CHA becoming “land piggy bank” by swapping out public housing land

The Chicago Housing Authority keeps giving up land earmarked for low-income housing, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development consistently allows the deals.

The federal agency hasn’t blocked a single public housing land deal in Chicago over the past decade, the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica reported.

When Mayor Lori Lightfoot orchestrated a deal for the professional soccer team Chicago Fire to buy land that had long been set aside for low-income housing, it prompted the outlet to investigate how and why such deals kept going through.

The HUD has approved using CHA land for Target stores on the North Side, a privately owned tennis complex on the South Side and fire and police stations in gentrifying neighborhoods on the Near West Side. While the CHA has said these exchanges would generate more money for housing, in many cases, the projects have been delayed or never came together. The investigation described the CHA as a “land piggy bank” for other government agencies and private interests.

It also found Chicago’s public housing agency is far from alone in always receiving HUD approvals among similar organizations in large cities across the nation. There were 100 such agencies that had never had a property disposition stopped by HUD since 2011, including housing authorities in Milwaukee, Atlanta, Baltimore and Philadelphia, among others.

The Chicago deals were made possible by the 2000 Plan for Transformation that HUD helped CHA launch. The plan was a citywide effort to tear down and redevelop damaged and deteriorating public housing complexes that led to thousands of Chicagoans scrambling to find a place to live. After a few years, the buildings were gone and CHA was sitting pretty with multiple blocks of open land ready for new housing developments for Chicagoans with all ranges of income.

More than 20 years later, only a handful of the former public housing sites have been rebuilt, while the majority remain empty and the agency still has hundreds of units to build to meet court requirements.

“The goals of the CHA need to return to providing public and affordable housing,” Emily Coffey, senior counsel for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, told ProPublica. “And HUD has an obligation to make sure that each and every disposition complies with civil rights laws and hold CHA to its commitment to replace lost public housing units.”

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