Housing development residents in uproar over 'sneak attack'
By Cinque L. Muhammad
Staff Writer
Updated Jun 27, 2003, 6:56 am

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com)--"The top officials of CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) came in with the police department
and told everybody to get out of the offices and get off the premises, while they moved in and started destroying
documents and taking over everything," said Marvin Edwards, resident manager of the William Green Homes high-rise
complex, one of the remaining buildings of the Cabrini Green public housing development.

In an unprecedented and highly controversial June 9 move, shortly after 6 a.m., nearly 20 police officers helped CHA
officials raid the offices of two resident management companies (RMC) at Cabrini Green. The management teams and
crew of 1230 N. Burling and William Green Homes were immediately fired, as locks were changed and a private
management company, Atlanta-based H.J. Russell, was quickly installed to replace them.

No notice or warning was given to the management companies from CHA regarding this decision.

CHA’s chief of operations, Duwain Bailey, who was on hand for the takeover, said that no violence took place.

"We’re doing this because services need to be improved for the residents and that’s all this is about," Mr. Bailey said
during a news conference that morning, citing a list of alleged infractions by the RMCs.

He said they have let buildings become unspeakably filthy and in a state of disrepair, allowed squatters to occupy vacant
units, and been lax in their enforcement of the 1996 one-strike rule that allows the eviction of whole families if (anywhere
in the country) a family member is charged with possession of drugs or weapons.

"We wouldn’t have done it this way, but because we’d given them a direction and they wouldn’t do it [before], I had no
reason to believe they would do it today," Mr. Bailey concluded.

In a tandem display, CHA’s CEO Terry Peterson showed pictures of piles of garbage and other debris that he said were
taken inside the management office at the Burling complex.

"Our residents deserve to live in safe, clean and well-managed buildings," he said.

Mr. Edwards maintains that these claims are totally untrue. He said the CHA brought in a "bunch of inexperienced
individuals" to try and put a "quick-fix solution to something."

Resident Timothy McNeal found trashcans outside the buildings at 6:30 p.m. June 9 filled with important documents,
including $6,000 worth of un-cashed money orders and discarded computers. "I saw the new management bringing bags
out, putting them in the garbage. In these bags, I found rent receipts, money orders, blank checks, payroll records, leases
with people’s social security numbers," he said. "They didn’t give anyone time to come in and get the important stuff out
of the office."

Tactics like this, tenants say, would make it impossible for the RMCs to prove that there was no misappropriation of funds
and shows that H.J. Russell doesn’t have the residents’ best interest in mind.

Residents are upset and alarmed, fearing that they will be next to be removed and displaced in the closing stages of CHA’s
10-year Housing Transformation Plan to tear down all of its gallery-style high-rises in order to make way for what it calls
"mixed-income communities." Cabrini’s public housing developments will have to come down eventually, regardless of
citizen opposition.

Reports from The Resident’s Journal newspaper read that 374 (the majority) of public housing families relocated in 2002
were moved, courtesy of the Housing Choice (Section 8) Voucher, into private market housing in predominately Black
areas that have a high concentration of poverty.

Furthermore, reports state that seven percent of families went unaccounted for, usually ending up homeless, and
"twenty-six lease holders were evicted, disappeared or died." Another report from this publication states that some
residents moved into CHA temporary replacement units that were in "deplorable" conditions and HUD (Housing and
Urban Development) Secretary Mel Martinez has accused public housing authorities of failing to create new
"mixed-income" housing communities in a timely fashion.

Residents who marched through the streets of Cabrini Green on June 10 consider the CHA’s moves as a "massive land
grab at the expense of the poor" that’s not just in Cabrini, but all over the city.

Chanting "Fight or be homeless," protester Deirdre Matthews of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing explained that
Chicagoans who don’t earn $70,000 per year or more are in serious jeopardy with regards to the housing market, adding
that there are 153,000 homeless citizens in the city on any given night.

Residents have been managing the Cabrini buildings for 10 years and, according to tenants, they were doing a good
enough job. A resident who identified herself only as Jackie said workers kept the buildings clean and the elevators
working.

"My sink has been flooding since (the resident managers left). My kitchen light is gone and I don’t have a maintenance
person to come fix it, because they fired everybody and didn’t replace them," she pleaded.

Many at the rally echoed remarks that, because the surrounding high-priced properties aren’t selling, the Cabrini RMCs
are being removed to lay the groundwork to get the residents out of the way of the city’s development.

While the RMCs strive to practice humane policies to keep a roof over residents’ heads, private management companies
can be expected to do the unchallenged bidding of CHA, whose track record is not favorable, residents argue.

"Cabrini is the only place in the country that’s comprised of all RMCs," noted Charles Price of Cabrini Rowhouse
Management. "So if you come in and take Cabrini’s RMCs, then how safe are the rest?"

CHA spokesperson Derrick Hill reassured The Final Call that H.J. Russell would serve the residents and "do a better job
than the former management teams."

A former public housing resident, Mr. Hill said, "We’re going to do right by the people."

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