In Chicago’s affordable housing crisis, what role will the Chicago Housing Authority play? We asked mayoral candidates Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas, as well as public housing residents themselves.

By India Daniels and Jerrel Floyd

Artwork by Njideka Akunyili Crosby hangs on the wall of the Jane Addams Homes, a former public housing site and future home of the National Public Housing Museum. (Photo: atelier_tee/Flickr)

Between now and April 4, Chicago residents will choose who will be the CEO of the city for the next four years. The new mayor will face significant challenges, including reinvigorating one of the most critiqued and in-demand services in the city, public housing via the Chicago Housing Authority. 

“All you have to do is to take a look around at all of the homelessness in this city, and the mayor knows the stats, to know that there is a great need for public housing in Chicago,” said Etta Davis, vice president of the Dearborn Homes Local Advisory Council, a residents’ organization in Bronzeville. Department of Housing officials reported in 2021 that Chicago is 120,000 units short of the affordable housing it needs. 

While there are many ways to make housing more affordable in Chicago, the scale of CHA’s actual and potential impact is enormous: The agency currently oversees around 20,000 public housing units, and another 50,000 Chicago households are using CHA vouchers to help pay their rent. ProPublica Illinois estimated CHA lost 16,000 homes for families over the last 22 years. Meanwhile, more than 44,000 people are on CHA waiting lists for housing support and the agency is still sitting on empty land and vacant apartments.

RELATED: How Chicago's 2023 Mayoral Candidates Plan to Address the Affordable Housing Crisis

Public housing residents and advocates are frustrated and want to know: Will the next mayor understand the depth and breadth of issues facing them? How will he balance the need for new housing with ongoing maintenance and management issues, including serious health and safety risks? And will he ensure residents have input and leadership in future CHA decisions, especially considering the decades of broken promises that led to today? City Bureau presented their stories, concerns and questions to candidates Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas in the form of a survey of questions. After more than two weeks and many emails/phone calls with both campaigns, only Johnson responded to the survey.

Johnson committed to making CHA’s waitlist system more streamlined and transparent, prioritizing homeless families for housing support and expanding the number of CHA residents on the agency’s governing board. Though Vallas did not respond to City Bureau’s questions directly, he previously mentioned a desire to “reactivate” CHA, as well as other ways to incentivize private developers to create affordable units.

But before diving into residents’ concerns, questions and candidate responses, it’s important to add a little bit more context. 

Understanding the CHA and Mayoral Control

In Chicago, the mayor has direct control over city government departments that address issues like urban development, streets and sanitation and business affairs. Mayoral influence is less direct over so-called “sister agencies” like the CHA, which manages the city’s public housing sites and administers the housing choice voucher program. However, with the power to appoint the CHA’s top decision makers (the CEO and the 10-member board of commissioners), the mayor has the power to influence strategic shifts. 

For instance, former Mayor Richard M. Daley unveiled a plan in 2000 to demolish public housing buildings and replace them with “mixed-income” communities, where wealthy, middle-income and low-income Chicagoans could live side by side. This “Plan for Transformation” is considered “complete” by CHA, but ProPublica, Illinois Answers Project and other news outlets have documented how the city and the CHA fell short on the plan’s promises. This history has led to a lot of distrust and frustration among public housing residents. 

“My opinion on public housing and CHA is not a good one,” said Anthony Perkins, a member of a community organization called ONE Northside. Perkins is facing housing insecurity and is currently on three CHA waitlists. “Our future mayor needs to know that promises during election campaigns are all well and good, but after entering office they need to make good on these promises.” 

The Robert Taylor Homes in Bronzeville was once the largest public housing project in the U.S. Originally home to about 4,400 households, only about 300 public housing units have been completed on the site since its demolition in 2007. (Photo: samuelnbarnett/Flickr)

The housing choice voucher or HCV (formerly known as Section 8), is the CHA’s primary method of supporting low-income families. Instead of requiring these families to live in a public housing unit, CHA pays a portion of their monthly rent to a private landlord. But interest in these vouchers far outpaces the available funds; the HCV program waitlist is thousands of households long and has been closed since 2014.

