The Making of a Ghetto
Mikva, Abner J.
THE MAKING OF A GHETTO ABNER J. MIKVA Every major American city has at least a few skeletons in its closet— the mistakes and the tragedies the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall never mention....
...After a two-year struggle, the dispute between City Hall and TWO ended in Mayor Richard Daley's office with a promise of com- munity participation in future deci- sions and a beginning for low-cost housing in Woodlawn...
...As a community, Woodlawn got started just after the Civil War—a stretch of prairie with a few cottages, a railroad station, and some good duck hunting...
...An apartment building rises on each side of the playground...
...It was never a preten- tious place to live...
...Mysteriously, often an abandoned building catches fire, sometimes even while people are still living there...
...The only housing the city has built in Woodlawn stands in a dismal cluster on the east side—part of a noble exper- iment that never made it...
...When the wind blows, the dust swirls up from those lots, cov- ering everything with a film, and when the sun shines, those lots glitter with the dazzling reflections from the pieces of broken glass that litter the ground...
...Instead, the city has explained, the money has been spent "upgrading" city services to a level they should have been 'for decades, and for building a day care and medical center that should have been built by the city long ago...
...Public housing in Chi- cago has been limited virtually to verti- Buried City enue...
...Faced with the city's attitude, TWO has found itself in the position of dev- il's advocate with City Hall, and, in Chicago at least, that is not the best position...
...There must be a new commitment to solving the problems of the cities, a lew commitment with new ideas and new manpower, a new commitment that uses the strength of community organizations, private industry, and government together instead of at :ross-purposes...
...Now the University wants to lease it to TWO for housing, but the city has yet to give its approval...
...in fact, no sociologist seems to have found a name to describe the community's con- dition...
...The statistics about Woodlawn, compiled in a series of investigative reports on the commu- nity by the Chicago Daily News, are as unique as they are dramatic...
...That is what is happening in Woodlawn now, except that there even the new buildings are not being built because of disputes over princi- ples and policies between the city gov- ernment and the Federal Government...
...By 1940, the community was eighty per cent black...
...The Model Cities concept is a good example of that...
...When one black family finally man- aged to buy a home, the Property Owners League filed an injunction to keep it from moving in, and the fam- ily could not get a clear title to the property...
...Most of the battles that have been fought over property rights and civil rights and human rights have been fought at one time or another in Woodlawn...
...There have been two major prob- lems with the Federal Government's approach, which dates back to the "They can't keep you out for being black, but they might decide your money isn't green enough" "The tragedy is that Wood- lawn is not unique...
...The Chicago Daily News has helped by focusing attention on the plight of Woodlawn...
...Under the urban renewal program the land there was scheduled to go to the University of Chicago for expansion of its south campus...
...Every imaginable urban problem exists in Woodlawn: a high unemployment rate—twelve per cent, a high infant mortality rate, a high crime rate, bad schools, inadequate city services...
...Woodlawn is only a few blocks away, just south of the University, a pleasant walk from Rockefeller chapel on the campus—pleasant until 60th Street or so, where Woodlawn begins...
...Eisenhower Administration...
...With tenant services and maintenance reduced, the building be- gins to deteriorate, and it can decay from shoddy to uninhabitable in a short time...
...The tragedy is that Woodlawn is not unique...
...The ele- vated train tracks straddle its length...
...One of them, a few miles directly south of the Loop, is named Woodlawn...
...It is not...
...All of the remedies for that illness—whether from the left, the right, or the middle—have failed...
...Part of the problem is the FHA's dependence on the Ad- ministration's budget policies—almost $1 billion appropriated by Congress in the past two fiscal years for housing has gone unspent...
...That is not now the case...
...Building codes are supposed to pre- vent this kind of negligence, but codes and most other regulations rarely work according to theory in Chicago...
...On the way out of Woodlawn, a person can drive by the fire station at 63rd and Dorchester...
...THE MAKING OF A GHETTO ABNER J. MIKVA Every major American city has at least a few skeletons in its closet— the mistakes and the tragedies the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall never mention...
