Does Chicago’s North Side need more gentrification? Lathrop Homes residents say “No”

Lathrop Homes

Concentration of poverty is a bad thing when it comes to a neighborhood. It’s generally agreed upon.

Why? There are a number of theories. Low tax base. Fewer resources. No one to look up to. Sort of the broken windows theory, applied to people.

If everybody’s down, no one’s going up.

But what about the concentration of wealth?

A group of Chicago residents stood up this morning to say that’s a problem too. They’re residents of Lathrop Homes, a public housing development on the North side that’s surrounded by the affluent neighborhoods of Bucktown, Roscoe Village and Lakeview. It’s a place you wouldn’t expect to find public housing, and residents there say they intend to stay.

The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation has demolished thousands of public housing units around the city, getting rid of the high-density, high-rise towers, and making new low-density neighborhoods with a mix of public housing, middle-income and market-rate tenants.

But most of those developments were in rough neighborhoods with few stores or resources, not anything like Lathrop.

Market-rate development on Clyborn across from Lathrop

Right across the street from Lathrop’s 1930’s era brick buildings sit brand new condos. The average listing price around the neighborhood? $546,000 according to Trulia.com. Their market map shows Lathrop in red – as in a red-hot and growing real estate market.

Down the street, there’s a Costco in a huge shopping center. There’s a beautiful park and good schools.

“It’s a land grab, pure and simple,” said Rachel Goodstein at a press conference this morning, who’s been involved with the Lathrop community for years. “It’s a land grab at the expense of people who’s families have benefited this community.”

The current CHA plan on the books would take Lathrop’s 900 units and demolish them for 1200 new units, 400 of which would be public housing, with the rest being affordable and market-rate housing.

But Lathrop residents gathered this morning to say that the concentration of wealth in this community should not be allowed to continue unrestricted – that demolishing their homes and building more market-rate in an already saturated market isn’t right and doesn’t make sense. They want Lathrop to remain public housing, affordable housing and affordable home ownership.

“The CHA wants market rate housing in the development, but we don’t need it,” said Edna Hernandez, who grew up in Lathrop Homes. “We are surrounded by market rate housing.”

Map from Trulia.com showing the hot rental market around Lathrop. Lathrop homes outlined in blue.

Robert Davidson, a current Lathrop resident, agreed. He says in this recession, we can’t afford to lose decent places for low-income people to live.

“Why is CHA tearing down public housing when we need it the most?” said Davidson. “I’m here today to tell you that this is a mistake.”

CHA has used market-rate housing to subsidize the cost of building new public housing in the past. It made a lot of sense, especially when the housing market was booming. But now, even they are using big discounts and tax credits to lure buyers. Some have said the Plan for Transformation is dead on the table, others just stalled. Either way, it doesn’t seem like a great time to put your hopes in the housing market. And if the housing authority chooses to rehabilitate, rather than demolish, they would have access to landmark preservation tax credits  because of Lathrop’s age and beauty.

“A working group composed  of key stakeholders – including the City of Chicago, elected officials, community organizations and residents – has been assembled to determine the future of Lathrop Homes, and will meet to make a recommendation for the future of the development,” CHA spokesman Matt Aguilar told me in September. When I called him today, the news hadn’t changed.

Basically, they’re saying nothing has been decided yet officially.

Two little girls play on a jungle gym during Lathrop's early years

But that’s not good enough for these residents, who say they don’t want to get railroaded by city officials working behind their backs.

“Lathrop was a stepping stone in our lives,” says former resident Scott Shaffer. “We want that for other families.”

We say we want diversity. We say we want an unsegregated society. We say the concentration of poverty is bad for people. But what about the concentration of wealth? How can we have one with out the other?

Get rid of units here on the North Side, and where do you think these low-income residents are going to go? Probably other neighborhoods with a high concentration of poverty.

One resident pointed out today that Lathrop was built in the middle of the Great Depression. And now it’s future is being decided in the midst of the Great Recession.

Have we learned anything from this current crisis? That gentrification and condo-conversion has its limits? That we can’t inflate the value of land real estate over the value of people and their homes?

Demolition made sense in other areas of the city. But Lathrop residents are saying that here, in their home, it doesn’t make sense.

Who will prevail? We’ll have to wait and see. But if this morning’s press conference showed anything it was that these residents won’t go without a fight.

*Note: For more on Lathrop Homes, including a tour of the development and historical pictures, take a look at this article from September.