Mr. "Kiss'n'bottom" because of his relationship with da mare. He and the Walsh's prove that the poor are big business. Right, Mr. Holsten of Hinsdale?
ReplyDeleteIf the plan is, in fact, still to build only about 178 units in WY, spread across two buildings, how does that constitute a concentration of poverty. If there is a desire on Shiller's part to build anything even approaching the magnitude of Altgeld, I would be greatly concerned.
ReplyDeleteBesides, the whole point of Altgeld being a failed model was that it was thousands of units in a place isolated from the city, an island of poverty. These units would not create an isolated patch of poverty--it seems they would be ideally part of a larger mixed-income community.
I'm sure someone will tell me if I am missing something in this equation. Is the fear that Shiller will advocate to build many more units than initially proposed, sneak in more buildings, create nothing but a stretch of low-income housing?
Otherwise, if 178 remains the plan (and there is no bait and switch going on) I think it is wildly exaggerated to compare 178 units to the isolated monstrosity that was Altgeld--hence the concern with rebuilding it as opposed to just knocking it down.
Yes, Altgeld is an extreme case. Robt. Taylor, Stateway, Cabrini, not that isolated, 100% low income, 100% failed.
ReplyDeleteWY-Not mixed (an oft repeated lie, but lie none the less) in a community which already has a poverty rate twice that (or more) to neighboring wards/zips according to the last census.
I think Neighborlady and Bradley are both right. A lot of what made Altgeld bad was the physical isolation, the isolation from lots of transportation, businesses and other important organizations that are in neighborhoods where people tend to hold down decent jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe risks for WY are not exactly the same but that doesn't mean there aren't any to consider. As far as I know, there have been no assurances about tenant selection or about security or how much $$ Holsten has committed to give to support a tenant's board.
Bradley's point that WY will be going into a high poverty neighborhood still matters. The point of scattered site housing was to scatter it throughout the city and the region. That is not happening when only a handful of neighborhoods are on the receiving end. Doing that puts additional strain on the communities that get the housing because poor families tend tax a neighborhood's resources. Notice that I am not making a judgment on that---it is just a fact. For example, when 73% of an elementary school's kids qualify for free breakfast/lunch it does matter. And what should we say about gangs and the drug trade? I am the last person to want to criminalize poverty and say that poverty comes from moral inferiority but there is a relationship between high levels of poverty and gangs & drugs now. As farrell (?) says, ignoring such things is "dangerously naive." There still have to be some decent job prospects for people when they get to these new neighborhoods.
We've got a lot to deal with in this neighborhood. (Kids not being able to cross certain streets to get to local parks for fear of retaliation, anyone???) These are some of the reasons why I am for affordable housing but against WY. To me it is just common sense. You don't take on new projects until you know what you are already doing well (or not), how you are going to take care of your current responsibilities and how your new plans will likely fit in. Also, the TIF should really be focused on economic development...
When it comes to people who have gotten a raw deal, Shiller doesn't spend a lot of time on details. Maybe she thinks it is mean or just repeating wrongs of the past? Heartless as it may appear (or even be), someone with her power has an obligation to get into the details.
And responding to billyjoe...yes "hellhole", as you so poigniantly pointed out, there's nothing there yet. And how many millions of dollars (not Helens, not Holstens...who's could it be) have been spent? I think that earns WY the "Hellhole" moniker.
ReplyDeleteSorry I dropped a couple of apostrophes.
ReplyDeleteCabrini had working-poor living there as well, an element that is often forgot--one can be working and still be in the poverty zone. Cabrini did not start out bad. I don't know all of the minute details of Cabrini, but based on what family said (who lived in Cabrini before migrating to Uptown), Cabrini was a good place in the beginning, a safe place for poor people, including working poor in the 50s and 60s. There were greater attempts to engage the youth in activities and exchanges outside of and beyond Cabrini through church and private organizations (again, this is coming from someone who lived there when it was good).
ReplyDeleteManagement issues caused the beginning of the deterioration, and people began to leave as fewer public funds were expended to properly manage the place and permit Cabrini to maintain connections to the greater city via public transportation. People who could leave, left.
I don't know that WY would face the same sort of issues as Altgeld and Cabrini.
My thought is that if there will be commercial activity in WY as well (assume for the sake of argument that there will be a target and other area set aside for commercial, non-residential ventures), and even conceding that Uptown does have a significant amount of below-market rate housing here, does the 178 units included in the WY plan really threaten to create the sort of housing/community situation seen in these public housing models of the past?
That said, I do understand some of the frustration generally because Uptown does not seem to lend itself to anything other than extremes-- high priced condos or low income housing. Why not nice market rate apartments or lofts for those of us who don't quite have the money to buy $ 260,000 condos (or who don't want to buy), but don't qualify for low-income housing?
I think your description of Cabrini is fair and I echo what you have to say about people who want to live stay in Uptown and can't afford a $260,000 condo.
ReplyDeleteSo, then, why doesn't Wilson Yard follow the model that is being developed everywhere else in Chicago? Mix in affordable home ownership opportunities for non-CHA waitlist people with families further down on the income scale? Why something so different for Uptown? And why so expensive? It seems to me that if you could reduce the price then the City of Chicago would have more money to spread across the whole plan for transformation system. How many people will wait and wait and wait and see nothing for so many years while money is wasted on $400,000 units? Or, as the article says, take Altgeld or nothing?
John Kass had a great column today about dealing with radicals "the Chicago Way." Although I'm an Obama Mama I feel as if I could have written parts of that column. Where is the dissent? Where is the outrage? Has everyone really been co-opted?
@neighborlady:
ReplyDeleteThere might be a Target. But seeing the state of the economy and the financial markets, as well as the retail environment as a whole, I think you're going to have a bunch of empty storefronts.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't think that's going to happen.
So, what we'll have is an isolated island of low income housing, little retail, and a Target that will cater to drivers and L riders.
There won't be a soul walking the streets from Sunnyside down to Montrose.
The plan is a bad one, and should be scrapped before the taxpayer subsidy rises to $60,000,000.
WY housing will be a version of that located at Clybourn and Damen (mid-rises, close to transportation) and it TOO is being torn down and the land sold to da mare's cronies.
ReplyDeleteI do think that 178 units represents a concentration of poverty. Affordable housing should be built in much smaller conglomerations, and should be virtually indistinguishable from surrounding housing to avoid stigma. In the past affordable housing existed in communities above shops, in "granny apartments", and in carriage houses. The suburban model no longer provides these spaces, and this pushes all affordable housing pressure into older communities.
ReplyDeleteIn Uptown we are in danger of becoming a neighborhood segregated between low-rise condo buildings and high-rise poverty centers. That is NOT integration. Don't kid yourselves!
Do you know who it is being sold to, buenapark? What will be done with the land? See, this is what gets me so riled up about what is going on in Uptown. The economic resurgence around that area means that those families are now even closer to good jobs (Costco is a fantastic employer in their market segment), and can reap the opportunities of being in a more mixed community.
ReplyDeleteThe Shilleristas stomp up and down around here about affordable housing but in many ways what they do just enables the city to keep forcing people out of their homes elsewhere. They know that there is a community there. Why enable to city to move these families someplace else rather than saying, "No. No displacement anywhere. We'll welcome even more than our share but not so that displacement can be achieved elsewhere."
I think the bald truth of the matter is that the only power Shiller has is the power that Daley has given her---for her ward and that alone. What an opportunity she has missed in getting Uptown residents interested in the issue and perhaps even working across the city for equity.