Just moving on: after years of waiting and struggling to meet new requirements, thousands of CHA residents may not return to new mixed-income housing.

Born and raised in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development, Antoinette McCoy left her home at 4429 S. Federal St., Apt. 903, in 2002 shortly before it was balled and craned into a massive parcel of vacant land.

When she left, McCoy signed her name to a Chicago Housing Authority form saying she wanted to come back to a new unit in Legends South, Hansberry Square or Mahalia Place, the mixed-income developments slated to replace the Taylor Homes.

Like most other "relocatees," McCoy was given a housing choice voucher to find private housing. She cycled through a couple of apartments in Woodlawn before settling in South Shore.

According to the CHA, 88 percent of the thousands who've left its demolished high-rises also signed these forms for the "right to return" to mixed-income developments. In order to maintain that right, McCoy would have to be working or going to school full time, and her record of credit, utility, bills, bankruptcies and criminal activity, would have to remain just the way it was when she left Taylor-blemish free.

What McCoy would get in return for her patience is first crack at a new unit that might include oak flooring, gas fireplaces, designer lighting or closets with vinyl-clad shelves--amenities found in some other CHA mixed-income developments.

But nearly four years after leaving Taylor, McCoy says she can do without a designer lighting package and the gas fireplace. She's ready to move on. "I understand my name is on the list but I will decline it they call me. I'm not moving back down there," McCoy said from her apartment in South Shore where she has lived since last year.

McCoy might be just one of thousands of CHA residents who will not return to the mixed-income developments. In most of the new developments, CHA residents must meet a 30-hour-a-week work requirement. But employment was a source of income in fewer than 40 percent of CHA households on July 1, 2005, according to CHA documents. And many others, including some highly qualified residents, like McCoy, have grown tired of waiting for the units, said public housing advocates and residents.

CHA officials and some developers say residents are simply exercising their choice for private housing in ways they never anticipated. "When the CHA created the Plan for Transformation, they assumed families would want to return. Now we're learning that many families don't want to return because they're happy where they are," said Whitney Weller, who oversees the development of Legends South.

CHA Board Chair Sharon Gist Gilliam agreed. "Just like market-rate families, public housing residents make housing choices based on a wide variety of reasons including proximity to schools, churches, day care and other family members," she wrote in the CHA's 2006 annual plan.

"We have to get past the idea that everybody who lived on the reservation ought to come back to the reservation," Gilliam added in a phone interview with the Reporter. "They like and are satisfied with their housing. Their kids are going to school. They joined a church in their community. Why should they move back?"

But public housing advocates say it has less to do with residents being satisfied and more to do with the fact that residents have spent years waiting for the replacement housing. "What housing?" said Bill Wilen, a lawyer representing residents of the Henry Horner Homes. "It's not been built yet."

Meanwhile, residents have settled in their surroundings, changed their minds or grown wary of the redevelopment effort, advocates say.

The CHA's $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation calls for the rehab or reconstruction of 25,000 units of public housing for families and seniors. These 25,000 units represent the number of leaseholders that were living in CHA units at the time the plan was put in place. Approximately 9,438 units will be rehabbed in public housing developments for senior citizens, and another 9,343 apartments will be either reconstructed or rehabbed at existing family developments or scattered-site homes.

The remaining 6,219 CHA family units will be built in new mixed-income developments that will also include units for middle-class renters and homeowners. The CHA units in these developments serve as replacements for the high-rise units demolished at several developments across the city.

The mixed-income housing is how many Chicagoans understand the Plan for Transformation. It's a social mixture designed to reduce racial segregation and give public housing leaseholders access to the same network of schools, grocery stores and police security available in higher-income neighborhoods.

Since most relocated residents have moved into poor, racially segregated neighborhoods, critics say the plan's mission will be threatened if thousands of CHA families don't return to mixed-income housing.

A July 2004 report by the Metropolitan Planning Council found that most of the residents were relocated to five predominantly black South Side neighborhoods: South Shore, Englewood, Washington Park, West Englewood and Woodlawn. With the exception of South Shore, those neighborhoods all have poverty rates exceeding 30 percent and unemployment rates higher than 18 percent.

"Because of the difficult path that residents face in the private market, returning to the public housing rebuilt in mixed-income developments might be their best chance at living in a truly integrated community," Wilen wrote in a research paper on work requirements for the mixed-income developments.

While Gilliam said the CHA has all the funds committed for the replacement units, there are growing whispers that all of the replacement units may not be built because federal public housing funds have been dramatically cut in recent years. In addition, the pace of construction has been far slower than the CHA originally planned.

