SERIAL : 47

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY
The Stay-Together Gang

The Black Kings weren’t the only ones anxious about the threat of demolition. All the tenants of Robert Taylor were trying to cope with the news. Although demolition wouldn’t begin for at least two years, everyone was scrambling to learn which building might come down first and where on earth they were supposed to live.

Politicians, including President Clinton and Mayor Richard J.Daley of Chicago, promised that tenants would be relocated to middle-class neighborhoods with good schools, safe streets, and job opportunities. But reliable information was hard to come by. Nor would it be so easy to secure housing outside the black ghetto. The projects had been built forty years earlier in large part because white Chicagoans didn’t want black neighbors. Most Robert Taylor tenants thought the situation hadn’t changed all that much.

The CHA began to hold public meetings where tenants could air their questions and concerns. The CHA officials begged for patience, promising that every family would have help when the time came for relocation. But there was legitimate reason for skepticism. One of the most inept and corrupt housing agencies in the country was now being asked to relocate 150,000 people living in roughly two hundred buildings slated for demolition throughout Chicago. And Robert Taylor was the largest housing project of all, the size of a small city. The CHA’s challenge was being made even harder by Chicago’s tightening real-estate market. As the city gentrified, there were fewer and fewer communities where low-income families could find decent, affordable housing.

Information, much of it contradictory, came in dribs and drabs. At one meeting the CHA stated that all Robert Taylor residents would be resettled in other housing projects-a frightening prospect for many, since that would mean crossing gang boundaries. At another meeting the agency said that some families would receive a housing voucher to help cover their rent in the private market. At yet another meeting it was declared that large families would be split up: aunts and uncles and grandparents who weren’t on the lease would have to fend for themselves.

With so much confusion in the air, tenants came to rely on rumors. There was a talk of a political conspiracy whereby powerful white politicians wanted to tear down Robert Taylor in order to spread its citizens around the city and dilute the black vote. There was even a rumor about me: word was going around that I worked for the CIA, gathering secret information to help expedite the demolition. I assumed that this theory arose out of my attempt to procure a Department of Justice grant for the Boys & Girls Club, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Many tenants still clung to the idea that the demolition wouldn’t happen at all, or at least not for a long time. But I couldn’t find a single tenant who, regardless of his or her brief about the timing of the demolition, believed that the CHA would do a good job of relocation. Some people told me they were willing to bribe their building presidents for preferential treatment. Others were angry at the government for taking away their homes and wanted to stage protests to halt the demolition.

There was also a deep skepticism among tenants that their own elected leaders would work hard on their behalf. Ms. Bailey and other building presidents were being besieged by constituents desperate for advice.

One day I sat in Ms. Bailey’s office as she waited for a senior CHA official to show up for a briefing. Several other tenant leaders were also waiting, in the outer room. Ms Bailey made no effort to hide the fact that she, along with most of the other tenant leaders, had already agreed to support the demolition rather than try to save the buildings. “The CHA made things perfectly clear to us,” she explained. “These buildings are coming down.” She spoke to me as if I were a five-year-old, with no understanding whatsoever of city politics. “Of course, you got a few people who think they can stop this, but I keep telling them, ‘Look out for your own family, and get out while you can.’ I’m looking out for myself.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That means I got one shot to get what I can from the CHA for me and for my people. The CHA don’t have no money, Sudhir! They made that clear to us. And you know they just want to get us out of here, so I’m going to get something out of this.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I already told them I need a five-bedroom house in South Shore,” she said with a rich laugh. Then she told me the building presidents’ personal requests. “Ms. Daniels wants the CHA to give her son’s construction company a contract to help tear down the buildings. Ms. Wilson made a list of appliances she wants in her new apartment. Ms. Denny will be starting a new business, and the CHA needs to hire her to help relocate families.”

“And you think the CHA will actually agree to these demands?” 

Ms. Bailey just sat and stared at me. Apparently my naiveté was showing once more.

I tried again. “You already got them to agree, didn’t you?”

Again she was silent.

“Is that what this meeting is about?” I motioned toward the outer room where the other building presidents were waiting. “Is that why this guy from the CHA is coming?”

“Well, no,” she said. “We already had that conversation. Today is about the families. Let me tell you how this process is going to go. I know it’s early, but they’re already tearing down the projects on the West Side, so there ain’t no mystery anymore.” The Henry Horner projects on the West Side were being razed to make way for a new sports arena, the United Centre, which would host the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Blackhawks, and, eventually, the 1996 Democratic National Convention. “We’ll make our list, and they’ll take care of our people.”

“Your list?”

“I already told you the CHA has no money, Sudhir! What part of this don’t you understand?” She grew very animated and then suddenly quieted  down. “They can’t help everyone. And you know what? They’ll mess up like they messed up in the past. Not everyone is going to be taken care of.”

Ms. Bailey said that she would likely be able to help only about one-forth of the families move out safely. Her bigger job, she said, was to make sure that the remaining three-fourths grasped this reality. The CHA, she said, “plans to use most of their money to demolish the buildings, not help people move out.”

 So Ms. Bailey and the other building presidents made lists of the families who they felt should have priority in obtaining rent vouchers, assistance in finding a new apartment, or free furniture and appliances. This list, it turned out, didn’t necessarily comprise the neediest families-but, rather, the building presidents’ personal friends or tenants who had paid them small bribes.

I asked Ms. Bailey how much she was getting. 

“Sudhir, I’ll be honest with you,” she said, smiling. “We’ll be taken care of. But don’t forget to put in your little book that the CHA also gets their share. We’re all washing each other’s hands around here.

It wasn’t very pleasant to watch this entire scenario play out in two parallel worlds. In the media all you heard were politicians’ promises to help CHA tenants forge a better life. On the ground, meanwhile, the lowest-ranking members of society got pushed even lower, thanks to a stingy and neglectful city agency and the constant hustling of the few people in a position to help. In the coming months, the place began to take on the feel of a refugee camp, with every person desperate to secure her own welfare, quite possibly at the expense of a neighbor.

Not everyone, however, was so selfish or fatalistic. For some tenants demolition represented a chance to start fresh with a better apartment in a safer neighborhood. It was particularly inspiring to watch such tenants work together toward this goal while their elected leaders mainly looked out for themselves.

One such optimist was Dorothy Battie, a forty-five-year-old mother of six who had spent nearly her entire life in the projects. Dorothy lived in a building a few blocks away from J.T. She was a heavyset woman, deeply religious, who always  had a positive demeanor despite having suffered through everything the projects had to offer. Her father and several nieces and nephews had been killed in various gang shootings. Dorothy had fought through her own drug addiction, then helped other addicts enter rehab. Some of her children were now in college, and one was a leader in a Black Kings gang.