In the aughts, it was possible to observe the past and future of U.S. public housing policy on the same Chicago block. After decades of deferred maintenance, lawsuits, and even a federal takeover, the portfolio of properties owned and operated by the Chicago Housing Authority was undergoing the nation's largest public housing rehabilitation, demolition, and reconstruction project. [...]
I've been photographing the transformation since I moved to Chicago's south side from Columbus, Ohio, in 2002. When I started this series, many south-side public housing projects like the Robert Taylor Homes, the largest of the projects along State Street, were shadows of what they once were. I spent time in and around south-side developments like Stateway Gardens, the Ida B. Wells Homes, and Randolph Towers, as well as pockets of the north side's Cabrini-Green development that felt like a community until nearly the end. [...]
As a photographer and sociologist, I emphasize the built environment as a key factor in—but also as a symbol of—the transformation of residents' lives. I hope that focusing on this earlier period of fundamental physical changes makes the intensity of the conversion clear. The images in this set show not only the stages of the shift to mixed-income developments, but also the complexity of the changes. After all, 17 years after the launch of the Plan for Transformation, the CHA is transforming the plan itself, increasing the services it provides while still continuing to work on the goal of moving public housing residents into mixed-income communities. At present, of the 16,846 households included in the Plan for Transformation, only 7.81 percent live in mixed-income residences. Instead, there's an array of housing situations for most of the public housing residents who lived in traditional CHA developments.
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