Mixing it Up: Public Housing Redevelopment in Chicago

The current trend in US public housing redevelopment is to replace existing high-rise, high density 'projects' with new lower density, mixed-income communities. The underlying assumption is that mixing together market rate and public housing units will result in social interaction of low-income and middle-income families, which in turn is to provide greater opportunities and reduce social isolation of the poor. While there is little empirical evidence that this will actually occur public housing authorities are making and implementing plans to transform existing developments into lower density, higher quality housing that can attract higher income families to both rent and purchase. As cities press forward with their plans, a key concern is getting the right blend of low, middle and high-income households. Federal policy does not mandate the mix, leaving this to the discretion of local actors involved in the redevelopment process, including local government, public housing authorities, planning consultants, for-profit developers, and to a lessor degree, public housing tenants and community residents. A challenge nationwide is how to balance the needs of public housing residents and the market interests of developers when determining this mix. The evidence to date in Chicago suggests that the proportion of permanent housing for very low-income renters is going to decrease. While some simply attribute this outcome to the Mayor’s ‘growth machine’ approach to transformation (i.e. decrease the number of units to satisfy landowners wanting to protect property values and government wanting to increase tax base), these power relations are only a partial factor in shaping the mix. Even more constraining, however, is new national law that encourages higher numbers of market rate units by giving more control to private sector investors. The argument made here is that even when given more opportunity to participate in the planning process, public housing tenants cannot control the outcome because the mix is effectively pre-determined by national policy requirements. Using a redevelopment site in Chicago as an example, this paper examines how strategies used to ‘up the number’ of public housing in the mix can be institutionalized in order to give tenants more opportunity to control the outcome of the planning process. Three interrelated components are proposed for the plan. First, outcomes for redevelopment need to be driven by residents of public housing rather than by returns to investment. Second, the scale and scope of transformation must expand beyond the public housing site to produce these outcomes. Third, strategies to limit land speculation must be used to keep public housing in the public domain. All three fit into a community-based approach to redevelopment that aims to give residents real power.