WBEZ | Charles Woodyard

CHA reveals next phase of massive public housing redevelopment

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:50:00 -0500

In 1994, Chicago public housing high rises failed federal government standards. The massive cinder block buildings had become as recognizable as the city’s skyline. They were also viewed as a symbol of failed housing policies that resulted in concentrated black poverty. Critics said the notorious high rises warehoused blacks in destitute conditions; residents decried a lack of investment in their apartments and communities.

Five years later Mayor Richard M. Daley went to Washington, D.C. and got permission to demolish the high rises, most of them erected when his father Richard J. Daley was mayor. Thus, the country’s largest public housing redevelopment program – christened the Plan for Transformation – was born. Its centerpiece was a plan to build mixed-income housing on the same footprint as the old high rises with the following formula for attracting residents: one-third market rate, one-third affordable and one-third public.

The controversial $1 billion-plus plan is scheduled to wrap up in 2015. Under the plan, which is 85 percent complete, 25,000 units will be developed or revitalized. CHA has already moved almost 16,000 family households from derelict buildings. Some public housing families moved into brand new units with higher-income earning neighbors. Others were lost in the system or moved into segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods. An economic downturn and housing crash eventually forced the Chicago Housing Authority to change course.

Now CHA is unveiling “Plan Forward,” the second phase of the original plan. It focuses on acquiring homes in neighborhoods across the city for rehab, boosting economic activity around CHA sites and providing job/educational training for people with subsidized housing vouchers in the city.

“All residents of public housing had been walled off from the rest of the city both by physical, cultural – not just geographic – but services [such as separate security and garbage collection],” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel of the CHA conditions pre-Plan for Transformation. “Now we’ve even got to take the next step further.”

The mayor spoke Saturday at Legends South, on 44th and State Street, a mixed-income development that replaced the Robert Taylor Homes – formerly the world’s largest public housing development. Emanuel served as vice chair of the CHA board in the 1990s when the original plan was in formation.

Multiple tracts of vacant land sit idle on the State Street corridor as development has stalled. One of the new plan’s goals is to tailor the mix of what’s considered mixed income. Another goal is to use CHA-owned land for non-housing development.

CHA CEO Charles Woodyard said various city agencies in the next few weeks will start approaching the vacant land as an asset.

“It’s more than housing. Housing was the foundation. We will work with the private sector and public sector to see if can have job-creating retail. If we can have retail that provides a needed service for our families. We’re going to make sure that the investment that the public makes doesn’t wither and die on the vine because we haven’t completed the community,” Woodyard said.

Thousands of CHA families rent in the private market with subsidized housing vouchers. A recent Urban Institute report praised the inroads CHA has made with resident services but said children have still suffered. New CHA strategies include improved early childhood education, connecting teens to extra-curricular activities and new youth programs for up to 5,000 kids.

One of the problems with the existing voucher program is that many poor families live in distressed neighborhoods such as Englewood or Austin where there’s high crime and few amenities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn’t provide enough money for people to live in less segregated, more affluent areas.

To counter that, Woodyard says CHA will acquire and rehabilitate homes and apartments in a variety of neighborhoods.

“One of the things we’re really trying to achieve is to integrate affordable housing into the larger community that is Chicago,” Woodyard said. “It means not just sticking to the South Side. The South Side and the West Side have a fair amount of affordable housing. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure families have opportunities in neighborhoods that give them opportunities.

“One thing we have to understand is our families are used to support systems and familiarity. So some of them may prefer to live on the South Side.” But Woodyard said CHA will give them incentives.

Other highlights from the new plan include an adult literacy pilot program and a recalibrated federal jobs program.

Resident activist Carol Steele runs the Coalition to Protect Public Housing out of Cabrini-Green. She said she’s still concerned about poor residents who lived in CHA back when the plan started in 1999.

“There’s not even enough housing for the people that have the right to return. That’s what I’m looking forward to hearing about,” Steele said. “When are we going to complete these 25,000 replacement units for the residents that are out there waiting to return to their communities?”

Natalie Moore is a WBEZ reporter. Follow her @natalieymoore.

CHA, HUD pen agreement on program

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:36:00 -0600

The Chicago Housing Authority has entered into an agreement with the federal government that aims to provide more jobs and contracts to public housing and low-income residents.

The program, known as Section 3, started in 1968. Last year the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found Chicago noncompliant with Section 3. Residents have also filed lawsuits related to the program.

