70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green puts a human face on public housing
I've written about Cabrini-Green many times before. Until the early 2000s, it was one of Chicago's most infamous public housing developments - in no small part because it was located close to the Gold Coast, one the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.
Over the past 15 years, the Chicago Housing Authority has slowly but surely demolished most of the buildings and replaced it with mixed-income communities. The theory - which I've always been dubious about - was that large concentrations of low-income housing breed crime, violence and drugs. By moving public housing residents into a mixed-income community, where they would live side-by-side with regular renters and more well-off home owners, they would be able to take advantage of amenities public housing developments lacked, build connections that would otherwise be impossible and generally be in a better position to improve their lives.
In 2009, Division Street served sa a dividing line between the new mixed income comunities and WIlliam Green Extension public housing
I spent a lot of digital ink on the issue in a mega-post I wrote four years ago, and I don't want to repeat all of that here. I will say that the biggest thing - but far from the only thing - that bugged me throughout the entire process is that, if you look at simple mathematics of units being demolished vs units being built, there was simply no way that everybody who lived in Cabrini-Green back in 1999 could return. Most residents simply got Section 8 housing vouchers, which, in theory, entitled former Cabrini-Green residents to discounted housing anywhere in the city. But because landlords can refuse to accept Section 8 vouchers, there are entire sections of Chicago that are essentially off-limits to them. And, in many cases, the buildings where the vouchers are accepted aren't much better than the deteriorating high-rises they left behind.
70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green, a documentary by Ronit Bezalel, originally screened at Gene Siskel Center Film during the Black Harvest Festival, the annual showcase of African-American film-making. I wasn't able to make it due to work commitments, but I knew that something like this documentary is bound to draw crowds, and anything that draws crowds is going to get more screenings further down the line.
I underestimated just how popular it would actually be. When my mom and I went to see What Our Fathers Did, the Friday screening was sold out. I bought a ticket for a Sunday 3:00 PM screening right then and there, which turned out to be a wise move, because by the time I actually arrived at Siskel Center earlier today, the show was sold out. And the ticket line for the 5:00 PM screening went almost down to the stairs, while the line to get into the screening room went all the way back into Siskel Center's reception area. I haven't seen anything like this since another breakout Black Harvest success - The Interrupters.
The documentary itself didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. And, between the photo trips, the research I did, the few times I went in as a reporter for the Skyline, I knew quite a bit. Enough to know that, for example, the history of housing segregation of Chicago presented there was very simplified and compressed. Or that, contrary to what the movie said, we know what residents of Little Sicily (the neighborhood that was demolished to make way for what would eventually become Cabrini-Green) didn't vanish without a trace. They ended up the western edge of West Town community area, in Galewood and Edison Park and in near west suburbs like Cicero and Berwyn. I interviewed a few of them.
But that is, all things considered, a minor quibble. Even if "70 Acres" didn't touch on too much new ground for me, it wound up explaining the issues involved from a very stark, very human perspective. I particularly liked the way it wound up touching in the tensions between public housing residents and middle-class condo dwellers who moved in. How, even if the later weren't racist, and even though some of them tried to reach out, they still harbored under preconceptions of what public housing residents were like. It's more subtle than just saying "oh, I hate black people," and unfortunately, I've found that no one is completely immune to it. It's something that's not always easy to articulate, but "70 acres" pulls it off beautifully.
If a mixed-income community was ever going to truly become a community, everyone involved must be willing to extend a certain amount of trust. They must be willing to work through inevitable cultural misunderstandings and try to accommodate each others' needs. "70 acres" shows some attempts to break the gap, but they are small and paltry. Doing something more involved isn't easy, but it's better than what has been going on for the past few years.
It touches on many other issues that have cropped up over the past 15 years. The fact that public housing residents who want to live in mixed-income community face tougher rules and restrictions than the condo owners or renters, and some of the unintended consequences of those rules (for example, while one can understand tougher background checks, the draconian ban on anyone with criminal record locks out people who got into a fight once). It touched on how important the community connections were to the Cabrini-Green residents, and the consequences of splitting it apart. It also briefly touches on something that I wish would have been explored in more detail - about how CHA and the city made promises, broke them, made different promises and then acted surprised when public housing residents didn't trust them.
Like I said - I've written about those things before, and I will probably continue writing about them for years and years to come. But reading something written by a third-party is one thing. Seeing the past 15 years of the transformation of Cabrini-Green through the eyes of people who were in the midst of it all - that's something else entirely. That is something that 70 Acres in Chicago accomplishes brilliantly.
