Chicago Tenants Confront HUD
Chicago, IL - “We shouldn’t have to live like this!” was the resounding cry at a Nov. 29 public meeting where the Kimbark Tenants Association made the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) answer to their demands. A busy year of struggle by tenants of a subsidized housing complex in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side led up to the event. A year ago management tried to force them out for a condo conversion. Now the tenants are forcing management to clean up its act and respect their rights.
Like many neighborhoods in Chicago and around the country, the rich are attempting to take Woodlawn from its current residents, most of whom are working-class African-Americans. With the University of Chicago encroaching from the north and hundreds of developers marketing this neighborhood as an up-and-coming area close to the lake and the university, working-class and low-income residents are being rapidly priced out. A community organization called The Woodlawn Organization owns the buildings and states publicly that, “At times…the displacement of existing residents,” is “required” for Woodlawn’s re-development. The Woodlawn Organization is headed by the powerful Reverend Leon Finney, who is a close ally of Mayor Daley and the University of Chicago.
A year ago the Woodlawn Organization told tenants of five buildings on Kimbark Avenue in Woodlawn to be out so their buildings could become condominiums. Illinois law requires that before ending a property’s subsidies tenants need to get a year’s notice and be given decision-making power over the building’s fate if they form a tenants association. Management had already stopped putting the money it should have been into maintaining the properties. They thought they could let the buildings deteriorate and then run tenants out on short notice through intimidation and rumors. They were wrong.
Working with organizers from the Student/Tenant Organizing Project (STOP) and supported by numerous neighbors, tenants held rallies, tenants’ rights trainings, community picnics and joined on a march across the neighborhood and an action down-town. By September the tenants had signed up over half the complex into the Kimbark Tenants Association, giving them final say over the property’s future. Tenants had an initial meeting with HUD in September, where they confirmed that the Section 8 contract didn’t even expire until 2009. They also found out that HUD is supposed to hold management accountable for the buildings’ condition.
After documenting hundreds of neglected repairs, tenants pressured the HUD project manager for their building, George Gilmore, to come to a public meeting and hear their demands. Stories of rodents, broken porch stairs, uncovered radiators, a pregnant women living with a gas-leaking stove and consistent neglect of work orders prompted anger and indignation amongst the broad crowd of community members and supporters who were present. 20th ward alderman Arenda Troutman applauded the Kimbark Tenants Association’s initiative to take control of their living situation and expressed firm support. Then representatives of the Kimbark Tenants Association presented their demands to Mr. Gilmore and made him publicly commit to: 1) Intervene if management hasn’t addressed emergency repairs in 24 hours, 2) Tell management to accept the new tenant-created Tenant Complaint form, 3) Make sure tenants get a copy of work orders and 4) Meet again in January to review progress.
Management is now scrambling to get repairs made as tenants watch closely to catch patch-jobs and inadequate work. Meanwhile tenants are preparing to take back the control of their buildings and their neighborhood, one victory at a time.
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