The Near North Side development was completed in 1962, and once had 15,000 residents. But conditions deteriorated, crime and violence grew, and the CHA itself called Cabrini-Green and some other developments notorious.
So the city demolished CHA high-rises, some with huge implosions. It's part of the plan for transformation for the nation's third largest housing authority. Chicago drafted it with approval of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The plan began in 2000 and is considered the nation's largest, most ambitious effort to redevelop public housing.
In addition to knocking down all the high rises, the plan calls for renovating or building 25,000 housing units. The CHA says it now has 86,00 family housing units, and 9,200 senior citizen apartments. It also oversees almost 37,000 housing choice vouchers that let low-income families rent privately-owned units.
How's the plan going? And what happens to the CHA residents whose homes are demolished? We'll ask the authority's chief executive officer, Lewis Jordan, who once lived in the CHA's Rockwell Gardens, on this edition of NewsViews.