...Years ago, the elevated brought busi- ness and people to Woodlawn, making 63rd Street a center of commerce...
...One TWO official said, "We're the only people, besides Jesse [the Reverend Jesse Jackson of the Southern Christian Leadership Confer- ence's Operation Breadbasket], who are on the city's back, and the city doesn't like it...
...Hansberry...
...Model Cities is the Federal Government's first attempt to treat urban problems comprehensively...
...First, there is the dirt and the filth...
...Tenants begin moving out or stop paying their rent...
...He cuts maintenance costs and increases the number of apartment units to make money as quickly as possible...
...The city's plan would have driven many people from Woodlawn, just as they had been driven from Hyde Park-Kenwood...
...Wher- ever the Woodlawns are located, they are easier to avoid than to go there, for they do not attract many tourists or much of the convention trade...
...For anyone who is interested, though, the directions to Chicago's Woodlawn are not difficult...
...The City of Chicago has been in- volved in a chronic war of nerves with the Federal Government over the use of housing funds...
...Chicago happens to have made more than its share of mistakes...
...The red and orange blocks outnumber the yellow ones, but the yellow is beginning to spread...
...Instead, the destruction has its roots in wholesale public indifference and governmental inaction—the American tendency to invest in the new and let the old just die...
...It has turned to private foundations, the Univeristy of Chicago, and the Federal Govern- ment for help to build new housing in Woodlawn and rehabilitate the old...
...The cycle of unchecked urban decay that began in the mid-1950s with over- crowding is having its most tragic ef- fects now, in the fires and the physical destruction of Woodlawn...
...At one point, the FHA "red-lined" Woodlawn—it simply would not insure any construction or rehabilitation loans in the area...
...It provides decent homes for 501 families, with rents beginning at $90 a month...
...On every block, there is ev- idence that society and the government and its programs—local, state, and Fed- eral—have failed...
...Two years ago, the President's National Commission on Urban Problems summarized another problem with FHA: "The numbers, rules, and regulations of FHA pro- grams are confusing...
...And the statistics raise a question: What ever happened to those marvelous housing and rehabilitation and urban renewal programs that have been pro- moted and promised for the last ten years...
...Chicago's response to Woodlawn's lat- est problems has been typical...
...The walls of most of the buildings have been defaced, not with obscenities, but with the names of street gangs like "Blackstone Rangers" and "Casanovas" and "Disciples...
...Urban renewal came to Woodlawn about 1955—not in the form of new housing or better city services, but rather in the form of more people...
...The State's At- torney's office has begun to prosecute landlords who let their buildings be- come unsafe or unhealthy, and the city assessor's office may revalue some of the real property in Woodlawn so that the weight of taxes alone will not drive some building owners to abandonment...
...To begin with, the Chicago program was only pro- visionally approved because there had not been enough community participa- tion in the plan...
...ABNER J. MIKVA, Illinois Democrat, has been a member of the House of Rep- resentatives since 1968...
...If the Federal Govern- ment would not take a risk in Wood- lawn, no private institution would, so nothing was built or rehabilitated in Woodlawn for years...
...The best they have done is delay the inevit- able, and the time has passed when the project-by-project approach will do even that...
...Chicago's housing record never has been auspicious, despite the statistics from City Hall...
...It was one of the first housing developments in the country built by a community organization, and it grew out of that first struggle with the city and the University of Chicago...
...It temporarily robbed Woodlawn of any chance for improve- ment—conditions could only get worse, and they did...
...The World's Fair in 1892 and the elevated train transformed Woodlawn into a sizable community, more urban than suburban...
...Conditions have not been any better for Woodlawn since...
...They were mostly refugees from Hyde Park-Kenwood, a neighborhood that the urban planners and bulldozers changed from a low-income community to a moderate and upper-income one...
...Since January, 1970, almost 400 buildings have been abandoned, burned, or de- molished in Woodlawn...
...The children in the neighborhood seem to prefer play- ing in the buildings to playing on the swings...
...The black migration began in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the trains 'There is a Woodlawn in every big American city...
...The city owns much of the abandoned property and has a good deal to say about how Federal money is spent...
