CHA Back in Charge

After 23 years, the Chicago housing authority is no longer in receivership. The court-ordered receivership had placed administrative duties in the hands of a private company, Habitat Co. Now U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen has determined that CHA has sufficiently addressed desegregation issues and is no longer out of compliance with the landmark Gautreaux case, which required all new public housing construction in Chicago to be outside of predominantly African-American low-income neighborhoods. The ACLU, which filed the original 1987 lawsuit that landed the CHA in receivership, has indicated that it is satisfied with the progress made since Habitat took over. In 1999, Mayor Richard Daley, as part of a complex and controversial proposal for transforming Chicago’s public housing, outlined a plan to rehabilitate 25,000 units. That plan, according to CHA, is roughly 70 percent complete, with hundreds of blighted buildings demolished and nearly 18,000 units rehabilitated or redeveloped.