Letter To editor
I have sat by and looked out my window at this mess that the city of Chicago has created more specially the Chicago housing authority, or CHS. What started a half of century ago to segregate low income people into an area of their choosing quickly bit the powers that be back. Soon after the families moved into the projects the Chicago police department had an ugly beast that had to be tamed.
It was for sure not the people who lived in these buildings whose fault it was that violence and drug pushing had spread along State Street. Tens of thousands of people with very limited help from the government who that put them there. Hard to find or no jobs, not enough money to do the things that families need to do for themselves, and a violent atmosphere that the police seemed to almost not care about. This led these people to this means with no end.
And it just happened to be people of color that all this was going on with. This led to a very scary situation that involved bigotry and racism towards the people in this situation. The main row house area was State Street from Cermak to Marquette. Notable projects with names like Ida B Wells and Robert Taylor Holmes were the main ones that got bad press through the 1900's. Kids and parents couldn't get out of their houses without being bombarded by drug use, gambling and violence. This was most definitely not an ideal area you would want to raise your kids. People were literally held hostage by gangs most notably the gangster disciples Mickey cobras, and vice lords street gangs. They were threatened by punishment of death or that they would hurt their Children if the parents called authorities on them or gathered information and told on them.
So now that these buildings have been torn down and the people basically displaced the city of Chicago is faced with a whole new dilemma. The areas where the people were "shipped" not my word, are now seeing their particular communities hit with higher crime rates and generally shady vibe. Drug and gambling arrests are way up, especially in the near west suburbs, and violent crime has increased in some communities as well.
So what are the Chicago Housing Authority and the people whom make the decisions where the indigent, or just down on their luck people, are going to live? City shelters are absolutely packed beyond capacity as are rehabilitation centers for people without insurance. With little hope of the economy suddenly flipping or no promises of new jobs, people are getting restless and scared for the future.
I am very scared for this situation because even though I am not directly apart of this I could feel the pain of their plight. Having little or no prospects of any career style employment people are continuing to lose hope. And what is one of the first things that happen when people lose hope is they become desperate. And desperation leads to desperate measures. And some people will sit on their high horse and make judgments but these people are put in a very mixed up dilemma. I don’t know what would be any silver bullet plan to make this bleak mess turn around. But that is one of the reasons politicians, aldermen, and community leaders get hired and paid handsome salaries. And seeing that the way the city and CHA have handled the circumstance in the past all of this frightens me that this is a problem that’s not going away without real innovative ideas and solutions that will finally help curb this problem.
