U R B A N R E N E W A L A N D I T S I M P L E M E N T A T I O N

URBAN RENEWAL AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION Protest for housing on south side Chicago. Poorhouse. Before urban renewal could be implemented, the local officials had to label the targeted areas as blighted. What consisted of a blighted area? · Too many families crowded into buildings · Average building more than thirty-five years old · Schools, parking areas, and playgrounds needed · Obsolete, unsafe street ordinance violations · Close to a blighted area · Houses converted to commercial use · Too many families moving away · Growing decay of buildings · Lack of building maintenance61 Using these parameters to define blight, Bronzeville definitely fit the description of a blighted area in the 1950s. Looking at an aerial map of Bronzeville in 1949, one can see that the area along State Street was not densely populated. The presence of vacant lots contributed to the slummy look of the region. However, the Bronzeville neighborhood appeared heavily populated with residents. The major strips of forty-seventh and fifty-first streets were very busy. The presence of cars, buildings and businesses showed that this neighborhood was really a metropolis in the late 1940s.62 Kids standing in a vacant lot next to a dead dog on south side Chicago. American Memory. In 1945, a Chicago Sun-Times article offered the following depiction: "The present slum eyesore [in the path of the urban renewal project] is a mixture of dilapidated houses and two flat buildings, junk ridden backyards and vacant lots, and rows of alley shacks."63 Bronzeville's urban renewal process began this same year. To carry this project through, the city had planned to clear the slum area adjacent to the C.R.I.P.R. This project made way for the Super Highway, currently known as the Dan Ryan Expressway.64 During urban renewal, the residents displaced from the slums along State Street could find replacement housing in the newly planned housing project of Stateway Gardens. The city planned to build Stateway as the affordable alternative replacement housing required for the implementation of this project. CHA proposed to use this site for a public housing project that contained 993 apartments.65 Stateway Gardens. Poorhouse. The city finished the construction of the first public housing project in 1958. Constructed in northern Bronzeville, Stateway Gardens opened in the autumn of that year. Stateway consists of two ten-story buildings adjacent to State Street and six seventeen story buildings to the west along the C.R.I.P.R. tracks. It consisted of 1,684 units of two, three and four bedroom apartments and extends from thirty-fifth to thirty-ninth streets. Stateway Gardens provided the African-Americans in the surrounding area apartments that served the purpose that CHA set out to accomplish of affordable, decent safe and sanitary. 66 The new housing project relieved Bronzeville of some of its housing stress because it provided more options and it began to help stifle the blight.67 However, alone, the huge project of Stateway Gardens did not solve the severe housing shortage in Bronzeville.68 The CHA continued to have extremely long waiting lists and they could not build the housing fast enough to fit everyone's needs. For this reason, the next big project proposed was the Robert Taylor Homes. Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. Poorhouse. Erected in 1962 on the edge of southern Bronzeville, Robert Taylor Homes is the largest housing project in the world. Construction for this project began in 1960, which was CHA's biggest construction year in its history to date. Robert Taylor Homes rests on a site of ninety-five acres of land and is a quarter of a mile wide and two miles long. It extends from thirty-ninth to fifty-fourth streets along State street. There are twenty-eight sixteen-story buildings, one completely indistinguishable from the next. This project was so large that it had to be built in four stages.69 The Robert Taylor Homes, supposedly, saved Bronzeville of its thirty-year housing shortage. In Bronzeville, local officials usually constructed high-rise buildings. High rise apartment buildings were built because of the number of people that it could hold compared to that of apartment tenements. The same area can take care of a greater number of people.70 Therefore, instead of allowing the expansion of the ghetto to grow outward, they started to build upwards. However, these buildings were more expensive to maintain. Because these high-rise buildings required elevators, there was an inevitable cost increase in maintenance.71 In order to understand the implementation of urban renewal, one must understand the limitations placed on the residents affected by this project. The local authorities restricted the residents from fully partaking in what urban renewal had to offer. For example, everyone could not move into the public housing facilities. Potential residents had to be intensely screened by CHA. This included: 1. An office interview by a social worker 2. An employment verification 3. A Check for a police record 4. A home visit by an investigator and 5. A scoring on a CHA formula giving preference to applicants in substandard apartments with insufficient income to get good housing on the private market.72 The elaborate investigation made it difficult for many African-Americans to get apartments through the city. Institutionalized residential discrimination placed another limitation on the residents looking for housing. To prevent racial takeover in public housing facilities, the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, formulated the Neighborhood Composition Rule. It stated that "public housing projects would not be permitted to alter the racial character of its neighborhood."73 Along with the aforementioned discrimination of the savings and loan institutions, this rule placed more limitations on African-Americans in the urban housing market. Despite the discrimination the migrants experienced in the public as well as the private housing sectors, they accepted what was offered to them. The housing needs of the residents in Bronzeville were so urgent, that the first step in winning the battle was receiving new housing. "Conditions within the Black Belt were so appalling that decent housing, wherever it was located, was desperately desired by the community, leaders and masses alike."74 Moreover, when segregated housing was established the residents of Bronzeville just accepted the housing and counted this as one battle won. The urban renewal projects perpetuated segregation by encouraging division of races in its public housing. CHA's segregation rule created a sub-culture in the public housing facilities in Bronzeville that socially isolated this predominantly African-American community from the rest of Chicago.75 This isolation shied away from integrating Chicago. Through public housing, the government had the power to integrate the city. However, the local officials, instead, choose to perpetuate institutionalized discrimination to keep Chicago segregated. Initially, urban renewal seemed ideal. Families moved out of over crowded tenements and into better housing facilities. The project provided families with space and an opportunity to actually build new lives in the North. In 1953, the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed, The Grants, a young family of five from the South. The Grants' history documents problems with African-American housing in Chicago. It presented a first hand account of the climb from the over populated tenements, to lives of comfort, health and dignity.76 Before the construction of the new housing in Bronzeville brought on by urban renewal, the Grants lived in a tenement in which three families shared the space of an apartment only intended for one. For sixty-dollars, fourteen people occupied a bathroom with one toilet that was out of order most of the time. Urban renewal granted the Grants the opportunity to live in safe and clean new housing. After receiving assistance the Grants stated that, "We feel safe from fire, safe from disease-breeding filth and safe from vermin."77 The Grants obtained housing with three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room and a bathroom that works for only fifty-five dollars a month. Urban renewal was definitely a dream come true for many similar to the Grants.78 Home

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