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Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Neighborhood ties still propel violence in a changing Cabrini-Green
Julia Tate was headed to bed a few weeks ago when her daughter burst into their rowhouse screaming. Tate's cousin, Devon LaSalle, had been shot. The family had urged LaSalle to not come around the neighborhood so much, but he grew up in a now-closed part of the Cabrini-Green rowhouses. He still spent a lot of time there in spite of how much had changed since he was a kid on Mohawk Street. At 41, LaSalle was one of many people who stuck around the rowhouses even as development exploded around the now-vacant lots where the infamous high-rises once stood. Old relationships persisted too, for better or worse. When LaSalle and another man were killed days apart on the same block in what's left of the original public housing development, authorities said both had known their alleged shooters for years. It's been two decades since there were slayings so close together in the Cabrini-Green rowhouses, a patch of 146 public housing units ringed by new construction in the well-heeled River North area. Chicago Police Department sources and neighborhood violence interrupters say the killings likely came from personal history and were not tied to wider gang conflicts. And they came at a time when a leader with his own links to Cabrini-Green is seeking to run the Chicago Housing Authority. Now-former Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., who stepped down from his City Council spot while angling for the post, grew up there and has long decried people's tendency to hang out in their old neighborhoods, Sue Popkin, a researcher who has tracked the impact of the CHA's Plan for Transformation across a number of now-demolished housing complexes, including Cabrini, said old residents and people with ties to the developments keep coming back and maintain social lives in their old neighborhoods long after they've moved away. She offered another CHA development, the Ida B. Wells Homes, as an example. It took years for the homes to be dismantled, she said — 'but until it was entirely gone,' former residents returned. 'People go back to places after disasters,' Popkin said. 'You can't get people to move away from the edge of the ocean, even after there's a flood. There's a very powerful pull of home.' That pull was true for Devon LaSalle, his family said. He came back often to spend time with his girlfriend and his cousins, who are Cabrini residents. LaSalle made an excellent plate of Spanish rice, they said, and would set up in a nearby park to cook and sell plates with a few friends. He had a lot of history on those blocks. Court records show he was arrested last year and charged with aggravated discharge of a firearm after he allegedly fired a gun down Cambridge Avenue into a group of people. That case was still pending at the time of his death. More recently, LaSalle had started working as one of 21 peacekeepers through the organization Near North 3.6.5, and meant to use his own close street relationships around the neighborhood to prevent further violence. The group's leader, the Rev. Randall K. Blakey, said LaSalle had been considered 'one of the best and most promising' men to work with the program, which started in April of this year. He had not been on duty the night he was shot, Blakey said. Just after midnight on July 13, Assistant State's Attorney Mike Pekara said, LaSalle spoke to a man, Maurice Timms, briefly in one of the courtyards that separate the banks of rowhouses. After LaSalle turned away, Timms allegedly shot him once before he approached and fired again. A citizen called 911 a few hours after the shooting to report that Timms had returned to the area and he was asleep in a nearby pickup truck, Pekara said. Officers arrested Timms after a group of residents identified him as the alleged shooter, according to police records. Eight days earlier, 46-year-old Darrin Carter was killed about 50 yards down the block, authorities said. Obbie Sanders allegedly approached Carter as he sat in his car, took out a gun and shot him multiple times. Carter then sought help from a nearby squad car before he lost consciousness, Pekara said. Sanders — who wears leg braces and uses a cane to walk because he's been shot so many times — was allegedly captured on surveillance video fleeing the shooting scene, and police arrested him after he crashed a car near Wacker and DuSable Lake Shore drives. Both Sanders and Timms had been in the neighborhood's social mix days or weeks before the slayings, Pekara said. LaSalle's father, Ralph LaSalle, has been trying to think what could have pushed someone to allegedly 'execute' his son, particularly someone who they'd all known personally. 