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Elizabeth Brackett reports on how Chicago is reevaluating public housing.

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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The wrecking ball slammed into the 16-story high rise in the bright morning sun in Chicago, a building in Robert Taylor Homes, part of the four-mile stretch of the most densely concentrated public housing in the nation was coming down. All around the country the massive, often roach-infested, graffiti-covered buildings are being knocked down, or in some cases blown up, a testament to what many are calling a public housing policy that has failed. Congressman Danny Davis.

REP. DANNY DAVIS, (D) Illinois: It has not been successful, and thank God, we're at a point where people finally realize that it has not been successful, and we're seeing the demolition of buildings like this one and efforts to de-densify areas where people have been too heavily concentrated.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mattie McCoy moved into Robert Taylor Homes when it was built in the early 60's. She says then it was a decent place to live.

MATTIE McCOY, Robert Taylor Resident: It was nice. It was real nice. It wasn't a whole lot of noise out. Kids--me, myself, we had a curfew. You wasn't allowed on the ground after 9 o'clock. You could--if a person was called to the office at least three times, they would let them know that they had to evict or something of that nature.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But as federal funds for maintenance and renovation were cut, the buildings deteriorated. Finally, in 1995, the Department of Housing & Urban Renewal took over the troubled Chicago Housing Authority, but McCoy says even that didn't stop the decline.

MATTIE McCOY: There was a lot of neglect on the Housing part. People got to the place they just didn't care about what it looked like or whatever, and it's basically on the neglect side.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: There has been so much dissatisfaction that legislation just passed by the House repealed the landmark 1937 Depression era housing law. The new Republican-authored bill revamped housing legislation for nearly 6 million poor Americans. The bill opens public housing to tenants with more moderate incomes and requires unemployed tenants to do volunteer work. There are no funds for new units of public housing, except to replace some units that are being demolished. Whenever public housing goes down, residents worry about what will replace it. The proposed law does not require a one-form replacement of units, but it does promote more cooperation between the public and private sector to develop mixed income housing. Chicago has been in the forefront of developing mixed income housing. Two of the flats on this block belong to the Chicago Housing Authority. Yet, they are virtually indistinguishable from private housing. The HUD administrator, Edwin Eisendrath, says developments like these are changing the face of public housing in Chicago and elsewhere.

EDWIN EISENDRATH, HUD Midwest Representative: You know, it'll take a while, but we're offering opportunities for many, many people to move. We've already moved, not just at Robert Taylor, but at CHA over a thousand families this year. We're trying to move towards a day when we can--in partnership with the private sector--provide housing opportunities in viable neighborhoods throughout the country. The notion of sort of stand alone, separate, as separate as this I think should be a thing of the past, and both the administration bill and the House and the Senate bill all share that.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But there is little agreement over what the income mix should be in either scattered site or traditional public housing. Under the House bill more than 65 percent of families in public housing could have incomes up to almost $35,000 a year. HUD says this would knock out the poorest of the poor from public housing. HUD has proposed that almost 90 percent of the families living in public housing should be poor or working poor families with incomes below $13,000 a year.

ERNEST GATES, Community Development Corporation: A scattered site won't be successful until you deal with the human social development side of the people that will ultimately have to inhabit these units.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Ernest Gates's Community Development Corporation developed this mixed income scattered site housing on Chicago's tough West side. Gates has the contract to build 70 units altogether--half for the working poor and half for the very poor. All of the second group must come from public housing that is being demolished. And Gates says that can mean problems.

ERNEST GATES: If they bring the old problems into new units, you haven't begun to address the problem. The problem is not the housing; it's the people in the housing, and the conditions that they've been forced to live under for any number of years. If you have enough bad actors involved, then the working class and the decent people will leave.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Even though Dalphine Allen-Jasper is thrilled with her unit in the new mixed income development, she is concerned about her downstairs neighbors.

DALPHINE ALLEN-JASPER, Mixed Income Resident: Some of the residents that's comin' into this transition, they're not ready for it. I think they need to be trained in some areas because some of them, the mentality that they have is they can play their music at 1:30 at night; they don't have to respect their neighbors; they're used to throwing garbage in the front yard--lawn, but it's a habit. And, with anything, it takes time to train them to change those habits and to learn to respect each other.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: (talking to Gates as they enter unit) This is nice.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Gates is so upset about what has happened to several new units he has told the Chicago Housing Authority he will not turn any more units over to them. Gates is accusing the CHA of failing to properly screen tenants or provide funding for tenant training programs.

ERNEST GATES: Well, we've had an instance where a resident has moved into a new unit just like this and in two weeks' time it was completely trashed; the unit had to be practically totally redone. We had a tenant that moved in that drove nails into the new oak cabinets to hang her clothes over the stove, over an open burner to try ‘em. So, I mean, there have been enough instances where it's time to kind of back up and take a look at the people that are moving into the units, so that's the basis for our non-compliance, if you will.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Eisendrath denies the charge that units have been damaged. He says the CHA does have a screening and training program and says mixed income housing is working well.

EDWIN EISENDRATH: There haven't really been problems with folks living together. There were a couple of instances where people we moved in--have subsequently, we've taken eviction actions.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: There are public housing residents who don't want any part of mixed income housing, no matter what the mix. These are residents who want to stay right where they are. Cora Moore is president of the tenant council at the Cabrini Green Housing Development. Moore has watched buildings come down at Cabrini Green, but she doesn't want to leave the place she has called home for the past 30 years.

CORA MORE, Cabrini Green Resident: We still want to live here because our kids grown up--three sets of families--you know--and you feel more comfortable. If you move into another area and they find out you're from Cabrini, you're not going to live comfortable there.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: And Moore doesn't like another controversial proposal in the House Reform Bill--the requirement that all public housing residents perform eight hours of volunteer work every month.

CORA MOORE: Firstly because they in public housing have to have all the stigma on them where they have to volunteer and if they don't, they will be evicted, you know. This is all residents do anyway--volunteer. You know, it should be a job in there.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Anger about the housing bill passed in the House and the fear of being moved brought out hundreds of demonstrators in Chicago. Later this summer many here will join thousands of other public housing residents from across the country for a Washington, D.C., protest against the House bill. The Senate will take up its own version of the bill later this year.

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