Diane L. Gottlieb's building (second from left) in the 1600 block of South Homan Avenue in North Lawndale has been the subject of a city lawsuit over code violations since July 2014. Gottlieb gets $1,925 a month in rent for two apartments there leased by CHA voucher-holders. The CHA covers 87 percent of that. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Chris Fusco, Tim Novak, Mick Dumke and Brett Chase
From her 49th-floor condo at Lake Point Tower, Diane L. Gottlieb oversees a public housing empire that brings her nearly $1 million a year in government-subsidized rent.
Gottlieb, 55, has a growing portfolio of apartments — from swanky digs in a Gold Coast high-rise to rundown buildings on the South Side and the West Side — that she leases to dozens of tenants whose rent is covered in full or in part by the Chicago Housing Authority.
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The buildings include a brick three-flat in the 1600 block of South Homan in North Lawndale, one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, that Gottlieb bought three years ago for $30,000 after the property went into foreclosure.
Today, she gets back more than a tenth of her purchase price every month — $3,032 — in rent from that building, with two-thirds of that coming out of federal tax dollars managed by the CHA.
Diane Gottlieb leaves housing court at the Daley Center on April 13. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Diane Gottlieb leaves housing court at the Daley Center on April 13. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Gottlieb owns seven of the 30 residential buildings on this block, which is littered with trash, vacant lots and boarded-up homes. Her tenants on South Homan include 21 people who live in 10 apartments with rent subsidies provided by the CHA’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly known as Section 8.
Six of her buildings on South Homan have a history of building-code violations.
That’s not unusual for landlords renting to CHA voucher-holders, according to a Chicago Sun-Times and Better Government Association investigation that found that thousands of voucher tenants are living in buildings that have been cited by City Hall inspectors over the past five years for code violations.
The Sun-Times and BGA also found that, despite the CHA’s massive “Plan for Transformation” of public housing, most of the more than 44,000 voucher tenants continue to live in high-crime, poverty-riddled neighborhoods on the South Side and the West Side where the bulk of the housing agency’s tenants lived in the days of the old CHA high-rise projects.
CHA about the series boxThe CHA began demolishing Cabrini-Green, the Robert Taylor Homes and other projects 16 years ago, aiming to help people find better housing options. Since then, providing housing for poor people has become a growth industry for private landlords that lap up government funding by catering to the need for low-income housing.
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# Beyond the Rubble Chicago
Business 04/23/2016, 08:59am
Comfortable apartment, but ‘neighborhood is trouble’
Taura Willhite says drug-dealing and other crimes make her want to move from the apartment on South Homan she leases with a CHA voucher. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
Taura Willhite says drug-dealing and other crimes make her want to move from the apartment on South Homan she leases with a CHA voucher. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
Mick Dumke
@mickeyd1971 | email
Tim Novak
@tnovaksuntimes | email
Chris Fusco
@FuscoChris | email
Brett Chase
email
After moving around the city for years, Taura Willhite is glad to now be in a comfortable apartment, with a landlord who’s prompt to respond when she calls with a maintenance request.
What she doesn’t like, though, is the area around the three-story greystone in the 1600 block of South Homan in North Lawndale where she lives. It’s bad enough that she wants to move out.
“The neighborhood is trouble,” says Willhite, 40, a disabled mother who lives there with the help of a Section 8 voucher from the Chicago Housing Authority. “There’s a lot of drug sales and gun violence.”
Under its “Plan for Transformation,” the CHA demolished badly managed, high-rise housing projects in “the largest, most ambitious redevelopment effort of public housing in the United States.” The aim was to help people find better housing options and, with that, to improve their prospects for work, education and quality of life.
“We want to rebuild their souls,” former Mayor Richard M. Daley said of the city’s public housing residents.
More than a decade and a half later, Willhite lives on a trashed-out block that includes 76 CHA-subsidized residents — among them former tenants of the long-gone high-rises. Amid vacant lots and boarded-up homes, they live in 14 buildings, some of them with a history of code violations.
In 1966, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived just a short walk away from here while waging his Chicago campaign “to help eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment.’’
Fifty years later, vacant lots dot the block where Willhite lives. The buildings there include a century-old single-family home and four three-flats built during the housing boom of the early 2000s.
In the past year, the police have logged 67 crimes on this block — including drug dealing, armed robbery and aggravated battery. Shootings, sexual assaults and other violent crimes have been reported on neighboring blocks.
