Tenants allege fraudulent evictions by CHA ahead of Commissioners Meeting

Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release
October 20, 2011

8:45am - Coter Boys and Girls Club - 2915 N Leavitt

Over the past several weeks, the Chicago Housing Authority has come under increasing scrutiny because of its application of its "one strike" policy. Under this policy, all arrests - regardless of whether it takes place on CHA property or not, and involves a leaseholder, occupant, or guest - are grounds for an eviction. A recently released study by the Chicago Reporter has found that in the past six years, the vast majority of these arrests had nothing to do with the primary leaseholder - 86 percent in 2010 alone. Moreover, the number of one strike arrests involving misdemeanors has sharply increased, from 40 percent in 2005 to 76 percent in 2010. However, speaking out prior to the Board of Commissioners meeting, current and former residents will go further in calling attention to the way in the CHA has failed to follow its own rules in evicting residents under the "one strike" policy.

"Even though I won my case, it still worries me a lot. How many people before me went through what I went through in terms of eviction and lost their apartments just because CHA wasn't doing its job," asks Roberta Rendle, a former resident of 1230 N Burling, Cabrini Green's last tower block.

In February 2011, Rendle won her eviction case by showing that CHA had failed to follow its own guidelines under the "one strike" policy. Since then, she and her attorney, Ed Voci, have come across other tenants in the rapidly gentrifying Near North neighborhood who are facing eviction even though public housing managers did not review the "good conduct" section of their lease with them as required by CHA guidelines. In spite of this, those who have already been evicted have lost their Right to Return to public housing, something Rendle believes should be corrected.

Joined by members of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, Rendle and other CHA residents will also call attention to what has happened to her and others since they have been moved in advance of the demolition of Cabrini Green. Now in Wentworth Gardens, Rendle and other former residents of Cabrini Green now face heightened tensions with longer term residents of this Southside housing development.

At the same time, those who have an opportunity to remain in the neighborhood with an apartment in the newly constructed mixed income developments face additional "good conduct" lease standards that are applied to low income tenants, but not to middle and upper-income residents. These include a mandatory drug test, a provision that CHA Commissioners decided not to expand to all public housing residents after significant public opposition earlier this year.

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