Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green.

In 1942, a public housing development went up on Chicago’s near north side to house veterans returning from World War II. They were known as the Francis Cabrini Homes, and “were built in an area that had undergone massive slum clearance”. They consisted of fifty-five two and three story redbrick buildings arranged as row houses, resembling army barracks. The Francis Cabrini Homes housed 600 racially diverse families until 1959, when the Cabrini Extension was built. This extension was made up of fifteen high-rise buildings at seven, ten and nineteen stories in height. With the introduction of these buildings, the Cabrini projects became dominated by African Americans. Three years later in 1962, the William Green public housing project was built adjacent to the Cabrini development. It was comprised of eight fifteen- and sixteen- story gallery-style buildings, much like the Robert Taylor Homes that can be seen from the Dan Ryan Expressway. (Krieger, The Projects)

Chicago’s notorious reputation for crime-ridden, poor quality public housing is a direct result of public policy during the reign of former mayor Richard J. Daley. Instead of using public housing to give lower income families a decent place to live, as was the intent of most public housing at the time, it was used to segregate blacks by concentrating them into certain parts of the city. Cabrini-Green was obviously one of these places. The architecture of Cabrini-Green also played a part in the inevitable doom of the project. City officials realized that the renowned architect LeCorbusier’s “island in the sky” concept of urban community, where giant high-rises grew out of the ground with enormous green space in between them, would be good for public housing. In reality, the green space separated the projects from the rest of the city, concentrating slums into ugly concrete structures that quickly fell into disrepair, resulting in “hulking high-rises in poor black neighborhoods.” Also, 95% of those living in public housing in Chicago are also on some type of welfare, compared to 25% in New York City. “Predictably, CHA buildings are magnets for drugs and crime.” Because of this, the Chicago Housing Authority has gained the reputation of being the worst public housing organization in the United States. (“Chicago’s Public Housing Projects”)

However, Chicago is not the only place with a failed public housing project. The 1954 Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri shared a similar fate to that of Cabrini-Green. It was designed on a fifty-seven-acre lot, with thirty-three buildings of concrete slab construction at eleven stories each. A total of 10,000 people were to live there, blacks in the Pruitt section and whites in the Igoe section. The Supreme Court blocked this racial segregation and the project became integrated. Initially praised for its architecture, Pruitt-Igoe soon became a social disaster area. It quickly became inhabited by poor, black, female-headed households, and almost everyone living there was on welfare. In 1974, just twenty years after it was built, Pruitt-Igoe was leveled by the government. (Phillips, 460-462)

In 1995, Henry Cisneros, the Federal Housing Secretary caught wind of an incident where two boys, ten and eleven, dropped a five-year-old out of a fourteenth floor window of a CHA high-rise. The Chicago Housing Authority had been neglecting its responsibilities for way too long, so Mr. Cisneros stepped in, and the Chicago Housing Authority became under control of the Federal Government (“Chicago’s Public Housing Projects”). With new management, 1.5 billion dollars in federal funds were appropriated to the Chicago Housing Authority to reform the current state of Chicago’s dismal public housing in 2000 as part of a ten-year plan (Reuters). Cabrini-Green is a major focus in this reform, as many of the high-rise apartment structures are being torn down. According to the Chicago Housing Authority:

These buildings are gallery style high-rises built between 1953 and 1966. The CHA experienced great difficulty with this type of building design, ranging from problems with heating systems to frequent elevator failures. Design flaws, coupled with a lack of maintenance and limited capital improvements since initial construction, have rendered these buildings vulnerable to system failures, particularly during winter months. Renovation of these buildings is not economically feasible. (Plan for Transformation, 94)

Nevertheless, not all the residents are pleased that these monoliths of crime are being razed. To many, these buildings are home, somewhere they even like to live. The demolition of these buildings, they argue, is the demolition of their home and community (Krieger, Current Conditions: What Now?)

The Chicago Housing Authority sees the demolition of these antiquated structures a great step forward in the development of modern public housing. Instead of building enormous, relatively inexpensive concrete apartment buildings en masse, the emphasis has turned to mixed income, low-rise housing. In the shadows of the Cabrini-Green high-rises, a developer is proposing to build 280 private housing units. They will range from $200,000 to $600,000 in price, with subsidized condominiums costing $140,000. The object of this is to reduce the number of poor people living in Cabrini-Green, and effectively gentrify the area. (Roder) The Chicago Housing Authority also has plans for new housing units in Cabrini-Green, in an effort to replace the current system of housing in place. Much like the condominiums previously mentioned, there will be midrange housing at $150,000 making up thirty percent of the housing. Fifty percent will be at market value, $300,000 and above. The remaining twenty percent will be public housing. Many current residents feel that this will force them out of their neighborhoods and it will leave them without a place to live, but the CHA has said that it will give out vouchers for private housing. A spokesman for the CHA said that “[they are] going to have enough housing for 25,000 lease-compliant residents” (Reuters). This voucher system lets people live in places they would ordinarily not be able to live, in the suburbs, for example. According to James Rosenbaum, a professor of sociology from Northwestern University, women and children who move to the suburbs are more likely to prosper. Mothers usually find jobs, even if they have never worked before, and the children have a higher probability of finishing high school, and in turn, have a better chance of getting accepted to, and graduating from college (“Chicago’s Public Housing Projects”). This appears to support the theory of Environmental Determinism, which states that the way in which one turns out is determined by the environment that he or she is raised in. Evidently, Cabrini-Green offered little to those growing up and living there until now.

Cabrini-Green is a shining example of the wretched state of public housing in the City of Chicago. Although it started out as a friendly, racially mixed community, it quickly became a center of drug deals and crime. Thanks to racist and backward public policy during the 1950’s and 60’s, added to inherently flawed architecture, bad infrastructure and lack of maintenance, Cabrini-Green became known across the United States as the epitome of all that was wrong with public housing. Finally, in 1995, the federal government stepped in to save the Chicago Housing Authority, who was apparently asleep at the wheel. Only in the last few years have steps been taken in the right direction. Cabrini-Green is slowly transforming back into what it was intended to be… a racially mixed, affordable housing for the lower classes. If those in charge learn from the mistakes of the past, Cabrini-Green, along with other CHA projects can be transformed into decent, friendly and safe communities to live in. A lesson has been learned, and it should not be forgotten.

Works Cited

Chicago Housing Authority. Plan for Transformation, Year 3, Moving to Work, Annual Plan FY2002. 16 Oct. 2001.

“Chicago’s Public Housing Projects.” University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire. 15 Aug. 2000. <http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/articles/chprjcts.htm>

Krieger, Shoshana. The CHA and the American Dream. Columbia University, New York. 19 Nov. 2002. <http://www.columbia.edu/~sk652>

Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Reuters. “Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project to be reborn.” CNN.com. 15 Aug. 2000. <http:// www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/15/chicago.cabrini.reut>

Roder, David, and Spielman, Fran. “Condo, town houses planned near Cabrini-Green.” Chicago Sun Times. 30 May 2002.