CHA directly oversees 20,000 public housing units, about 15,000 of which are located in family and senior public housing developments, like the Cabrini Rowhouses and the Hilliard Towers Apartments. Another 2,800 are “scattered site” units, such as an apartment within a larger non-CHA complex or a freestanding house. 

Recently, Mayor Lori Lightfoot faced criticism for pulling strings to negotiate deals for a Chicago Fire soccer team training facility and a new high school to be built on land where public housing projects were razed. Lightfoot and CHA have argued that selling or leasing off these prime plots of real estate will fund better public housing services; critics say the city moves quickly when there’s money to make, but continues to postpone the safe and accessible public housing it has promised.

In the current runoff race between Johnson and Vallas, debate has centered on their divergent approaches to public safety, and what their respective track records in education say about how they would govern. With the exception of a forum hosted by the National Public Housing Museum where candidates mostly listened to stories from current and former public housing residents, even when nine candidates were in the race, public housing was rarely a topic in debates.

How Vallas and Johnson Would Manage CHA

The questions sent out to the Johnson and Vallas teams were rooted in the conversations City Bureau had with CHA residents and public housing advocates. Residents said they often feel ignored, treated like second-class citizens, especially by the revolving door of management companies that CHA pays to administer its buildings. They said they are made to live in places that the average person or official would never.

Vallas didn’t respond to the survey. In Johnson’s response, he agreed that CHA residents shouldn’t be expected to live in substandard conditions. Johnson said he would hold management companies “accountable,” adding that he would “focus inspections and building code enforcement at CHA scatter site and Section 8 housing.”

In his overall plan for housing, Johnson said he would request a quarterly report from CHA that would note the number of newly housed people, the average time it takes to bring a unit back online, an inventory report and a review on whether they are meeting national standards. He pledged that he would make the CHA waiting list more streamlined and transparent so that residents are not confused about their application status; he’ll also prioritize providing support to homeless families. 

“If an apartment isn’t good enough for City leadership – including the Mayor – then it isn’t good enough for our CHA residents,” he wrote in his response. 

Residents also wanted to know if the next mayor would support more resident leadership, voice and agency when it comes to CHA administration. 

Johnson vowed to expand the number of CHA residents that sit on the CHA governing board, which approves CHA’s budget, contracts and long-term policies. Currently, only three out of 10 of the board members need to be CHA residents. 

Though Vallas’ team didn’t respond to questions from City Bureau following multiple emails and calls, Vallas previously acknowledged that CHA has not been a safety-net and developer of low income housing in a generation. He also said that CHA needs to be “reactivated,” but has not provided any details about how. 

One of the most consistent asks from organizers and CHA residents is for agency leaders and elected officials to spend more time actively listening and engaging with current residents. Neither mayoral candidate answered questions from City Bureau around how they expect to engage, learn from, and build trust with current CHA residents.

Additionally, City Bureau shared questions specific to each candidate’s past statements. With Johnson, his campaign called for new investments in housing. City Bureau wanted to know how he planned to balance that ambitious vision with CHA’s financial capacity and restraints. Though Johnson didn’t specifically answer this question, he previously noted that he plans to withhold TIF funds for any non-residential use on CHA land. 

Vallas has touted his track record of fiscal responsibility as head of Chicago Public Schools and other school systems. He’s a proponent of “school choice,” which, by directing funds toward charter schools and private school tuition vouchers, can restrict resources for public neighborhood schools. City Bureau asked how he would balance his fiscal approach with CHA’s promises to current and past public housing residents; it’s another question that remains unanswered. 

Learning from Public Housing Residents

Back in February, a handful of public housing residents trickled into a routine meeting at a CHA regional office in Humboldt Park. The event was organized by Catherine Serpa, a CHA resident council leader who represents about 1,000 households living in CHA’s North Central and Northwest Side scattered site units.

Serpa takes her role, which is an unpaid volunteer position, seriously. In a prior conversation with City Bureau, she expressed frustration with third-party property management companies contracted by CHA and at the substandard conditions many tenants in her region are living in. “It’s a never-ending fight for public housing residents,” she said.“In the seven years I've been here, we’ve gone through five different property management companies, each worse as the next,” Serpa said. Throughout the meeting, she interjected detailed knowledge of CHA’s processes and constraints, as well as the particulars of each resident’s issues with their units, all while keeping the discussion moving so that everyone got a chance to address the representative from the new property management company.

