When was cabrini green demolished

And we also saw different kinds of outmigration from the city to places like the south suburbs. Austen: We have this incredible shortage of affordable housing. So I guess some of the lessons [from Cabrini-Green] are how the need has not disappeared. In a way, public housing is one [solution], but it also could be a kind of distraction because it was so vilified and so demonized and so wrapped up with race and pathologizing Black poverty.

So we [still] can do something bold. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Follow her meha. Follow her jutobzz.

Skip to main content. Here are edited highlights from the conversation. SG Ali was in fifth grade when the city tore down her Cabrini-Green apartment. The year-old rapper remembers watching the city demolish the complex from the playground of nearby Jenner Elementary School.

Born and raised in the projects, Ali says she and her mother moved in and out of the high-rises, at one point staying with family in the same building where she was born and raised. Our parents let that shit go easy.

Jenner Elementary was also where Ali first discovered her love for music, rap in particular. She later attended Carl Schurz High School, and her love for music flourished.

She began pursuing music as a career in We was family. It was safe. When Walter Burnett Jr. Burnett moved into the Cabrini-Green complex when he was two years old. His parents separated when he was young, but because his father had relatives in the neighborhood, Burnett says he was always surrounded by family.

When he was 17 years old, Burnett left Cabrini to serve time in prison for armed robbery. And when he returned after a two-year stint, he says the complex was dramatically different. The safe, secure, well-maintained community he left was gone, and in its place was a dangerous, dilapidated complex where violence and crime ran rampant. He says he had to campaign for alderman in the community with off-duty officers when he was targeted by the Gangster Disciples after he refused to agree that the high-rises would stay standing.

His experience with the stark conditions in Cabrini-Green motivated his support for tearing down the high-rises. Just like we adapt to the bad things, we adapt to the good things. For J. How deep, you ask?

Well, for starters, his Twitter handle is iamcabrini. Born in Cabrini, Fleming is a father of 12, nine of whom were also born in the complex. He credits his decades-long career in organizing to the Cabrini-Green community. During this time, he says, the city was forcing residents out through eviction or de facto demolition, or refusing to upkeep apartment units until they became unlivable. If you have to live somewhere ten years to be a local, then Pete Keller is a Cabrini-Green local almost three times over, having lived in the community nearly 30 years.

Keller is a two-time author and longtime community activist. And as of early March , he also runs an Avalon Park resource center for formerly incarcerated people.

He also credits his time in Cabrini for his love for activism. It molded me to understand the struggles of life, the real struggle of eating, sleeping. And for all its struggles, Keller says the community had its advantages. I mean, it was just completely different. And like others, Keller says it was hard to feel safe outside of the projects, particularly in light of their notorious reputation the public often extended to its residents.

And for all of its notoriety, and the violence that did indeed occur, Keller says there was never and will never be a community like Cabrini-Green. As time passed and the near North Side neighborhood continues to make room for more five-star restaurants and coffee shops selling five-dollar lattes, former Cabrini-Green residents and those who worked in the area are faced with the delayed horror of gentrification: complete cultural erasure. Watching the last Cabrini-Green tower go down in inspired Carpenter to want to preserve the memory of the neighborhood.

Knowing what happened to Cabrini-Green, she says, is an essential part of Chicago history. Today, she fears that, with gentrification, the whole community is being forgotten. The Cabrini-Green housing projects has had a complicated reputation. Introduced in , the decision to invest in public housing communities around the city was an effort aimed to replace slums and provide affordable housing for low-income families. Many working-class Black families migrating from southern states took advantage of this opportunity.

By the s, Cabrini-Green consisted of 23 high-rise buildings and barrack-style row houses, housing close to 15, people at its peak. They have garbage everywhere. After years of disinvestment under Mayor Richard M. By then, Cabrini-Green, popularized by negative national media attention, had a renowned reputation for its unlivable conditions and horrific acts of violence, including the death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, who was shot by a stray bullet while walking with his mother.