...The city's belligerence has jeopardized the Model Cities program...
...As early as 1950, Woodlawn was al- most all black, and its problems had only begun...
...There were many instances of whites and blacks living in the same apartment building, in the same kind of apartment, but with the blacks paying double the rent...
...Some of the fires are set no doubt by vandals or set accidentally by vagrants trying to keep warm...
...In the beginning, TWO was involved mostly with rent strikes and unfair business practices...
...Like Woodlawn, the ornate muse- um buildings have been a Chicago fix- ture since the World's Fair of 1892, the Columbian Exposition...
...It leaves Woodlawn without decent housing, without community participa- tion in city planning, without access to some Federal assistance...
...People in Woodlawn cannot take ad- vantage of some other Federal pro- grams because Woodlawn has not been designated a "conservation area" by the city of Chicago, which would mere- ly mean that City Hall intends to pre- serve the area rather than destroy it...
...Last year alone, there were 1,600 separate fires in Woodlawn...
...Woodlawn Gardens is solid evidence of what can be done, given the appropriate assistance, and the homes there will not be burned or abandoned...
...In the last four years, an incred- ible number of people, 30,000, have left Woodlawn—or been driven out by fires, fear, or frustration—and now, with the critical shortage of housing in the country, 2,000 living units are empty in Woodlawn...
...To fight this plan, TWO asked for help from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation...
...Now, it has focused on conserving existing and providing new housing...
...All of this physical destruction and social devastation has happened in a relatively short period to one relative- ly small community...
...This project-by-project assistance has not al- ways been there, and the overall his- tory of government housing policies in Woodlawn is a sad story...
...It was difficult for a black family to find a home in Woodlawn then, because virtually all of the residential property in the area was under restrictive cov- enants, a practice encouraged by the Woodlawn Property Owners League— to keep the neighborhood all white...
...None has been comprehen- sive enough to realize that erecting a new building or tearing down an old one does not help as long as poverty, racism, and general urban decay go unchecked...
...Supreme Court (Lee vs...
...Chicago tears down more housing than it puts up...
...Trash and old news- papers and empty bottles clutter the streets, sidewalks, and gutters...
...Begin by taking Lake Shore Drive south from the Loop past the world's largest con- vention center at McCormick Place, past some splendid old residential ho- tels around 55th Street, then turn off at the Museum of Science and Indus- try...
...Land was being appro- priated by the city and the Univer- sity of Chicago—appropriated and planned for use without the consent or the advice of the people of Woodlawn, a clear violation of the Federal urban renewal law...
...The people who live there can vouch for that...
...Both buildings have been abandoned, both have been gutted by fire, both have their roofs caved in...
...It is a community passed by, overlooked, abandoned, and yet struggling to survive...
...From this point, the history of Woodlawn becomes an archetype of the history of urban America...
...Now, the tracks seem to cast only a shadow over the street, and when the trains thunder by overhead, conversa- tion below is impossible...
...He is a member of the Chicago bar and served in the Illinois legislature for five terms...
...By that time, the landlord cannot af- ford the repairs to bring the building up to code standards, so he abandons it...
...Yet, the city holds the key to Woodlawn...
...their incomes were modest, and the neighborhood was pleasant...
...One of the yellow blocks is Woodlawn Gar- dens and an adjoining shopping center at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Av- There have been no riots in Wood- lawn to burn the buildings and the stores...
...The end result of this unchecked cycle of urban decay—on such a large scale—is a community like Woodlawn...
...TWO built Woodlawn Gardens with help from the Kate Maremont Foundation, the Illinois Housing Development Authority, and the Federal Housing Authority...
...The Uni- versity is putting time and money into Woodlawn, not to level it, but to help it...
...It is not diffi- cult to determine how business is go- ing on 63rd Street...
...Inevitably, the process starts with an absentee landlord who has bought an apartment building to make a quick profit...
...They feel that there is a conspiracy between the University and the city and real estate developers...
...Right away, a few special things about this part of Chicago command your attention...
...TWO offi- cially came into being in response to the city's announcement of a massive land clearance and urban renewal plan in Woodlawn...
