CHA Families Relocated Mostly Within City

By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 15, 2011 2:30PM

The Chicago Housing Authority released a report yesterday (PDF) that served to answer outstanding questions about the agency's "Plan for Transformation" that relocated families from now demolished high rise complexes such as Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini Green. The report shows that most of the 17,000 families relocated as part of the plan moved to other parts of the city. 56 percent of those residents relocated either to other developments within CHA or are using housing vouchers to rent apartments in other areas of the city.

The report goes a long way to dispel the perception that CHA families moved to the suburbs. Of the families that still use vouchers, only 60 live in the suburbs. It also serves to show that CHA kept tabs on the relocated families within its system. At a press conference announcing the report, CHA CEO Lewis Jordan referenced that perception. “There’s a myth out there that we don’t know where our families are. We do know where they are. And there’s a myth out there that a majority of our families were forced out of the city, which is not true,” Lewis said.