We don’t know what’s coming next at Harold Ickes Homes, but we’re guessing the Chicago Housing Authority will — some day, when there’s more money — push for some sort of mixed-income approach at the soon-to-be vacant land at Cermak and State. Usually such plans are discussed before residents start moving out, but never mind that for a moment.

What irks us about CHA’s approach at Ickes is that long-term trends for this part of the Near South Side would have created a mixed-income community around State and Cermak on its own — without dismantling Ickes and demolishing the buildings that it comprises.

The real estate market is all over the place right now, and you can read our then-and-now piece in this week’s paper to get a taste of that. But even before the residential housing bust, developers were crossing Cermak Road. More surely would have followed. And, eventually, they will.

And then, magically, you have condo dwellers, market-rate renters and public housing residents living side-by-side. Exactly what the Chicago Housing Authority is attempting to engineer throughout the city.

In our old West Town edition of Chicago Journal, we made the same point about Lathrop Homes, near Diversey and Damen, saying there was no reason to demolish Lathrop to create a mixed-income neighborhood — because a mixed-income neighborhood already was there. Lathrop is, right now, surrounded by high-end condos and rentals.

Lathrop’s future remains murky. Ickes, you’ll see in this week’s Chicago Journal, is essentially over. And that’s too bad.

Traditional public housing gets lambasted by the right and many people fear public housing residents, associating them with crime. The reality is far more complex. What’s nearly always lost in discussion of public housing is the role that such units play in providing stop-gap housing for some of the city’s poorest. Not to mention everyday working people with jobs that pay modestly or worse.

After the disgusting housing speculation of the 2000-07 period — leaving us with a wrecked economy, rampant home foreclosures and searing job losses — one would hope that public housing might be able to shake some of its longtime stereotypes, and be valued once again. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case at Ickes.

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By testa from North side
Posted: 02/26/2010 0:32 AM

When all of the people with housing options live in high quality new housing with access to services and amenities and the poor people live in the buildings that are cut off from the street network, lack the most basic amenities and can quickly be distinguished by their design characteristics as the place that poor people live, then its not mixed income housing. It's isolated, segregated housing for poor people in close proximity to a stable neighborhood. This is the case at Ickes and Lathrop.

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By Dave Hanna from Printers row
Posted: 02/22/2010 3:13 PM

Comparing Ickes and Lathrop homes is far from an "apples to apples" measure. Start with the architecture and note the same willingness of urban market rate homeowners and renters to live next to Lathrop is behind their acceptance of the Marshall Field housing in Old town. These "projects" look more like the surrounding properties than not. Ickes, on the other hand, looked like a prison, and had all the trappings of the typical urban renewal high rise. We, and the residents there, deserve better.