CHA mixed-income building has class clash -- chicagotribune.com: "Low-income apartment dwellers and middle-class condo owners have shared Westhaven Park Tower since the building opened in 2006 -- an innovative setup that the city hoped would unite residents and exemplify Chicago's $1.6 billion overhaul of public housing.
Proximity, however, has not led to harmony.
The most recent skirmish inside the 113-unit midrise on Hermitage Avenue on the West Side concerned building security. Another flare-up centered on the proper use of the lobby: Public housing residents -- who make up a third of the building -- saw it as a place to hang out; condo owners did not.
Kathy Quickery, president of the building's condominium association, put it bluntly in a letter to the CHA last month: 'After living in the building for three years, I consider the project a failure for homeowners.'"
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This is one of the outcomes of the Clinton Administration's housing policy. These mixed-income developments were the result of the HOPE VI program that replaced public housing projects with places like this. Another part of the Clinton-Cisneros housing policy was expanding home ownership to the poor by forcing banks to lend to them. That worked out just about as well as the mixed-income housing concept.
1 comment:
It's apparently aimed at reducing class in the U.S. and making it a more "classless society."
However its boom and bust economic cycles may already be accomplishing that task, reordering economic status like a giant drink mixing class that's shaken, not stirred.
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