'That guy, I knew him,' he said of Timms. 'He called me 'Pops.' I wouldn't have figured he would do (anything) like that.' Now 64, the elder LaSalle spent 10 years in prison as a young man after he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He has thought about the man he killed decades ago often over the last several weeks. 'The pain I'm feeling, now I know what his parents went through and how they felt,' he said. He doesn't plan to return to Cabrini-Green ever again. Burnett said the killings highlight issues the area has faced for years, even as the area has seen crime plummet and development take off around what's left of the rowhouses. A native of the Cabrini-Green rowhomes, Burnett may soon assume control of the CHA this summer. He said former residents of the rowhouses often return to the area after moving away or being released from prison, reigniting old conflicts. 'All these outside folks coming to the neighborhood, I think it's a detriment to the neighborhood,' Burnett said. 'It's hard to stop those incidents when folks are drinking or getting high and they get into it.' His comments largely echoed those he made five years ago when the killing of 9-year-old Janari Ricks jarred the city. Then, too, Burnett called for nonresidents to keep out of the rowhouses and 'do dirt' elsewhere. Residents of Cabrini-Green were critical in helping CPD officers find a suspect in that case, too, police officials said at the time. One man was charged with murder in the boy's death, and court records show that case is still pending. Janari's mother later filed a lawsuit against CHA, the security firm that patrolled the rowhouses and the property management company. That lawsuit, settled in 2024 for $7 million, alleged that the shooter who killed Janari was well-known in the neighborhood as a violent person, as was his intended target. The target of the shooting, it was alleged, was included on a CHA 'exclusion list' of people who were not to be allowed within the rowhouses. Burnett said CHA could do more to ensure that only those named on a lease are residing in a unit, though he said he couldn't say whether rules related to the list need to be strengthened. 'We need to check these places,' Burnett said. 'We've got a lot of folks harboring in apartments that (aren't) supposed to be there.' The CHA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Burnett told the Tribune that fostering a sense of community and respect for current residents would help deter behavior that can lead to violence. 'So I think the challenge is, one, the people in the neighborhood who may be related to these folks don't demand respect for their houses,' Burnett said. 'Your cousins, your brother, your baby's daddy, you don't demand that they respect your neighborhood.' In a statement, a CHA spokesperson said that all public housing residents needed to adhere to the rules laid out in their leases. According to the statement, the agency 'works hard not to perpetuate stigma for past, present, or future public housing residents' and is making it a priority to offer public gathering spaces where people with ties to the area can return and celebrate their history there. The intersection of Cleveland and Oak streets is known as Dantrell Davis Way, in memory of the 7-year-old boy slain by a sniper's bullet in 1992 as he walked to school through the high-rises with his mother. Scores of children were shot within the Cabrini-Green high-rises, and Dantrell's death catalyzed momentum for the structures' eventual demolition, which researchers like Popkin found led to dramatic dips in violent crime. Along the west side of Cleveland is a vacant lot, still owned by the CHA, where Dantrell's former school once stood. To the north, a new apartment building is under construction. A set of cubic gray and white rowhomes stand on the east side of the street behind a black fence, where people on a recent morning were watering their lawns and walking their dogs. South of Oak Street stand blocks of boarded-up rowhomes and the 800 block of North Cambridge Avenue. People lined the street on a recent afternoon, chatting in twos and threes as they leaned on cars and against fences. A teenage boy rode a motorbike up and down the block, revving the engine every time he turned around. Rodnell Dennis stood at the far end of her block with