Cabrini Green - For Better or Worse

Last week we took a tour of the new Cabrini Green area. After reading Zorbaugh and the chapters on the Slums such as Little Italy and Little Hell I was surprised to see how neat, clean and high end the area of Cabrini Green was! I suppose we did visit some 80 years after The Gold Coast was written, but from everything I have heard this was the slum area. The housing was described as ‘mixed income’ housing but it seemed to me middle if not upper class housing. Or if they weren’t they were ornately built homes.

Obviously there was a lot of work done and a lot of progress made in the last few years, but at the same time I could not help but feel that the policies of the Chicago Housing Authority had not changed much. When our tour guide was asked what happened to the people who were displaced from the public housing before the new homes were built he stressed that what he was about to say was not necessarily true or fair, but it was “just the way it is”; this sounded to me something that someone living in the Gold Coast interviewed by Zorbaugh might say 80 years ago! I am not condemning the man, I am condemning the position he gave when he said people were either just moved to other public housing in the city, able to afford private housing with the help of a ‘voucher’ or just left the system entirely. I am not sure if it was just because we were a small group of students, but he didn’t give the impression that the needs of people were followed up or attempted to be taken care of. No wonder Chicago is called the ‘windy city’ with attitudes like this.

What was very interesting too was, in our SOA 494 class, my group is studying Old Town. One of the question’s we asked people in our interviews was “Do you think the changes made to the Cabrini Green area have had any effect on Old Town?” Most people answered in a positive way, saying the area was more desirable and beautiful even. But one woman’s answer stood out most to me; she argued that the change was for the worse, that it caused the ‘troublesome’ people who lived in Cabrini Green originally to move closer to Old Town and as a result she did not feel safe walk the streets at night. She also said she strongly disagreed with the idea of mixed income housing because it lessened to standard of living and appeal of living for young families. The different reactions to the Cabrini Green areas were interesting to listen to.

I think she had a good point in saying that mixed income housing is a bad idea; it will create animosity between lower and higher income families as one will come to resent the other.