The CHA provides Taura Willhite with a housing voucher to live in this six-flat, center, on South Homan Avenue. Her landlord plans to rehab the abandoned building next door. Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
The CHA provides Taura Willhite with a housing voucher to live in this six-flat, center, on South Homan Avenue. Her landlord plans to rehab the abandoned building next door. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
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# Beyond the Rubble Taura Willhite North Lawndale
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Chris Fusco, Tim Novak, Mick Dumke and Brett Chase
From her 49th-floor condo at Lake Point Tower, Diane L. Gottlieb oversees a public housing empire that brings her nearly $1 million a year in government-subsidized rent.
Gottlieb, 55, has a growing portfolio of apartments — from swanky digs in a Gold Coast high-rise to rundown buildings on the South Side and the West Side — that she leases to dozens of tenants whose rent is covered in full or in part by the Chicago Housing Authority.
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The buildings include a brick three-flat in the 1600 block of South Homan in North Lawndale, one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, that Gottlieb bought three years ago for $30,000 after the property went into foreclosure.
Today, she gets back more than a tenth of her purchase price every month — $3,032 — in rent from that building, with two-thirds of that coming out of federal tax dollars managed by the CHA.
Diane Gottlieb leaves housing court at the Daley Center on April 13. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Diane Gottlieb leaves housing court at the Daley Center on April 13. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times
Gottlieb owns seven of the 30 residential buildings on this block, which is littered with trash, vacant lots and boarded-up homes. Her tenants on South Homan include 21 people who live in 10 apartments with rent subsidies provided by the CHA’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly known as Section 8.
Six of her buildings on South Homan have a history of building-code violations.
That’s not unusual for landlords renting to CHA voucher-holders, according to a Chicago Sun-Times and Better Government Association investigation that found that thousands of voucher tenants are living in buildings that have been cited by City Hall inspectors over the past five years for code violations.
The Sun-Times and BGA also found that, despite the CHA’s massive “Plan for Transformation” of public housing, most of the more than 44,000 voucher tenants continue to live in high-crime, poverty-riddled neighborhoods on the South Side and the West Side where the bulk of the housing agency’s tenants lived in the days of the old CHA high-rise projects.
CHA about the series boxThe CHA began demolishing Cabrini-Green, the Robert Taylor Homes and other projects 16 years ago, aiming to help people find better housing options. Since then, providing housing for poor people has become a growth industry for private landlords that lap up government funding by catering to the need for low-income housing.
Read More
# Beyond the Rubble Chicago
Business 04/23/2016, 08:59am
Comfortable apartment, but ‘neighborhood is trouble’
Taura Willhite says drug-dealing and other crimes make her want to move from the apartment on South Homan she leases with a CHA voucher. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
Taura Willhite says drug-dealing and other crimes make her want to move from the apartment on South Homan she leases with a CHA voucher. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
Mick Dumke
@mickeyd1971 | email
Tim Novak
@tnovaksuntimes | email
Chris Fusco
@FuscoChris | email
Brett Chase
After moving around the city for years, Taura Willhite is glad to now be in a comfortable apartment, with a landlord who’s prompt to respond when she calls with a maintenance request.
What she doesn’t like, though, is the area around the three-story greystone in the 1600 block of South Homan in North Lawndale where she lives. It’s bad enough that she wants to move out.
“The neighborhood is trouble,” says Willhite, 40, a disabled mother who lives there with the help of a Section 8 voucher from the Chicago Housing Authority. “There’s a lot of drug sales and gun violence.”
Under its “Plan for Transformation,” the CHA demolished badly managed, high-rise housing projects in “the largest, most ambitious redevelopment effort of public housing in the United States.” The aim was to help people find better housing options and, with that, to improve their prospects for work, education and quality of life.
“We want to rebuild their souls,” former Mayor Richard M. Daley said of the city’s public housing residents.
More than a decade and a half later, Willhite lives on a trashed-out block that includes 76 CHA-subsidized residents — among them former tenants of the long-gone high-rises. Amid vacant lots and boarded-up homes, they live in 14 buildings, some of them with a history of code violations.
In 1966, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived just a short walk away from here while waging his Chicago campaign “to help eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment.’’
Fifty years later, vacant lots dot the block where Willhite lives. The buildings there include a century-old single-family home and four three-flats built during the housing boom of the early 2000s.
In the past year, the police have logged 67 crimes on this block — including drug dealing, armed robbery and aggravated battery. Shootings, sexual assaults and other violent crimes have been reported on neighboring blocks.
The CHA provides Taura Willhite with a housing voucher to live in this six-flat, center, on South Homan Avenue. Her landlord plans to rehab the abandoned building next door. Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
The CHA provides Taura Willhite with a housing voucher to live in this six-flat, center, on South Homan Avenue. Her landlord plans to rehab the abandoned building next door. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
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# Beyond the Rubble Taura Willhite North Lawndale
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