his arms folded. A group of kids rounding the corner stopped for hugs and fist bumps before scattering into several rowhouses up and down Cambridge. Others dressed in swim gear waited on the steps or hurtled back and forth across the street, where a fence blocked off more boarded-up units. Dennis, 46, grew up in the high-rises and spent 20 years behind bars before he was paroled in 2012. He recalled finding a dramatically different Cabrini-Green upon his return — 146 of the original rowhouses surrounded by new construction. A CHA spokesperson said the agency had erected 4,000 units of public housing around the neighborhood since 2000. Another 4,000 units still planned for around the area will house people with a range of incomes, as part of the CHA's 'Cabrini Now' plan. The agency's ombudsman lets residents living in mixed-income communities offer feedback and voice concerns with community-building, a spokesperson said, and CHA works with several organizations in the Near North Side area on events where residents can get to know one another. But for Dennis, who now works as a peacekeeper through Near North 3.6.5, the distance between the old neighbors and the new feels vast. 'They don't know us,' he said. 'They just know the stories they've heard about us. They form opinions that have no relevance to who we are.' Dennis, who pleaded guilty to the murder of a 9-year-old boy when he was just 13, said he had come a long way from contributing to the violence that gave Cabrini-Green its notoriety. 'It goes to show you a level of growth from then to now,' he said. But he said it's hard to impress that on people who avoid the rowhouses despite living so close by. 'How do you communicate with people who live 15 feet from your front door but don't want to walk through your neighborhood?' he asked. Just behind Dennis, Julia Tate's rowhouse still had stuffed animals and a wilted flower from LaSalle's memorial gathering next to the front door. He left behind 14 children and had just welcomed his first grandchild, relatives said. On Wednesday afternoon, Tate's air conditioning was blasting and the blinds were drawn to keep out the start of the latest heat wave. Her phone rang every few minutes with relatives calling about funeral arrangements. Now 56, Tate has lived in the rowhouses all her life, on Iowa and Mohawk streets and now in a unit on the southern edge of the neighborhood. She remembers her mom growing cucumbers and cantaloupe out front, trips to Rainbo Roller Rink in the Uptown neighborhood and singing in the Sunshine Gospel Choir. Tate mentioned the 1970 murders of two police officers in nearby Seward Park as an example of the kind of violence that gave the housing projects their notoriety. Cabrini-Green 'had its day,' in her words. But the rowhouses had been another story. 'This area was always a safe haven for people,' she said. 'We had a childhood life, even though things might have been happening during the time when we were growing up.' People come back to the rowhomes because that's what's left, but also because they were considered a less risky place to be, she said. 'The people that come down here now are the people that used to be in the high-rises,' Tate said. And while crime has dropped sharply in the area since those towers were demolished, Tate feels that kids growing up in the last of the rowhouses today don't have as much access to the kind of programs that sprang up to help kids who lived in the high-rises. Some anti-violence workers said the new development in the area has actually made it harder to secure funding. City and state dollars often are allocated based on median-income in a particular ZIP code, making kids from struggling families less likely to stand out on paper in a wealthier zone. A CHA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency was always looking for ways to offer more options for youth activities. Currently, organizations like After School Matters and By the Hand Club for Kids run no- or low-cost programming for families in the area along with the Chicago Park District. Stacie Wade, LaSalle's second cousin who pounded up the stairs screaming the night he was killed, remembers programs from her youth in the rowhouses. Now 31, Wade doesn't recall worrying about shootings growing up. 'I used to like it down here,' she said. But LaSalle was like an older brother to her, and his death has made her reconsider the neighborhood where he spent so much time and she's lived most of her life. He was with people he trusted when he came back, she said. And still he was taken away.
