Do the poor need middle-class supervision?
The old Cabrini row houses, which may end up being rehabbed by the Chicago Housing Authority
For nearly 10 years, the Chicago Housing Authority has been promising to rehab the Cabrini row houses. But after all this time, it might not happen.
You’re probably familiar with the Cabrini high-rises, the ones that appear in the opening credits of Good Times and have a lasting reputation for terrible living conditions and intense violence.
But you might not know about the row houses, 586 units of low-rise housing that was the original Cabrini-Green. Built back in the 40s as housing for war-time factory workers, the row houses have been the only thing at Cabrini that wasn’t going to see a wrecking ball.
But now, it’s not so clear. Chicago lawyer and legend, Alex Polikoff, has raised an objection to the row houses being rehabbed, saying that having a pocket of concentrated poverty so close to the mixed-income condos and townhouses that have replaced Cabrini would end up hurting the entire area in the long run.
Polikoff says it’s been proven that concentrated poverty doesn’t work – that it’s bad for the people who live there and for the surrounding communities.
But resident leaders and their lawyers have been counting on the huge number of units in the rehabbed row houses to bring a lot of Cabrini families who were moved out back into the neighborhood. And they say that public housing residents, with good management and security, can create a positive, vibrant community in the row houses.
All the details of what’s happening are in the piece I wrote for today’s edition of Skyline News, but I want to know what you think.
Do you think that having a lot of poor families living near each other is always a recipe for disaster? Or can poor communities, with the right support, be just as successful as higher income neighborhoods?
Community issues need community input. Share your opinion and your experience
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
[...] Do the poor need middle-class supervision? – Megan Cottrell – One Story Up – True/… [...]
I suspect large numbers of poor together is bad news, mentoring might be a more appropriate word than supervision Megan. A vision I have but have not the influence to make happen is what they are calling “social entrepreneurship.” This may or mat not require mentoring from sources such as business students or professionals, but what I am talking abut is simply having a business plan or model that will do two things- 1) improve society some way, examples could be from more fresh produce to a neighborhood to fixing houses and 2) the plan will sustain itself financially once it is off the ground.
I think that there is tremendous potential in this, and we see that giving banks money only brings about banks buying other banks. The people in the “hood” as they like to call it already are mostly entrepreneurial anyway, the drug dealing and other crime to them is viewed as just their job, it is what they can do and most say is the only option available, so many of them understand business already, getting them to go legit via an opportunity like someone providing start-up money is the challenge. This could help the middle class too, which to me is people who were making less than 35,000, (cracks me up to hear the politicians describe $200,000 as middle class.)
It’s a thought, that’s what we are here for
If there wasn’t some sort of mentoring and social services for the poor, it would have to be invented. Whether that mentoring takes place by virtue of proximity and neighborliness of the middle class, or whether it takes place through some government or religious charity, it has to be there.
I take issue with your term “need” in the headline, though. Not all poor are there because of social inabilities. Some will move up on their own. Some, however, are trapped because they lack the education or life experience to move up.
Regardless, we all have a vested interest in not warehousing misery in one place. We should be “our brother’s keeper.”
As someone who grew up in poor neighborhoods in Brooklyn my entire life I can assure you having poor grouped together has it’s problems none of them prevented “moving on up”.
What prevents social climbing is a break down in family units, the lack of male guidance for young men, (one of my problems), an abandonment of social perks such as schools that function, (mine ran out of textbooks), lack of stores other than those that sell liquor, a disdainful and hostile police force and a government that knows it is cheaper to provide dead end welfare than fund anti poverty programs and schools. These high rises were never a really good idea and never really came together as a normal neighborhood and the cities that built them spent little on upkeep or security.
Today there are no jobs for teenagers, no jobs for high school grads and no jobs in the neighborhood. In my day this was not the case and it was hard then but working kept me off the streets. Today the government provided incentives for jobs to go away and those on the bottom suffer first.
Experiments in new schools have consistently proved that the children caught in these hopeless trapped can achieve at remarkable levels and can go to college. Do they get encouragement? My guidance teacher in high school recommended auto shop for me…said college level courses were not for me. I did fine and still can’t change a spark plug.
Don’t know why you were called out, I grew up dirt poor and was able to rise above and make more than anyone in my family before me and I agree with your post wholeheartedly.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Do the slummy requirement middle-class supervision? – Megan Cottrell – One … [...]