In February 2000, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Plan for Transformation. Touted as a comprehensive “blueprint for positive change,” the three-pronged plan is supposed to renew the CHA’s physical properties, promote self-sufficiency for public housing residents and reform the CHA administration.
An article in today’s Chicago Tribune, however, suggests the plan has yet to materialize at the Harold Ickes Homes on the Near South Side. Sara Olkon, a Tribune staff reporter, writes that despite the city’s grand new plan, “the Ickes” is a “throwback to the kind of public housing that made Chicago notorious.” Moreover, the city has yet to decide whether or not to rehab the building or demolish it. Stuck in limbo, critics say conditions at the building have deteriorated into lawlessness.
