Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Project

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Recommended: American dream and urban-suburban life

Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green. In 1942, a public housing development went up on Chicago’s near north side to house veterans returning from World War II. They were known as the Francis Cabrini Homes, and “were built in an area that had undergone massive slum clearance”. They consisted of fifty-five two and three story redbrick buildings arranged as row houses, resembling army barracks. The Francis Cabrini Homes housed 600 racially diverse families un... ... middle of paper ... ...live in. A lesson has been learned, and it should not be forgotten. Works Cited Chicago Housing Authority. Plan for Transformation, Year 3, Moving to Work, Annual Plan FY2002. 16 Oct. 2001. “Chicago’s Public Housing Projects.” University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire. 15 Aug. 2000. Krieger, Shoshana. The CHA and the American Dream. Columbia University, New York. 19 Nov. 2002. Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Reuters. “Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project to be reborn.” CNN.com. 15 Aug. 2000. Roder, David, and Spielman, Fran. “Condo, town houses planned near Cabrini-Green.” Chicago Sun Times. 30 May 2002.

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