...There were some early attempts at organizing the residents, but this did not amount to much until about 1961...
...The leaders of TWO now say that since they blocked the city's plan nine years ago, Chica- go's City Hall has not offered them any direct assistance...
...The University's attitude toward Wood- lawn has not always been benevolent (at one point, it even put up a barbed wire barrier between the south cam- pus and Woodlawn), and many Wood- lawn residents still feel the city and the University stand ready to "take over" part of the neighborhood...
...The FHA has changed its policy, but there are still many restrictions on FHA loans, and an FHA insured loan is the exception rather than the rule in Woodlawn...
...The University is do- ing and has done much more than the city for Woodlawn...
...If the windows are smashed or boarded up, if the electrical fixtures are dangling by wires from the ceiling, then the store is closed...
...TWO wants to build 360 more units at 60th Street and Stoney Island, but there is a hitch...
...It always has been difficult to make ab- sentee landlords responsible because their names usually are hidden con- veniently in a land trust—a clever legal device that exists only in Illinois and Florida...
...There is a chance that in ten years or so, Woodlawn will be like Hyde Park-Kenwood—a respectable, modern community—and that the people there will be integrated, and that most of them will be making more than $10,000 a year...
...The effect of this policy was devastating...
...If there is an iron grate over the windows or a collapsi- ble steel covering for the door, then the store is open...
...The case was a victory for the blacks and a turning point for Woodlawn...
...The story of Woodlawn is the story of those empty lots and those empty buildings...
...The case became a national cause and went to the U.S...
...cal slums like the Cabrini-Green pro- ject on the near north side and the Rob- ert Taylor homes on the south side...
...It leaves Woodlawn where it was in 1962...
...Only 35,000 res- idents remain...
...In some blocks of 63rd Street, more of the win- dows have boards than iron grates...
...The fire commis- sioner has agreed to hire more black firemen (there are fewer than 200 blacks on a force of 4,700 in a city that is about one-third black) and to investigate the fires in Woodlawn, but he agreed only after a meeting with TWO and a demonstration by 500 persons at City Hall...
...Four years earlier a study of Woodlawn had found that there were too many aging buildings and not enough playgrounds...
...In other cities it is named something else, for Woodlawn is only one of many skeletons that are the end products of a grave national urban illness...
...By the time the code violations are caught, by the time the landlord or apartment owner is taken to housing court, the building is a shambles...
...Chicago's City Hall has stymied the Federal Gov- ernment, stopping or distorting some programs to protect what it sees as its own interests...
...Where does this leave Woodlawn...
...None has been able to give much help to Woodlawn...
...Across the street is an apartment build- ing that has been hit by fire, and in the window of the fire station itself there is a sign: "Don't Burn Leaves...
...The poorer people will have been driven somewhere else, and they will take the problems of Wood- lawn with them to another community...
...The residents were mostly white and mostly Roman Cath- olic...
...That is when the overcrowding began, starting a cycle that is only now com- ing to an end in Woodlawn...
...Like most neighborhoods in modern urban America, Woodlawn has a set of statistics attached to it...
...the new housing developments are colored yellow...
...The number of government pro- grams and departments established to solve urban problems seems endless: HUD, HEW, Department of Urban Renewal, Chicago Housing Authority, OEO, Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity, FHA, and others...
...Woodlawn's main thoroughfare is 63rd Street...
...A new commitment is the only thing left...
...Six people died in those fires...
...What is not con- fusing is that they have not helped...
...TWO has been fighting the problems for ten years...
...The ap- proach has been piecemeal, project-by- project, program-by-program, and few provisions have been made for dealing with a city government that is reluc- tant and, at times, obstinate...
...Hous- ing is the root problem, though, and, without a solution to that, the urban crisis in Chicago as elsewhere will be with this country for quite some time...
...Chi- cago does not change easily...
...While the case was finding its way through the judicial labyrinth, white real estate agents began urging home owners to break the covenants by sell- ing to black families, and Woodlawn became one of the first victims of panic peddling...
...But some of the fires may well be set by arsonists working for a building owner who wants the insurance money...
