All Articles Tagged "chicago housing authority"
New CHA Chief to ‘Think Outside the Box’ in Transforming Public Housing
(Chicago Sun Times) — The public housing chief in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday made the giant leap to Chicago with a promise to “think outside the box” and provide more support services for displaced CHA residents. Charles Woodyard, 53, will need creative and unconventional thinking to succeed in his new, $216,000-a-year job as head of the Chicago Housing Authority. The $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation that tore down CHA high-rises and replaced them with mixed income communities has fallen five years behind schedule because of the collapse of the real estate market. “Given the bare reality of this real estate market, … we will be outside of the box thinkers on this. We will use our current assets to see how we can turn those into savings, into real housing opportunities for low-income families,” Woodyard told a news conference at a mixed-income complex built in the shadows of Cabrini Green.
Emanuel Expected to Name New CHA Head Thursday
(Chicago Tribune) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday is expected to name an outsider from Charlotte, N.C., to head the Chicago Housing Authority, according to a top City Hall source. Charles Woodyard, who has been CEO of the Charlotte Housing Authority since 2002, was chosen after a national search. Emanuel sought a fresh perspective at the agency and looked for a candidate who knows how to manage complex real estate transactions and property in an urban environment.
CHA Applied First-Strike Eviction Policy Broadly, Analysis Shows
(Chicago News Cooperative) — Nothing could have prepared Jessica Moore for the morning 19 Chicago police officers rushed her front door around 8 o’clock. According to police reports, they found $48 of marijuana in her son Devonte’s room and a $12 dime bag in her boyfriend’s pocket. Police arrested her boyfriend, but not her son. Years in the Cabrini-Green public housing project had taught Moore what to expect next. A few days after the September 2009 bust, the Chicago Housing Authority notified her that her lease would be terminated. Moore, 39, is one of hundreds of low-income residents the housing authority has taken to eviction court since 2005 for violating the agency’s one-strike policy. If residents get one strike — exactly what that means — the C.H.A. can try to evict them. The rule is part of federal guidelines created in 1996 to make public housing safer.
Chicago Housing Authority to Use Struggling Economy to Its Advantage as It Awaits New CEO
(Chicago Tribune) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel is down to two candidates for the top post at the Chicago Housing Authority, a job whose chief concern will be dealing with a stubbornly anemic real estate market that has hampered efforts to create vibrant mixed-income developments where crime-ridden high-rises once stood. Those developments are the linchpin in the CHA’s $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation, launched in 1999 and now expected to be completed by 2015, five years past the original target date. Getting the ambitious effort back on track has been tough amid the sluggish economy, even while the Plan for Transformation continues to impact huge swaths of the city — including the tens of thousands of public housing residents who were moved out of the demolished towers and offered a path out of chronic poverty.
CHA Chief Resigns Amid Questionable Use of Credit Card
(Chicago Sun Times) — Facing mounting controversy over questionable charges to his government credit card as well as over proposed drug testing of residents, Chicago Housing Authority CEO Lewis Jordan resigned Tuesday. “Over the past two weeks, questions about the propriety of credit card use have overshadowed the good and important work of CHA,’’ Jordan said in a statement announcing his departure at month’s end. “The charges in question amount to approximately $15,000 over three years, were not used for any personal expenditures, and were consistent with CHA and HUD policies and practices.’’ However, he said the questions have “become an impediment to my ability to steer this $1 billion a year organization through the important work it does.”
Residents Balk at CHA Plans for Tenant Drug Testing
(Chicago Defender) — Hundreds of Chicago Housing Authority residents displeased with the notion of being forcibly drug tested and facing eviction if family members of tenants are accused of a crime, vented their anger and frustration over the proposed changes in housing policy. Standing in the middle of a crowded assembly hall June 2 at the Charles A. Hayes Family Investment Center, 4859 S. Wabash Ave., Princeton Village resident Shak Levi told a panel of CHA representatives that requiring tenants to undergo drug tests was a direct violation of 4th Amendment protection from unreasonable search as seizure. “The Supreme Court has held that suspicion less drug testing by the government is an unreasonable search violation,” Levi read from a prepared statement that he only had an allotted time of two minutes to read. “Just because the government has a stereotypical view or assumes a person more than likely will do drugs if they move inside public housing and possibly commit a crime does not pass constitutional mustard of not being suspect.”
