Under the name Chicago Weekly, the Weekly has published a Housing Issue for close to a decade. In the past, the issue has been devoted to student renters at the University of Chicago. This year, as part of our reorganization as the South Side Weekly, we’re doing something different. Inside you’ll find stories relevant to anyone who calls the South Side home. Private development, public housing, and homelessness are all taken up, with an eye to the past as well as to the future. At the site of the old South Works steel plant, for example, plans are being made for the construction of what developers hope to be a new downtown, eighty blocks south of the Loop. Further south, where the Calumet River bends to the west and passes under I-94, one of the last true public housing complexes in the city is organizing to stave off demolition. Elsewhere, we walk you through your rights as tenants of the city of Chicago, and review a few relevant books.
Take some time, settle in, and make yourself at home.
Lost in the Shuffle: The future of traditional public housing under the CHA’s Plan for Transformation
The New Road: What lies ahead for the Lakeside development?
Temporary Living: A rising number of homeless students at CPS reveals a continuing lack of institutional support
Equal Property: An interview with writer and historian Beryl Satter
Public Eye: An interview with Todd Palmer, interim director of the National Public Housing Museum
How to Make Art Work: The Halsted of John Podmajersky III and the Chicago Arts District
From the Ground Up: In “Planning Chicago,” make no little plans
A Dream Deferred: The excellence and misdirection of “A Dream Foreclosed”
Old Neighbors: Kenwood’s rediscovery of Frank Lloyd Wright
Building Stories: Five architectural histories
Cover by CHema Skandal.
Read the full pdf here.
Hello:
Last August, the first homeless youth shelter to located on the South Side in over 30 years, opened to little fanfare. The shelter, Ujima Village, serves up to 24 youth nightly, of all genders, ages 18-25, and is run by Unity Parenting and Counseling, Inc. This is a “low threshold, low demand” co-youth-designed program, the third of its kind to open. It is located on the edge of Greater Grand Crossing at the intersection of Englewood and Auburn Gresham. I am the Supportive Services Supervisor for Unity Parenting and frequently work at the Ujima site. I am also a long-term survivor of youth homelessness myself, having been homeless during high school and college in the 1980s. I would love it if your publication would do a story on Ujima. There has been nothing on the South Side for homeless youth for so long and it would be great to get the word out to the mid-South Side communities that there is now a place to go for youth who are experiencing housing insecurity. Please contact me at 773.699.4711.