(Washington Post) — A federal audit has questioned more than $10 million in spending by the District’s housing agency, prompting the return of $1.6 million of Housing and Urban Development grant funds. In a report released Dec. 23 after examining the city’s financing of a long-delayed affordable housing project, its use of federal funds for […]
(Wall Street Journal) — Annie Ricks and seven of her children moved into the notorious Cabrini-Green Housing Project in 1990 and found things even worse than she feared. “Gunshots all over the place,” she said. “Fights, noise.” Thursday morning, she is scheduled to be the last of 15,000 residents to move out, marking the end […]
Some public housing residents may not be able to light up anymore. Is that fair?
(Washington Post) — For decades, Chicago’s Cabrini-Green high-rises – with their fenced-in balconies and horrific high-profile crimes – were a symbol of the failure of public housing in the United States. Their closure this month marks the end of an ugly era. The Cabrini high-rises were, to some, towering testaments to how Chicago public housing […]
(City Journal) — No one can doubt that the 1996 reform of public assistance really did “end welfare as we know it,” as President Clinton said—reducing the welfare rolls from more than 5 million to fewer than 2 million households. Its signature five-year time limit on assistance drew millions of the poor back into the […]
(New York Times) — Public housing is falling apart around the country, as federal money has been unable to keep up with the repair needs of buildings more than half a century old. Over the last 15 years, 150,000 of the nation’s public housing units have been lost, officials said, as agencies have sold or […]
(Chicago Sun Times) — It almost seems forlorn in the surrounding emptiness, a 15-story hulk of concrete with telltale, steel-fenced, open-air galleries characteristic of old public housing. This is 1230 Burling — the last Cabrini-Green high-rise standing. “Cabrini, down, but not out. “It’s not just a building. It’s not a place. It’s a feeling. “Now that’s […]