After the Demolition: Where Did Public Housing Residents Go?

Over the last decade, officials all over the country have torn down public housing with promises of better neighborhoods to come. This week, we're exploring whether those promises were kept in our series "After the Demolition." Read other posts here, here, here and here.

Almost 10 years ago, Gwendolyn and her two young sons lived in one of the Ida B. Wells high-rises in Chicago. It wasn't perfect, but it was home.

"I like [my] apartment, the fact that it's up on the 11th [floor]. What I don't like about the  apartment is that they won't come up and fix things the way they should ... like the plumbing, the electricity, and the wiring in the walls. It's all like falling apart .... Sometimes the tub backs up and the toilet stops up," she said at the time.

Her home wasn't going to be around much longer. That year, city officials decided that the high-rises that were home to thousands of residents would be razed. It was time to re-think what public housing would look like in Chicago. Since then, all over the country, officials have torn down public housing with promises of a better neighborhood to come, but it's hard to tell if those promises have been kept.

Ten years later, how have these residents fared? Are they any better off? This week, we'll try to find out in our series, "After the Demolition." Using landmark studies from the Urban Institute, we'll follow residents from one public housing neighborhood over 10 years. We'll see where they've gone and what they've experienced.

Named for journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, the Wells homes were built in 1941 as housing for the African-American working class. But by the time it was fully demolished in 2008, the complex had become a haven for disorder and crime. A whopping 72 percent of Wells residents lived in poverty. Shootings and drug sales were commonplace. Safety and opportunity were nowhere to be found.

So along came the bulldozer. Chicago's Plan for Transformation was the country's most ambitious idea to recreate public housing. The Wells complex would slowly be dismantled, and in its place would eventually stand a new development. That new development, Oakwood Shores, has some public housing units, but they're equally divided with units for working class and middle to upper class families.

Ten years later, perhaps the first and most important question is this: Where are the former residents now?

The former Wells complex had nearly 3,000 units of public housing. The new community that's being built there will eventually house about 900 public housing families. That means a whole lot of families won't be moving back and have had to move out while those units are being built. So where did they go?

When the study that includes Gwendolyn found them in 2005, nearly half of them had moved away with a Section 8 voucher. Another 40 percent were still living in the old buildings, waiting for demolition. A few had moved into the new housing being built, and others were no longer getting housing assistance at all.

Just a few years later, a lot had changed. By 2009, all of Wells had been demolished. Even more residents had moved out with vouchers — 54 percent of them now had subsidized housing in the private market through Section 8. A third of them had moved to other public housing. And more still, 17 percent, had stopped receiving housing assistance.

A lot of the controversy around demolishing public housing hinged on the argument that people were losing their neighborhoods. In addition to their apartments, the place where they grew up, raised their children and connected with a meaningful community would also be demolished. When the buildings were first razed, most of the residents said they wanted to move back. But as time went on, they settled in other neighborhoods and fewer said they wanted to come back.

Gwendolyn was one of those people. She took a voucher and used it to move into a house on the southwest side of Chicago. She says having higher rent and paying utilities has been hard, but it's also helped her.

"I think I'm a better person because I grew a little more mentally. I'm not around all of that negativity, you know, so I think I grew up a little bit and accept the responsibility .... I think moving has made me a little more responsible and I don't take things for granted like I used to," she told researchers.

Although vouchers are supposed to move residents to better neighborhoods, a lot of voucher holders like Gwendolyn still live in neighborhoods with high crime and poverty rates and high levels of segregation. (See the map at left; click here (pdf) for a larger version.)

"While conditions for voucher holders have improved substantially as a result of relocation, they continue to live in moderately poor, moderately high-crime, racially segregated neighborhoods that offer few real opportunities for themselves and their children," says the report.

Ten years later, are families safer and healthier? Have they found the jobs and educational opportunities they need to succeed? Keep reading this week, and we'll learn together what new housing can — and can't — do for a struggling family.

Photo credit: David Schalliol