The complaints varied. Some had been waiting weeks for new appliances like a refrigerator or microwave while watching their market-rate neighbors get new ones in a matter of days. But other concerns were a lot more longstanding and severe. A ground-level apartment resident brought up the lack of railings and wheelchair accessibility for their daughter, who lives with a disability following a traumatic brain injury. Another said that maintenance staff had damaged her bathroom walls while working on something else, and had not returned to fix them yet.

One mother said she had been dealing with mold in her apartment for a couple years. During the meeting, she became emotional about her children’s frequent hospital visits to address respiratory issues and how she feared for their lives. At this meeting, new management told her that she could request an emergency relocation, but there was no guarantee that her family would be able to remain in the neighborhood—they would be sent to whatever unit was available in Chicago. 

For her, she said the choice was obvious, if there was even a choice at all. “They need to understand that we are in danger in these homes,” she said to City Bureau. 

Concerns like this aren’t unique. Last year residents of a Kenwood apartment under 312 Property Management spoke out about similar issues. The units are subsidized through CHA vouchers. Residents had lost heat during winter months, faced flooding and running water issues with little response from management. 

Francine Washington, a CHA resident who sits on its board of commissioners, said oftentimes residents’ needs are overlooked. “We tell the Authority what we need, and we get what they think is best for us,” she said. 

Residents have a long list of questions and wants for the next mayor. Some simply want to live in spaces that are safe, dry and reasonably maintained. Advocates have also spoken out about how CHA funding should be used; if it’s anything outside of building new housing, some don’t want to see it. Others say CHA funds should be spent on fixing and modernizing existing units, not building new ones. But the recurring consensus is around understanding: Many want the next mayor to meet them where they are, listen, learn and build from there.

“We all have the same blood type, dreams and aspirations,” Washington said. “We do bite back. We matter.”

One last note…

Though Vallas didn’t respond to the survey, City Bureau wanted to include some of the remaining questions and responses so that residents have as much information that was shared with reporters. 

During a recent February scattered site tenant meeting, a public housing resident voiced their concerns to a new management company about issues with things like mold, accessibility needs for her disabled daughter, unmet assessments and other long-term unaddressed maintenance concerns and hazards. Another resident said they routinely see new developments and units get new amenities and updated spaces and are desperate for their own remodel. As mayor, how would you prioritize modernizing existing outdated public housing units?

Johnson — “We need a mayor who will hold the leaders of the Chicago Housing Authority accountable and push them finally to build the affordable housing that was promised to the community decades ago. We need a mayor who will be laser-focused on rehabilitating vacant public housing units and developing new units on CHA land that was razed decades ago, rather than distracted by cozy deals for wealthy developers and business owners. We need a mayor who will demand that the CHA become an agency that is responsive to residents’ needs, that will ensure landlords that manage CHA properties keep their units up to the same standard as market-rate housing.”

Vallas — No response

Alder Jeanette Taylor recently made headlines for reaching the top of CHA’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) waitlist 29 years after she applied. City Bureau also connected with a senior citizen whose landlord is forcing him out in order to renovate the unit. He has joined multiple CHA waitlists, but has little faith that a spot will open before he needs to move out. What do you believe to be the root cause of the long wait? What initial steps would you take to reduce the time spent on waitlists and support low-income Chicagoans who have emergency housing needs?

Johnson — “The waitlist for affordable housing is decades-long, with a process that is confusing and lacks transparency. Residents feel neglected and stigmatized. Meanwhile, the CHA busies itself with lining up commercial developments in gentrifying neighborhoods, leaving behind empty lots and apartments at its properties in disadvantaged communities.

“I will implement rules that will allow the CHA to take in more formerly homeless families and to prioritize these families for placement into vacant units. 

“As Mayor, I will create a centralized, transparent waitlist for all City affordable housing programs, institute a system that matches residents with appropriately-sized apartments and ensure that families get into the housing they need, rather than be bumped back down to the bottom of the waitlist when faced with a bureaucratic technicality.”

Vallas — No response

CORRECTION (March 30, 2023): A previous version of this article had an incorrect description of the service area that Catherine Serpa represents as CHA resident council leader.

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