The rocky road to redeveloping Rockford’s public housing

Saturday, March 28, 2015

By Lindsey Holden
Rockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — Two years after Linda Seay moved into her apartment in the Jane Addams Park complex, she still feels lucky to call it home.

“I cried when I (saw) the apartment,” said Seay, a disabled, recovering addict. “God gave me another beautiful thing in my life.”

Seay’s complex is the only one of 11 constructed by the Rockford Housing Authority that has been redeveloped. Plagued by inconsistent funding, an unstable housing market and a sometimes-difficult relationship with city officials, the agency is “drastically behind” in its efforts to reshape public housing in Rockford.

“The housing authority really didn’t have a strong direction around redevelopment until the last probably six years, and then (we’ve been) trying to align the money to make it happen,” Executive Director Ron Clewer said.

RHA is trying to revamp its aging housing stock, most of which was built between 1967 and 1972. Federal money is scarce, and many complexes have fallen into disrepair.

“One of the reasons the Rockford Housing Authority and other housing authorities around the country struggle with maintaining their buildings is capital budget funding from the federal government has long been inadequate to do upgrades and upkeep and improvements on the buildings,” said Bob Palmer, policy director at Housing Action Illinois. “The operating funding isn’t really adequate to handle day-to-day operations.”

Becky Lichty has lived in the neighborhood for about 15 years. Before the Jane Addams redevelopment, she witnessed drug dealing in broad daylight and prostitution.

“The first full summer I lived here, after the Fourth of July, I went outside and picked up almost a whole garbage bag full of hand rockets and fliers and needles and stuff that had come from across the street and took them to RHA and said, ‘This is what I deal with on a daily basis’,” she said.

Dated housing developments, especially high-rise complexes, housed hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. In some cases, putting so many low-income people together, frequently in segregated areas with few commercial developments or job opportunities, created hubs of crime and poverty. The Chicago Housing Authority’s high-rises represented the region’s most famous public housing failure. At one point, the Robert Taylor Homes housed 27,000 residents. Poor maintenance and high youth-adult ratios eventually contributed to its descent into a crime-ridden eyesore.

These problems have spurred housing authorities to begin to redevelop warehouse-style complexes into mixed-income and mixed-use communities. New planning theories suggest that bringing together residents of different income levels and putting residential and commercial spaces in the same area will break up pockets of poverty and create more livable neighborhoods.

Read the full story here.