Now the local and federal housing agencies are embarking on a five-year deal. The end goal is for at least 10 percent of the total dollar amount of all contracts covered by Section 3 go to Section 3 hires.

“CHA’s excited about this new partnership with HUD,” said Charles Woodyard, CEO of CHA. “Together we will ensure that goals of this new initiative are met so that Section 3 residents and other low-income Chicagoans are provided opportunities to advance their business and their careers.”

CHA’s track record on Section 3 is a mixed bag. A 2011 WBEZ report found that several years ago, 30 percent of new hires were designated Section 3 – the federal minimum. But in 2008 and 2009, for example, more than 70 percent of CHA new hires were Section 3. Still, in those two years, hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded in contracts, yet none of those involved Section 3-owned businesses. Other public housing agencies around the country have had much worse track records.

Four residents from the Altgeld Gardens development have filed a lawsuit under Section 3. A judge has ruled that one of those lawsuits can go forward. The resident involved in that case alleges that she hasn’t been hired under the program.

This new Section 3 agreement with HUD states CHA will require building trade contractors to submit payroll and hiring reports on a weekly basis. HUD will monitor progress. When it is infeasible for CHA to meet the numerical goals for employment, the housing agency must show HUD other economic opportunities that it provides to its resident and the community. Those opportunities may be educational, recreational, or youth-oriented. They can also involve learning enrichment, after-school programs, child care, senior services, and job preparation programs, as well as other economic opportunities. Noncompliance could cost CHA competitive grant funding.

Residents and stakeholders are skeptical about the agreement.

“Seems like a decision has been [made] and we haven’t be included in it. Once again we’ve been left behind,” said Dennis Hood, a CHA resident and owner of a contracting business.

Robert Whitfield is the attorney for the umbrella CHA tenants’ group. He said he’s not sure whether the voluntary agreement will turn the dime of resident hiring. The issue is bigger than CHA.

“I would like to see [CHA] use a lot more of their procurement power to force the union to get more residents into the unions as apprentices,” Whitfield said. “Until that happens they [HUD, CHA] can sign all the agreements they want but it’ll run into a dead end when contractors say they aren’t in the union.”

That’s a huge concern for Thomas Harris, secretary-treasurer of the American Allied Workers International Union. He said organized labor dictates the contracts. He said he’s trying to get his union to represent CHA residents so they aren’t shut out.

“Labor dictates what’s going to happen with the contracts and who the workers are going to be. They’ve been closed out of workplace because they’ve never been at the table to be represented in terms of their trades,” Harris said.

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CHA transforming its Plan for Transformation

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0600

The Chicago Housing Authority has spent almost 13 years implementing a sweeping and controversial effort to remake public housing. Among other things, this Plan for Transformation tore down public housing high-rises and in their place put up mixed-income developments. The idea was to de-concentrate pockets of poverty in public housing. CHA is now rethinking its Plan for Transformation amid an economic downturn.

The Chicago Housing Authority dubbed the new plan "2.0," and Charles Woodyard is leading this recalibration. Last fall Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made Woodyard the new CEO. He came from the housing authority in Charlotte, N. C. He’s got an extensive background in real estate, and he’s brought that outlook to Chicago.

WOODYARD: A public real estate company looks at a community as an asset and tries to determine if the asset is economically performing.

To many residents and housing advocates, the answer is no.

CHA built market-rate housing in mixed-income neighborhoods, but it’s had trouble selling some of these properties because of the housing slump. Many public housing residents got housing vouchers so they could move out of high-rises, but many moved into poor neighborhoods. And CHA demolished thousands of public housing units in areas that already have too much vacant land.

In fact, Woodyard says CHA controls 400 acres, an area bigger than Chicago’s Grant Park. Woodyard says the agency won’t plop houses or apartment complexes on each acre.

WOODYARD: We don’t need to be driven solely by the single-minded goal of tearing down public housing communities and building back public housing communities. The drivers should be to create communities that have other amenities that contribute to a sustainable community such as grocery stores, other retail.

That means CHA wants to improve mixed-income communities it’s already built, and add comforts and conveniences. Take Oakwood Shores on 39th Street near Lake Michigan. It replaced the Ida B. Wells public housing development. There’s not much else in the area except for the newer, mixed-income housing.

Woodyard says CHA’s applying for millions of federal dollars to revitalize the whole neighborhood.

WOODYARD: What I have seen in this city is that there are some major retailers that have come to the table and made things worked. So the thing I’m going to try to do is be creative on how I put our land assets into the mix. Maybe it’s a 99-year lease or maybe it’s a deferred payment after a few years with a balloon payment. I hope I’m not being too technical.