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70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green will be screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Wednesday, November 18 at 6:00 PM and Thursday, November 19 at 8:15 PM. For information about future screenings, check out the documentary's website.
Over the past 15 years, the Chicago Housing Authority has slowly but surely demolished most of the buildings and replaced it with mixed-income communities. The theory - which I've always been dubious about - was that large concentrations of low-income housing breed crime, violence and drugs. By moving public housing residents into a mixed-income community, where they would live side-by-side with regular renters and more well-off home owners, they would be able to take advantage of amenities public housing developments lacked, build connections that would otherwise be impossible and generally be in a better position to improve their lives.
In 2009, Division Street served sa a dividing line between the new mixed income comunities and WIlliam Green Extension public housing
I spent a lot of digital ink on the issue in a mega-post I wrote four years ago, and I don't want to repeat all of that here. I will say that the biggest thing - but far from the only thing - that bugged me throughout the entire process is that, if you look at simple mathematics of units being demolished vs units being built, there was simply no way that everybody who lived in Cabrini-Green back in 1999 could return. Most residents simply got Section 8 housing vouchers, which, in theory, entitled former Cabrini-Green residents to discounted housing anywhere in the city. But because landlords can refuse to accept Section 8 vouchers, there are entire sections of Chicago that are essentially off-limits to them. And, in many cases, the buildings where the vouchers are accepted aren't much better than the deteriorating high-rises they left behind.
70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green, a documentary by Ronit Bezalel, originally screened at Gene Siskel Center Film during the Black Harvest Festival, the annual showcase of African-American film-making. I wasn't able to make it due to work commitments, but I knew that something like this documentary is bound to draw crowds, and anything that draws crowds is going to get more screenings further down the line.
I underestimated just how popular it would actually be. When my mom and I went to see What Our Fathers Did, the Friday screening was sold out. I bought a ticket for a Sunday 3:00 PM screening right then and there, which turned out to be a wise move, because by the time I actually arrived at Siskel Center earlier today, the show was sold out. And the ticket line for the 5:00 PM screening went almost down to the stairs, while the line to get into the screening room went all the way back into Siskel Center's reception area. I haven't seen anything like this since another breakout Black Harvest success - The Interrupters.
The documentary itself didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. And, between the photo trips, the research I did, the few times I went in as a reporter for the Skyline, I knew quite a bit. Enough to know that, for example, the history of housing segregation of Chicago presented there was very simplified and compressed. Or that, contrary to what the movie said, we know what residents of Little Sicily (the neighborhood that was demolished to make way for what would eventually become Cabrini-Green) didn't vanish without a trace. They ended up the western edge of West Town community area, in Galewood and Edison Park and in near west suburbs like Cicero and Berwyn. I interviewed a few of them.
But that is, all things considered, a minor quibble. Even if "70 Acres" didn't touch on too much new ground for me, it wound up explaining the issues involved from a very stark, very human perspective. I particularly liked the way it wound up touching in the tensions between public housing residents and middle-class condo dwellers who moved in. How, even if the later weren't racist, and even though some of them tried to reach out, they still harbored under preconceptions of what public housing residents were like. It's more subtle than just saying "oh, I hate black people," and unfortunately, I've found that no one is completely immune to it. It's something that's not always easy to articulate, but "70 acres" pulls it off beautifully.
If a mixed-income community was ever going to truly become a community, everyone involved must be willing to extend a certain amount of trust. They must be willing to work through inevitable cultural misunderstandings and try to accommodate each others' needs. "70 acres" shows some attempts to break the gap, but they are small and paltry. Doing something more involved isn't easy, but it's better than what has been going on for the past few years.
It touches on many other issues that have cropped up over the past 15 years. The fact that public housing residents who want to live in mixed-income community face tougher rules and restrictions than the condo owners or renters, and some of the unintended consequences of those rules (for example, while one can understand tougher background checks, the draconian ban on anyone with criminal record locks out people who got into a fight once). It touched on how important the community connections were to the Cabrini-Green residents, and the consequences of splitting it apart. It also briefly touches on something that I wish would have been explored in more detail - about how CHA and the city made promises, broke them, made different promises and then acted surprised when public housing residents didn't trust them.
Like I said - I've written about those things before, and I will probably continue writing about them for years and years to come. But reading something written by a third-party is one thing. Seeing the past 15 years of the transformation of Cabrini-Green through the eyes of people who were in the midst of it all - that's something else entirely. That is something that 70 Acres in Chicago accomplishes brilliantly.
Click to view------------
70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green will be screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Wednesday, November 18 at 6:00 PM and Thursday, November 19 at 8:15 PM. For information about future screenings, check out the documentary's website.