...Whatever it is called, the im- pact of Woodlawn is devastating...
...It could become a never-ending proc- ess...
...The Federal Government has helped Woodlawn, but only on a project-by-project basis, and only after delays and confusion— some of them the fault of the city...
...The Federal Depart- ment of Housing and Urban Develop- ment (HUD) right now is holding up a grant of $20 million for neighbor- hood development because the Depart- ment has found that the city consis- tently fails to provide adequate hous- ing for low and moderate income fam- ilies displaced by urban renewal...
...Not far from there, along 65th Street, blocks of abandoned and gutted buildings form a canyon of desolation...
...Just off 63rd Street, on Drexel Av- enue, there is a small play area with swings and a slide, a pocket play- ground...
...of the Illinois Central would bring Ne- groes to the Woodlawn station after the long trip from the deep South...
...Besides housing, it is working with TWO on child care, health care, and legal programs...
...Many black people could not afford to live in the new Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood, and they moved to Woodlawn by the thousands—into buildings that absentee landlords had changed from six roomy flats to eighteen cramped apartment units...
...On a wall map of Woodlawn in TWO's office, the vacant and aban- doned buildings are colored red and orange...
...The city, state, and Federal govern- ments must decide where to draw the line, and where to break the cycle of urban blight...
...Then, Mayor Daley suggested that se- curity guards watch the vacant build- ings to prevent fires...
...Now it is getting some help from the University of Chicago and private foundations...
...Perhaps this country should begin again, discarding all the old tricks that did not work this time...
...As a country, we :annot do any worse than we are doing now...
...From there the road winds around to Midway Plaisance and the University of Chi- cago...
...Woodlawn is a Model Cities target area, theoretically, with millions of dollars to draw on, but the Model Cities program has hot helped improve the quality of housing or the quality of life in Woodlawn...
...Woodlawn might be a model com- munity with neighbors like the Univer- sity, two large public parks and the beach along the shore of Lake Mich- igan not far away, and the prestige of Hyde Park-Kenwood, a respectable, racially integrated community, just to the north...
...In addition, there is one important intangible factor that has not been counted—the desire of the people who live there, who want to keep on living there, and who want to make Wood- lawn a better place to live...
...By 1874, it was described as a "pretty, suburban village," and 63rd Street already was the center of busi- ness...
...Somehow, there has been no accounting for the millions of dollars in housing programs that the Federal Government has pumped into the city...
...Woodlawn is just one square mile in the whole city of Chicago...
...Then, there are the empty lots—count- less empty lots where businesses and homes once stood, now burned down or torn down...
...In Woodlawn, all the city is doing is tear- ing down the burned out and aban- doned buildings and converting them into vacant lots...
...The statistics leave the un- avoidable impression that something has gone amiss, that something like this should not have been allowed to hap- pen in an American city in 1971...
...Somehow, the money has been spent, but there has been no progress...
...Woodlawn is not a model community, though—it has not been for at least twenty-five years...
...Recommenda- tions for solving the problems were sent to City Hall, but they were ig- nored...
...Besides, Chicago has had a long-standing policy of building low-income housing only in black areas, and, for just that reason, HUD did not release the Model Cities money until earlier this year...
...Faced with all of this, some people might feel that the prognosis for Woodlawn is hopeless...
...At first, housing officials refused to admit there was a special problem, that the rate of fires and abandonment was no worse than any other neighborhood...
...Although the Court did not strike down restric- tive covenants generally, it did decide in favor of the black individual...
...Urban renewal and massive clearance without commu- nity participation constituted a pattern that had become common in Chicago...
...Hun- dreds of buildings stand vacant—win- dows without glass, entrances without doors, apartments without people...
...By then, a group of priests and minis- ters had formed the nucleus of what would become a coalition of communi- ty organizations called TWO—The Woodlawn Organization...
...Now, the Chica- go Housing Authority is under a court order to build the next generation of housing in white areas...
...There is a Woodlawn in every big American city, and its very existence is a symptom of a chronic national illness...
Vol. 35 • November 1971 • No. 11
