Cabrini-Green

Cabrini-Green, comprising two adjacent housing projects named after Frances Cabrini and William Green, is one of the most infamous and dangerous housing projects in the world. It is located on the North Side of Chicago, near the North/Clybourn Red Line stop along with the Chicago and Sedgwick Brown Line stops. The project is bordered by Evergreen Ave., Sedgwick St., Chicago Ave., and Larrabee St. It was made up primarily of mid- and high-rise apartment buildings, many with exterior porches ("open galleries") so that residents enter their apartments like motel rooms.

Current Status and Plans

While industry, investment, and residents fled the areas immediately adjacent to Cabrini-Green during the postwar era, the rest of Chicago's near north side underwent equally dramatic upward changes in socioeconomic status. Downtown employment shifted dramatically from manufacturing to professional services, spurring increased demand for middle-income housing; the resulting gentrification spread north along the lakefront from the Gold Coast, then pushed west and eventually crossed the river. In the 1980s, the Lower North Side industrial areas, just across the river from the Loop, west of famed Michigan Avenue, and south of Cabrini-Green, was transformed into River North, a focus of arts and entertainment. By the 1990s, developers had converted thousands of acres of former industrial lands near the north branch of the Chicago River (and directly north, south, and west of Cabrini-Green) to office, retail, and housing, and speculators began purchasing property immediately adjacent to Cabrini-Green, with the expectation that the project would eventually be demolished.

Related Topics:
Near north side - Gentrification - Chicago River

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The Chicago Housing Authority, under a ten-year Plan for Transformation enacted in 2000, plans to demolish almost all of its high-rise public housing, including much of Cabrini-Green (excepting the rowhouses, which will remain). Demolition of the Cabrini Extension ("the reds") began in 1995 and was completed in 2002; part of the site was added to Seward Park, and construction on new, mixed-income housing on the Cabrini Extension will begin in 2005. Subsidized development of mixed-income housing on vacant or under-used parcels adjacent to Cabrini-Green (for instance, the sites of a long-shuttered Oscar Meyer sausage factory, the former headquarters of Montgomery Ward, and an adjacent senior housing project) began in 1994, and new market-rate housing now almost completely surrounds the remaining public housing. Cabrini-Green once housed 15,000 people but this number is now down to about 5,000.

Related Topics:
Oscar Meyer - Montgomery Ward

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New housing built on the 70-acre Cabrini-Green site will include 30% public-housing replacement housing and 20% "workforce affordable" housing, while many adjacent developments (almost all targeted at luxury buyers) include 20% affordable housing, with a goal of 505 replacement units built off-site. The Plan for Transformation's process for relocating residents is currently under litigation; the suit alleges that many residents are hastily forced into substandard, "temporary" housing in other slums, do not received promised social services during or after the move, and are often denied their right to return to the redeveloped sites. Some former CHA residents have moved out of Chicago, to nearby suburbs or outside the region to cities like Bloomington, Illinois. Other residents have successfully moved into the replacement housing, and to date residents of the mixed-income developments have reported few problems. The entire redevelopment and relocation process remains highly controversial, more so at this highly sought-after site than at other CHA sites.

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