Axios
4 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Chicago Housing Authority may soon name new CEO
The Chicago Housing Authority could have a new leader in the coming weeks. Why it matters: CHA, the largest single owner of rental housing in Chicago, continues to grapple with finding affordable housing for the thousands of residents who were displaced after the city demolished more than 80 buildings starting in the mid-1990s as part of its "Plan for Transformation." State of play: 16,000 people are on the waiting list for CHA vouchers, but the agency has declared 2025 its " Year of Renewal," with a goal of being more transparent and accountable to residents. CHA has recently moved forward on some long-awaited developments. This week, it broke ground on new affordable units at the site of the former Robert Taylor Homes in Bronzeville, one of the most notorious public housing developments in the U.S. that was torn down during the transformation plan. Catch up quick: Angela Hurlock took over last October as interim CEO after Tracey Scott, a holdover from the Lightfoot administration, resigned amid controversy over the city's decision to lease CHA land on the Near West Side to the Chicago Fire. CHA had promised to build more than 2,000 units near the site of the former ABLA Homes, but at the time of the agreement with the Chicago Fire, only about half were finished, Block Club reported. Last month, the agency unveiled more than 200 new units at the site. The latest: Ald. Walter Burnett is angling to be the next CEO as he wraps up his tenure at City Council at the end of the month. The West Side alder grew up in the Cabrini-Green rowhouses, next to the high-rises that were leveled as part of the "Plan for Transformation." As alder of development-rich West Loop and Fulton Market and chair of the zoning committee, Burnett has been at the forefront of big changes in those neighborhoods. How it works: The mayor picks the CHA head, but the agency's Board of Commissioners has to approve the choice. What they're saying: CHA's Central Advisory Council opposes Burnett as the agency head, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday, expressing concerns that Burnett is too chummy with private developers. The other side: Burnett says his relationships with developers would be an asset to CHA. "I built a whole neighborhood in the West Loop during the time that we tore down the buildings in public housing that haven't been built back," Burnett said this week on Fran Spielman's podcast. "CHA has to do more to leverage the private-public partnerships. I have all of the private partnerships from dealing with them in my ward." Between the lines: Burnett regularly references his Cabrini roots. "This is my neighborhood. These are my people in this neighborhood," Burnett said last year at a groundbreaking for the new Bally's Chicago Casino in River West. What we're watching: Johnson's office did not respond to Axios' questions about who he plans to select as the agency's new leader and when, but told reporters last week that Burnett is "a strong contender." "There are, of course, a couple other candidates that are in consideration, but Alderman Burnett is certainly at the top of that."
Axios
17-07-2025
- Business
- Axios
Burnett's City Council era set to end, but his legacy still unfolding
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) wore sunglasses and clutched a box of tissues Wednesday as his colleagues in the City Council bid him farewell after 30 years in office. The big picture: Burnett, the longest-serving alder in the council, is stepping down this month with his eyes set on taking over as CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority. What he said: "I hope I made you proud," Burnett, holding back tears, said in his farewell speech. Zoom in: The 61-year-old also serves as vice mayor and chairman of the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards. Burnett grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing development, which he believes makes him a natural to lead the CHA. Reality check: Burnett's story may make him a suitable candidate to run public housing in Chicago, but his record with housing issues is more complicated. Flashback: Earlier in his career, Burnett, who has always been a staunch supporter of whoever is mayor, served as a cheerleader for Mayor Richard M. Daley and the CHA's Plan for Transformation. This plan was to demolish public housing high-rises like Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes and rebuild new mixed-income public housing. While Burnett helped usher in building new complexes like Westhaven Park on the West Side (replacing Henry Horner Homes), tens of thousands of residents who were displaced never returned. The plan was supposed to be finished within a decade, but most of its initiatives have still not been completed. Burnett's 27th ward includes the West Loop, which has had intense private development leading to affordability issues over the past decade. Some neighborhood advocates have accused Burnett of cozying up to developers, although Burnett countered by telling developers they had to hire minority workers if they wanted projects in his ward. State of play: Mayor Brandon Johnson will appoint Burnett's successor in the 27th ward, and Burnett's pushing his son to replace him. It's unclear if Johnson will select a successor for Burnett as vice mayor, but he will appoint a replacement for the chair of the Zoning Committee, and it hasn't been easy for him to get council confirmation in the past. The intrigue: Burnett's exit will make Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) the longest-serving lawmaker in the City Council. Beale began in 1999. The bottom line: Burnett will be remembered for his role in several City Councils over his 30-year career, but his legacy on how he has impacted the city is far from finished.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why We Need the Nation's First Public Housing Museum
