The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago

2. Early Public Housing

15 2. Early Public Housing The end of the decade of the 1920s brought the United States into its most severe economic depression. Apartment construction in Chicago virtually came to a standstill. In the worst year, 1933, only 21 apartment units were built.1 Due to the lack of construction and the large migration to Chicago before, during, and after World War I, there was a severe shortage of housing, especially for low-income families. From 1930 to 1938, 18,221 dwelling units were demolished in Chicago and only 7,619 new ones constructed, leaving a deficit of 10,602. The city had an increase of 60,517 families during the eight-year period. It has been estimated that it would have taken 150,000 additional units of housing for low-income families to eliminate the shortage.2 The shortage of housing was aggravated by two additional factors, poverty and existing slum conditions. During the mid-1930s, about a third of the families in Chicago had incomes below $1,000 a year.3 This placed them in a position where there was almost no chance of securing decent housing on the private market. Large areas in Chicago, especially in the inner city, were occupied by dilapidated housing, much of it little more than wooden shacks. Efforts to improve housing through zoning ordinances, Building Code inspection, and enforcement had not met with notable success, and to the extent that these attempts had caused buildings to be maintained or improved, they had also priced them out of reach of poor families. The Depression caused the already severe housing problems of poor people in Chicago to take on crisis proportions by 1931. In that year, a number of eviction disturbances occurred, where bailiffs serving eviction notices encountered hostility and had to summon the police. The most tragic incident took place in August 1931, after two bailiffs had moved the possessions of a destitute South Side black family out on the street. A crowd of 2,000 gathered and moved the family back into the building. The police were called, three members of the crowd were shot and killed, and three policemen and a crowd member were seriously injured. The next day the Chicago Tribune said there would be a policy of “firmness in dealing with communistic eviction disorders.”4 Private social agencies helped some poor families to pay their rents, but many families had to give up their apartments and move in with 16 Early Public Housing friends or relatives. The inability of most tenants to pay rent meant that landlords did not have funds to maintain their buildings, and the housing supply deteriorated. Because of the Depression and the restrictions on building during World War II, the period from 1930 through 1945 was the most disastrous in the history of the city’s housing supply. In fact, it can be argued that Chicago housing never fully recovered from that period. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, many of his New Deal programs to provide employment and remedy social problems were quickly adopted. Public housing was launched in 1933 with the establishment of the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration (PWA), which in 1935 was consolidated into the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The PWA built, at a cost of $134 million, fifty-one demonstration projects, three in Chicago. They were the Jane Addams Houses, Julia C. Lathrop Homes, and Trumbull Park Homes, on the West, North, and far South Sides of the city, respectively. Although the three projects were built by the PWA, they were managed from the first by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). Under the CHA’s contract with the United States Housing Authority (USHA), the CHA kept enough of the rental income for administrative and operating expenses and paid a specified amount to the USHA as a reserve for repairs and replacements. Eventually, the CHA got actual title to the projects. The CHA was incorporated in 1937. It is not an agency of the City of Chicago, although its commissioners are appointed by the mayor, and it has to submit an annual report to him or her. It is a municipal notfor -profit corporation, created pursuant to state statute and operating within the boundaries of the City of Chicago. The CHA has no taxing power and receives no annual appropriation from the city. It has a Buildings to be torn down on Grenshaw west from Loomis to clear the site for the construction of the Jane...