The CHA reported that 57 percent of the Plan for Transformation was complete by the end of 2005 but most of that work was rehabs of senior and scattered-site housing.

The Chicago Reporter has found that less than a third of the replacement family housing has been redeveloped as Inked-income housing. According to CHA reports and court documents, 1,963 replacement units have been built and occupied as of April 28, 2006, the most recent date for which data were available. That's far less than the 6,219 replacement units to be constructed by the end of 2009.

Between January 2001 and April 2006, replacement family units were constructed at a pace of less than 15 units per month. But developers would have to build units at more than seven times that pace--112 units per month--in order to reach the CHA's goal by the deadline. It's a pace which Terry Peterson, the CHA's chief executive officer, has acknowledged the agency can't meet.

The CHA's Minimum Tenant Selection Plan might have the greatest effect on a CHA resident's chances of returning to a mixed-income development.

CHA officials say the selection plan is a ladder out of public housing, while critics say it's a hurdle that keeps residents out of the new developments.

Adopted by the CHA in 2004, the selection plan is required at most of the mixed-income communities. According to the selection plan, developers have to screen out CHA households with delinquent utility bills, outstanding debts, prior bankruptcies in the past two years and any family members who don't pass a three-year criminal background check. Debts related to school or medical bills are exempt.

But it's the work requirement that chills advocates and most frustrates residents trying to get back in. All residents at least 18 years of age have to work 30 hours a week, or be enrolled flail time in a college or vocational program. "An arbitrary, one-size-fits-all, 30-hour work requirement without clear workforce development strategies and comprehensive resources to support work success is irresponsible," said Robert Wordlaw, executive director of the Chicago Jobs Council.

Just 3,610 of the CHA's 9,052 households, reported employment as a source of income as of July 1, 2005, according to the CHA.

The agency's 2006 annual report shows that about 70 percent of CHA residents earned less than $8,000 a year--lower than the $10,140 gross pay for someone working a 30-hour-a-week job at Illinois' minimum wage of $6.50 an hour.

But Gilliam said those large numbers of unemployed and underemployed are precisely why the CHA put the working requirement in place--to push residents into higher incomes and ultimately out of public housing altogether. "The requirement is to be working or enrolled in school or enrolled in job training program that leads to self-sufficiency. So it's not just working," Gilliam said. "The philosophy is that public housing or deeply subsidized housing was intended to be transitional--that you would not stay it in a lifetime. But it is not going to be transitional if you have no education, job skills or job."

Because of the difficulties meeting the work requirements and the years many have spent waiting on the new units, some are predicting that few of the residents will make it back to the mixed-income units. "If the CHA's screening criteria--especially the work requirements--remain unchallenged, advocates estimate that only 12 percent to 15 percent of the families ... will be allowed to return," wrote Wilen and Rajesh D. Nayak in a 2004 research paper published in the Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy.

As its name might imply, the Minimum Tenant Selection Plan is just the start of requirements for residents trying to make their way back. Each development has a tenant selection plan created from working groups comprised of developers, city planners, CHA resident leaders and local community groups.

Most of the additional requirements involve drug testing and checking for debt and bankruptcies outside the scope of the CHA's selection plan. The requirements vary at different sites.

CHA residents must pass drug tests at Jazz on the Boulevard, Lake Park Crescent and Oakwood Shores, replacements for former residents of the Ida B. Wells, Madden Park, Clarence Darrow and Lakefront Homes.

"Partially it was [what] public housing residents and community residents wanted. I was a little nervous, but I've been pleasantly surprised," said Lee Pratter, who oversees development for Oakwood Shores. "It has not been a deterrent."

There is no drug testing at Roosevelt Square, the development replacing the Addams-Brooks-Loomis-Abbott Homes, or ABLA, but tenants there can be screened out if they have more than $1,000 in past due bills.

For some CHA residents, massive utility bills are obstacles to the replacement units. "In Wells, nobody ever paid light or gas bills," said Kenneth Williams, a Wells resident working for the company redeveloping the site.

By day, by night and by weekend, Williams may find himself anywhere among several south suburban towns like Calumet City, Blue Island, Riverdale, and Dolton. His mission is to find former residents of Madden Park, Wells and Darrow and convince them to come back to the new mixed-income units at Oakwood Shores, located near the lake, between East Pershing Boulevard and South 35th Street.

Williams works for The Community Builders, the Oakwood Shores developer and the only nonprofit builder of a CHA mixed-income site. When the development is completed in 2009, it will have 900 units reserved for CHA families, according to the CHA.