Opening this week in Chicago, the National Public Housing Museum wants to reinvigorate our interest in collective well-being by tackling dominant narratives—of crime, poverty, and eventual destruction—head on. A 1936 advertisement for the New York City Housing Authority depicts the clamor of city life: a jumble of line drawings depict a leaping alley cat, trash can, train, and fire escape. Bold text in a quintessential Art Deco font plastered diagonally across the image reads, "Must we always have this? Why not HOUSING?," addressing both the energy and desperation of urban life in 1930s America. Funded by the Works Progress Administration, the ad was of a time when the federal government created massive public works projects across America to uplift the poor during the Great Depression. Though that era is now long over, the ad still feels relevant. We've reached a record high of unhoused people across the country: new housing construction is slow, rent costs burden more than 50 percent of Americans, and building housing is only getting more expensive. We may have driverless taxis coasting through cities and technology that delivers anything you desire in a matter of hours…but why not housing, indeed? The advertisement is one of many artifacts on display at the new National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) in Chicago, the country's only museum devoted to U.S. public housing, which opens April 4. Unlike other types of history museums which seek to keep the past alive, the NPHM is in a unique position because public housing itself isn't, technically, extinct. People still inhabit public housing developments built across the country after the U.S. Congress boldly declared in 1935 that housing is a human right. As such, the NPHM is doing something a bit different. They're not preserving objects and artifacts to encase public housing in amber; instead, the space squarely seeks to reinvigorate our interest in collective well-being by tackling public housing's dominant narrative—one of crime, poverty, and eventual destruction—head on. Located in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, the NPHM is housed in the remaining structure that was once part of the Jane Addams Homes—a 1937 low-rise public housing development that was mostly demolished beginning in 2002. According to NPHM executive director Lisa Lee, the building itself is the museum's biggest artifact, saved by a group of former public housing residents when the City of Chicago embarked on its 1999 Plan for Transformation that got rid of 18,000 public housing units and displaced more than 16,000 people. At that point, it had been the largest net loss of affordable housing in the entire United States, says Lee. See the full story on Why We Need the Nation's First Public Housing MuseumRelated stories: You Can Plug This $19K Backyard Office Into an Outlet "We're Going to Have Something Worse": What Dr. Lucy Jones Says Will Make L.A. More Fire Resilient The Push for Government-Run Grocery Stores—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week
Axios
19-03-2025
- General
- Axios
National Public Housing Museum opening in April
After more than a decade of planning, the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) opens next month. Why it matters: The NPHM will be the first museum in the country dedicated to telling the stories and sharing the history of public housing in the country. A portion of the museum includes affordable housing where residents live today. Context: The museum is in the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes, in Little Italy. The Chicago Housing Authority tore down 11 public housing developments across the city, displacing thousands of residents, as part of the 1999 "Plan for Transformation." Flashback: After CHA dismantled the homes, longtime resident Deverra Beverly launched plans in 2002 for a museum that told the history from residents' point of view. "They knew that one of the reasons that it was so easy to dismantle their homes was because there was kind of one narrative, one mainstream narrative, about public housing and its failure," NPHM executive director Lisa Yun Lee says. "And so they wanted to have a place where their voices could be heard and they could challenge the mainstream narrative." Zoom in: The exhibits include artifacts such as photos, dishes, sewing machines and Sears catalogs in recreations of former residents' apartments. Speakers play stories about the families who lived there, as told by descendants of the onetime occupants. Fun fact: Artist Edgar Miller's large, playful concrete sculptures of animals, known as "Animal Court," are back in the courtyard of the museum after being removed for restoration. They were originally installed in 1938 when the Jane Addams Homes opened, and former residents, like the Rev. Marshall Hatch, share fond memories of them. "The biggest one was home base. I've always thought about what it meant to go around through the animal kingdom and then come back and touch home base. It was a metaphor for how that project development felt like: home," a quote from Hatch reads on the wall. What's next: Opening day is April 4, and the weekend will include discussions about housing policy, interactive art workshops and guided tours of the re-created apartments.
