Media: Public-Housing Tenants Report Troubles at Their New Home

Annie Ricks, the last resident to leave the Cabrini-Green public housing development, said she looks out the window of her new home in the Wentworth Gardens development to make sure her children aren't being attacked. Jose More

DON TERRY- September 22, 2011 - New York Times

On a cold morning last December, a former teacher’s aide and grandmother named Annie Ricks was the last tenant to leave the last high-rise building at the Cabrini-Green public-housing development. The focus of national news-media attention, she was the star of the end of an era.

But after that day of farewells and photographs, Ms. Ricks disappeared from public view — until September’s monthly meeting of the Chicago Housing Authority’s board of commissioners.

She stood at the microphone with her 19-year-old son, Raymond. She was nervous. He was silent; his right hand was in a soft cast.

“I’m tired of my kids getting jumped on,” Ms. Ricks told the commissioners.

Since moving into the Wentworth Gardens public-housing development on the South Side on Dec. 9, 2010, after 21 years at Cabrini, on the Near North Side, “my life has been a living hell,” Ms. Ricks said in an interview.

She said Wentworth Gardens, on the edge of the Bridgeport neighborhood, had been a battlefield for her family, especially for her youngest sons, who had been attacked several times.

Raymond Ricks said he broke two of the knuckles on his right hand on Aug. 31 while defending his brother from a mob of at least two dozen attackers.

“It was like we were fighting everybody in the complex,” he said.

Ms. Ricks, 55, said longtime residents of the development were hostile to newcomers from Cabrini and had been trying to chase them out. She said there were seven families from Cabrini living in Wentworth after being relocated as part of the housing authority’s ambitious plan to tear down its high-rise towers and replace them with low-rise, mixed-income units.

Roberta Rendles, 32, moved into Wentworth from Cabrini in November 2010, and she said her two children had also had to run the gantlet of hostile neighbors. Still, she wants to stay in Wentworth.

“The community is nice,” Ms. Rendles said. “It’s not the community. It’s some of the people in the community. They’ve been here a long time and they’re close knit. That’s great. But why should I suffer because I come from somewhere else?”

Willie J. R. Fleming, a former Cabrini resident who has two children who live in Wentworth with their mother, said, “The indigenous people of Wentworth seem to feel the people from Cabrini are infringing on their territory.”

The result of adding the new Cabrini residents has been a lot of fights, Mr. Fleming said. “There have been beatings. Children have had their wrists broken, jaw broken. My daughter had a gun pulled on her in July because she’s from Cabrini. It’s a powder keg.”

But Beatrice Harris, president of the Wentworth Gardens tenants’ group, called the accusations about angry, violent neighbors “a lie.”

 “I’m not going to let nobody put us down because there are some people here who want to be somewhere else,” Ms. Harris said, adding that she has lived in Wentworth Gardens for 45 years and “it’s filled with good people.”

Jadine Chou, a senior vice president in charge of asset management at the housing authority, has visited the troubled South Side development several times in recent months.

“The C.H.A. has been working very closely with management, Chicago police and our private security to keep the peace,” Ms. Chou said. “We have brought in social service resources to assist the families. It is important to us that all families have the opportunity to live in a safe environment.”

According to Ms. Chou, the cause of the conflict is not as clear as some residents believe.

“As one of my property managers says, there’s always three sides to the story,” she said. “There’s your side, my side and the truth.”

Ms. Chou said there had been at least two “major fights” involving longtime Wentworth residents and the newcomers from the North Side. She said one of the fights had been captured by a surveillance camera and “that is revealing a lot of information.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Ricks said she spent much of her time sitting at the kitchen window of her second-floor apartment, watching the courtyard. She keeps her shoes nearby in case she has to hurry out to protect her children.