Williams travels all over the area because he's looking for a narrow band of families who would meet the CHA's employment requirement and pass Oakwood Shore's drug tests and background checks. It's a slightly ironic line of work for Williams, as he is a Wells resident himself and has already passed on a unit offered to him at the new Oakwood Shores. "My name came up ... a little while ago," he said. "I didn't respond right away, so they gave it to somebody else. I didn't mind because I wasn't ready."

Dedicating a small team of employees like Williams to tracking, vetting and convincing residents to come back isn't just a special flourish of a nonprofit in the largely for-profit world of real estate development. The CHA requires it of all developers, and it represents the agency's commitment to make sure all forms of contact are exhausted before moving on to another family.

A former court-appointed monitor of the relocation process once criticized the CHA for trying too hard to contact residents, according to a July 2005 Chicago Sun-Times article. "How many times do we have to go back?" said Eileen Rhodes of Eastlake Management and Development Corp., which oversees development at West End, the replacement mixed-income development for Rockwell Gardens. "After a human being has told you, 'No, I don't want to move,' do you have to go back and ask them again, ask their children? Do you have to ask their dog?"

Williams, on the other hand, understands why it's necessary to keep making multiple points of contact with residents. He said many relocated CHA residents might be skeptical of returning after years of living in the private market. He added that many residents are scared they won't qualify and feel that the new communities won't be socially accepting of them. "Sometimes they don't even answer the door, but you can see them peek out through the windows at you," Williams said. "Usually, if you can get them to visit a unit, they're sold on it. But getting them there is the hard part."

Williams said he's working with a man who meets all the requirements, save for a full-time job. "I helped him find a job lead, but, truthfully, it's up to the individual," he said.

To get a unit at some mixed-income developments, it's not enough to work full-time and present a background clear of bankruptcies, debts and criminal activity. In some units financed by the federal government through low-income housing tax credits, CHA families must clear an income threshold that less than 7 percent of all CHA families make.

As of July 1, 2005, the most recent date for which data were available, there were 572 CHA households earning more than 50 percent of Chicago's median income. The vast majority--7,222 of the 9,052 households--earned less than 30 percent of the city's median income.

But, at Jazz on the Boulevard, half of the 30 available CHA units are reserved for families malting between 50 percent and 60 percent of the city's median income--between roughly $20,000 and $24,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 estimates for Chicago.

The problem has been more extreme at Lake Park Crescent, a mixed-income development replacing the former Lakefront Homes. Rebecca Terry, a senior vice president at Draper and Kramer, said that half of the CHA residents there must make between 50 percent and 80 percent of the city's median income.

The developer's efforts were further hampered by the fact that the first replacement units there weren't completed until several years after the Lakefront Homes were demolished.

"Lake Park Crescent had trouble because initially we were marketing only to the Lakefront [Homes] relocatees," Gilliam said. "Those people had gone on with their lives; found housing, often times with housing choice vouchers; settled into schools; and all the rest. They just weren't available to come back."

Like all other mixed-income developments, developers have to give priority to displaced CHA residents from demolished high-rises. Yet, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen granted Draper and Kramer the authority to seek families from other CHA developments and also to build their own list of families who had never lived in public housing at all.

The move to seek non-CHA families was opposed by the Central Advisory Council, a group made up of all the resident advisory council heads of each CHA development. "Why not modify the 50 to 80 median income ... to 30 to 40 percent?" asked Robert Whitfield, one of the council's attorneys. "[Aspen] saw no reason to change it ... but bypassing 20,000 [residents who don't meet the income requirement] is quite a change to me."

Richard Wheelock, an attorney representing CHA residents, said he's somewhat concerned the legal maneuver will set a precedent for other developers to seek residents who've never lived in public housing. Though the guidelines severely restrict the pool of eligible applicants, Gilliam said the agency has to abide by federal law on those units financed by federal low-income housing tax credits.

Things have been much different at the Henry Horner Homes on the West Side. In its staggered schedule of demolition, allowing residents to move directly from their old units to their new units, some say Horner is an example of what the Plan for Transformation could have been.

Nearly 75 percent of Horner families have returned to live in the rehabbed Horner Annex and new Westhaven Park mixed-income community. In all, more than 600 CHA families live in Westhaven, nearly a third of the total number of CHA families who've returned to any of the mixed-income developments.

In the early '90s, Horner families went to court, claiming that the dilapidated state of their buildings constituted de facto demolition, entitling them to immediate replacement housing. They won the case, and the first building of replacement units went up in 1996.