FLEMING: I don’t think Mr. Woodyard is really thinking out the box. I think he's thinking in the way of the norm. And that’s to always go to the private sector and never going to the people to create opportunity.

J. R. Fleming is a public housing resident activist.

FLEMING: Giving residents the opportunity to own a dry cleaners sounds like a step in the right direction. Giving residents the opportunity to come together and own their own cooperative store makes a lot of sense.

One thing that’s vexed critics of the CHA is how formulaic the original Plan for Transformation has been. The agency’s mantra has been that many of its developments should be: ⅓ public housing, ⅓ affordable, and ⅓ market rate.

But for Janet Smith, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, that approach hasn’t worked because people need much more affordable housing. Smith says 90 percent of Chicago renters who earn less than $20,000 a year spend close to half of their income on housing. That’s the case while there’s a glut of vacant condos throughout the city, and CHA’s been building new, mixed-income developments.

SMITH: Is the mixed-income model the most effective model to produce your housing? The affordable housing is needed, the public housing is needed but the market-rate isn’t necessarily needed. So maybe it’s a way of reframing it so the mix isn’t such a wide range?

So, how does that standard of a third public, a third affordable and a third market rate stand up in the plan 2.0?

WOODYARD: I think that’s an artificial standard.

Again, CHA CEO Charles Woodyard.

WOODYARD: It doesn’t work in every community, so we will probably instead come up with a way in doing a market study for each community so the third, a third, a third, will probably leave us.

But Woodyard says that will likely mean more affordable … not more public ... housing when 2.0 debuts in June.

Emanuel picks new CHA chief

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:38:00 -0500

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tapped the former head of the Charlotte, N.C., public housing agency to lead the Chicago Housing Authority.

Charles Woodyard has been at the helm in Charlotte since 2002. Similar to Chicago, that city has been tearing down traditional public housing to construct mixed-income developments with retail components.

“He developed programs to encourage the private sector to invest in public housing. That is exactly the type of background I want here for the city of Chicago, to take us to stage two in the Plan for Transformation,” Emanuel said. The mayor made the announcement Thursday at the former Cabrini-Green development, which is a mix of public, affordable and market-rate housing on the city’s Near North Side.

Woodyard said he has to get up to speed on Chicago’s unique housing issues.

“My philosophy is then is that of a community builder. My goal is to transform communities and transform families into strong building blocks for a great city. My hope is that Chicago and the Chicago Housing Authority can do this in partnership,” Woodyard said.

Malachai Greene is a former city council member in Charlotte who worked with Woodyard

“You guys stole him,” Greene said, laughing. He said Woodyard “changed the nature of public housing in Charlotte.”

“We got away from the old-fashioned housing poor people, to creating communities where people can develop some real opportunities. We’ve moved into a good direction,” Greene said.

Woodyard and the Charlotte Housing Authority ran into at least one hiccup in trying to diversify public housing. Last year, an upscale Charlotte neighborhood balked at a proposed public housing development. The housing authority eventually scrapped that particular project.

Emanuel and Woodyard were short on details about the vision for CHA at Thursday’s press conference. The agency is in year 11 of its massive, billion-dollar Plan for Transformation – the blueprint for tearing down public housing. Emanuel served on the CHA board as the plan was being written. It’s the largest public works housing initiative in the country.

“We’re not going to reverse course. This has been much different public housing; it’s building off the success that you literally see around you,” Emanuel said. “It’s going to take it to the next stage—knowing full well that plan was developed with one type of real estate market. We’re in a different market so we have to think through and think anew,” Emanuel said.

The Plan for Transformation has five years to go. The tanking economy has slowed down housing sales for higher-income units. Emanuel said the MacArthur Foundation will be helping CHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recalibrate the Plan for Transformation and decide what’s next for public housing in the city.

Cabrini resident Joseph Peery said he is disappointed that neither the mayor nor Woodyard have specifically identified their positions on public housing and the impact on residents.

“I’m hearing what’s good for business,” Peery said. “I want to hear what’s good for residents.”

Peery said there often isn’t equity in how public housing residents are treated in comparison to higher-income households in mixed-income communities.

Since its inception, the Plan for Transformation has been controversial. Lingering issues include the displacement of some public housing residents and how remaining developments will be rehabbed or refashioned. Many low-income residents say CHA has preserved too few public housing units.

Lewis Jordan, the previous CHA CEO, resigned this summer amid questions around agency credit card use.