Flashback 1994: CHA VACANCIES CREATE TROUBLE SPOTS

 

The last remaining building of the Robert Taylor Homes (Wikimedia Commons)

     Wednesday's column prompted several readers to sneer at me for residing in the relative safety of Northbrook, as if living in a nice place were something to be ashamed of. But my job has taken me to every corner of the city, sometimes at night, and I go because a) it's my job; and b) I know that peril is a calculation, danger = (location x time) — you can go to the most crime-ridden spot in the city in relative safety, depending on how long you spend there. Or as I often say: if people can live there, I can visit.
     I'm writing a column that refers to this article, over 30 years old, that involved me visiting public housing projects at night. I thought I'd post it here so I can link to it. Maudlyne Ihejirika shared a byline on it with me.

    What I remember most from this story is that the mother of the boy who picked up a melted large soda bottle and showed us how it had been transformed into a crack pipe, after publication called the paper, indignantly insisting that the teen was somehow coached by us — I was with photographer Bob Davis. As if either of us would have known, or thought to do that in a million years. 

    Remember: in 1994 Chicago registered 928 homicides, almost twice the figure of recent years.

     Jenny Hodges up and left for Memphis. About a month ago. Took her kids and fled apartment 1310, on the 13th floor of the Rockwell Gardens high-rise at 2514 W. Van Buren. She wanted a better life.
     Fine for her, says her neighbor, Gloria Lumpkins, who lives next door, in 1308, with her sister and their seven children. But Hodges' former apartment is vacant now — stripped, trashed, its door wide open, one of seven vacant apartments out of 11 on Lumpkins' floor.
     "Nobody's in there but gang-bangers," says Lumpkins, 26. "They bust out the windows, throw things out the windows, use binoculars to shoot at people. There's lots of crime in here now because of vacant apartments."
     Nearly one of every six CHA apartments is vacant – 6,184 of the CHA's 40,210 units citywide, now havens for crimes such as the murder of Eric Morris, 5, last Thursday. At Henry Horner homes, entire buildings are vacant. The top eight floors at 1847 W. Washington are sealed off.
     "A lot of stuff used to happen up there — rapes and stuff," says Charlean Brown, 19.
     "It's sealed off, but you can get in," says Johnny Brown, 22.
     To show how accessible the apartments are, a trio of teenage boys – Michael Matthews, 15, Corey Bennett, 15, and Tony Dawson, 14 - go up to a vacant eighth-floor apartment at 1920 W. Washington.
     "It's messed up inside," says Michael. "They smoke crack in here."
     Broken glass is scattered around, along with beer bottles, blankets and an old foam mattress.
     "See that," Corey says, picking up a plastic rubbing alcohol bottle and explaining how a certain addict uses it to smoke crack. "He uses this to push the drugs down," he says, holding the bottle like a pipe and jamming down imaginary drugs with a nail tamper.
     "They put crack inside cigarettes," says Michael, who adds that the boys know because they've watched the addict through the open door. "He saw us looking, got mad, and threw stuff."
     "We'll be playing in the hallways; he'll be smoking his pipe," says Corey.
     Even those vacant apartments remaining empty add to the fear of residents in CHA developments.
     "You don't know what it's like. You never know what might come out at you from those apartments," says Jan Murray of 3833 S. Langley in Ida B. Wells, where Eric Morris died last week. "You call and call CHA, and it takes forever for them to come out."
     "If we don't make sure they board them up, they don't board them up," says Arthur Covington, 17.
     Many CHA residents complain about the need those apartments could be filling.
     "People want to get in and live in them and they can't get in," says Mike Hanson, 22.
     "People need these apartments," says Kenny Harper, 33. "They could get them together, looking good, but they don't."
     Officials are trying. Calling vacancies a major boon to gangs, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated $10 million this summer for the CHA to reduce vacancies in Robert Taylor and Stateway Gardens, after a rash of shootings.
     Last month, the federal government granted a record $30 million to fix up about a quarter of the CHA's vacant apartments.
     "Until we get the money to tear down these high-rises, there are always going to be tragic cases like this," CHA Chairman Vincent Lane said, referring to Eric's death. "We board up those units and they tear them right back down."
     A history of work orders for the board-up of Apt. 1405, a vacant unit in a 14-story building at Ida B. Wells, illustrates the agency's losing battle.
     A CHA crew had just been out to board up the apartment — again – hours before two youths allegedly broke in and threw Morris out of a window.
     CHA's dilemma is no comfort for residents of buildings with vacancies.
     There are accidents. A 5-year-old boy wandered into a vacant unit in Rockwell Gardens last June and fell 13 stories from a window to his death.
     There are rapes. A 23-year-old man was charged in 1991 with 10 rapes in the ABLA neighborhood, five of them in vacant units in the development.
     Gangs use them. Seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed in Cabrini-Green in 1992 by a reputed gang member shooting at rivals from a vacant unit.
      Not every building has a problem with vacancy. At 1900 W. Washington, a strong sense of community has kept the apartments occupied.
     "This building is full," said Angela Doles, 22, who credits building president Della Walker with keeping people involved. "If you join your building group and participate you keep your building going."
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 17, 1994