Wilen said that Horner should have served as a model. But the CHA pursued a dramatically different path for relocating residents and demolishing buildings in other developments. "Most of the [Horner] families were in the high-rises waiting for the buildings to be built. They could look out their windows and see the units being built," he said. "It's a difference of philosophy. We weren't interested in having families forced to leave Horner. The way to do that is to phase the demolition."

At Horner, there is no work requirement because of the consent decree. There is no minimum income requirement attached to any of the public housing units. The right-of-return is denied to convicted felons, and anyone who was evicted or voluntarily left after the signing of the consent decree.

The Horner model has its critics, including the advocate lawyers who sued the CHA on behalf of Horner residents. While building replacement housing next to existing public housing units makes relocation timely and humane for residents, the advocates say it also makes it difficult for residents of the new mixed-income housing to separate themselves from the crime that plagues existing CHA high-rises. "Neighborhood security is one of West Haven's most intractable problems. Failure to provide effective policing and to evict tenants who break the law or violate their leases are serious threats to realization of the West Haven mixed-income vision," according to the Web site for the Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, the group that brought the Horner case.

Recently, Peterson announced that the CHA may only finish 4,960 of the 6,200 public housing units originally promised. In light of this recent disclosure, Horner may not be an aberration of the Plan for Transformation but the only housing development where the CHA finishes building all it had promised to do.

Horner's high return rates showcase what's not working in the rest of the Plan for Transformation, said Janet Smith, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who's tracked data on housing choice voucher holders for years.

Smith says that, in many cases, relocated residents will have to wait five to eight years for the replacement housing to be built. "Five years--that's a child going through grade school. There's reasons why people don't move back," she said. "I really don't sense there will be a lot of people moving back."

THE NUMBERS

Crystal Ball

Each year since announcing the Plan for Transformation in 2000, the Chicago Housing Authority has altered its schedule to deliver more than 6,200 replacement units for displaced public housing residents. In its most recent annual plan, for fiscal year 2006, the CHA proposed to build 4,282 units during the final four years of the plan, more than five times the amount built during the previous four years.

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

Source: Chicago Housing Authority

Making Progress

At the end of 2005, the Chicago Housing Authority reported that it had rehabbed or rebuilt more than 14,000 of-its 25,000 units under the Plan for Transformation. However, most of that work was for rehabs of senior and scattered-site housing, not the more widely publicized development of mixed-income communities--the lifeblood of the plan.

PERCENT OF UNITS COMPLETED

MIXED INCOME     31.1%     1,937 of 6,219
SENIOR REHABS    93.2%     8,798 of 9,438
SCATTERED SITE    100%     2,543 of 2,543
FAMILY REHABS    15.2%     1,036 of 6,800
TOTAL            57.3%   14,314 of 25,000

Source: Chicago Housing Authority.

Note: Table made from bar graph.

From Low Income to Mixed Income

You know it as:

Commonly known as ABLA:

Jane Addams Homes, Robert H. Brooks

Homes, Loomis Courts and the Grace

Abbott Apartments

COMMUNITY AREA

Near West Side

HOW IT LOOKED IN OCTOBER 1999

3,235 units; 1,079 occupied

HOW IT LOOKED IN JULY 2005

1,181 units; 717 occupied

Now it's called:

Roosevelt Square

DEVELOPER

LR Development

CHA UNITS BUILT BY APRIL 2006

454

HOW IT'LL LOOK BY THE END OF 2009

1,467 CHA units; 845 affordable and 966 market rate

You know it as:

Robert Taylor Homes

COMMUNITY AREA

Grand Boulevard and Washington Park

HOW IT LOOKED IN OCTOBER 1999

3,784 units; 1,559 occupied

HOW IT LOOKED IN JULY 2005

314 units; 120 occupied

Now it's called:

Legends South and The Quincy

DEVELOPERS

Brinshore Development L.L.C. and Michaels Development Co.

CHA UNITS BUILT BYAPRIL 2006

110

HOW IT'LL LOOK BY THE END OF 2009

851 CHA units; 1,537 affordable and market rate

You know it as:

Henry Horner Homes

COMMUNITY AREA

Near West Side

HOW IT LOOKED IN OCTOBER 1999

1,743 units; 682 occupied

HOW IT LOOKED IN JULY 2005

587 units; 274 occupied

Now it's called:

Westhaven Village and Westhaven Park

DEVELOPERS

Brinshore Development L.L.C. and Michaels Development Co.

CHA UNITS BUILT BY APRIL 2006

640

HOW IT'LL LOOK BY THE END OF 2009

824 CHA units; 132 affordable and 361 market rate.

Sources: Chicago Housing Authority; The Habitat Co.; analyzed by The Chicago Reporter