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High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing
In the gripping first-person accounts of High Rise Stories, former residents of Chicago’s iconic public housing projects describe life in the now-demolished high-rises. These stories of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification give voice to those who have long been ignored, but whose hopes and struggles exist firmly at the heart of our national identity.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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2072 people want to read
About the author
Audrey Petty
5 books8 followersAudrey Petty is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A Ford Foundation grantee, her work has been featured in Colorlines, StoryQuarterly, and Saveur, among many others.
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October 29, 2024
High Rise Stories is a compilation of stories told by former tenants of Chicago’s densely-packed public housing. You’ve maybe heard of Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes, high-rise public housing units on the north and south side of Chicago. Former residents recount their times in CHA’s public housing; they also discuss how they felt to see their former homes torn down as part of the Plan for Transformation. While the stories were intriguing, I found this book to:
1. Be out of date — it’s been 11 years since this book was published. And the brand new book I received isn’t updated, which is problematic. It’s been many years since mixed-used housing has been built and lived in. Since this book covers CHA issues and the mixed-used housing situation, surely an update would be helpful. We know so much more now about mixed-used housing — we have the data, the stories. But as of the writing of this book, this was a new concept; therefore, so much is missing. The reader would definitely benefit from understand the impacts of the Plan for Transformation since 2013.
2. I found the book High Risers to be so much more impactful and informative. Not only are there stories from residents in there, the book details the history of CHA and the rise and fall of Chicago’s public housing in a gripping way. This book felt somewhat shallow in comparison, although I can appreciate the stories that were included. If someone is just learning about Chicago’s housing units for the first time, I recommend reading High Risers first.
While the updates and more detailed histories would be impactful changes to this book, my 4-star rating is essentially for the people who felt they could tell their stories, which no doubt was risky. Regarding the rest of the book’s content, a 3 would be more than generous.
1. Be out of date — it’s been 11 years since this book was published. And the brand new book I received isn’t updated, which is problematic. It’s been many years since mixed-used housing has been built and lived in. Since this book covers CHA issues and the mixed-used housing situation, surely an update would be helpful. We know so much more now about mixed-used housing — we have the data, the stories. But as of the writing of this book, this was a new concept; therefore, so much is missing. The reader would definitely benefit from understand the impacts of the Plan for Transformation since 2013.
2. I found the book High Risers to be so much more impactful and informative. Not only are there stories from residents in there, the book details the history of CHA and the rise and fall of Chicago’s public housing in a gripping way. This book felt somewhat shallow in comparison, although I can appreciate the stories that were included. If someone is just learning about Chicago’s housing units for the first time, I recommend reading High Risers first.
While the updates and more detailed histories would be impactful changes to this book, my 4-star rating is essentially for the people who felt they could tell their stories, which no doubt was risky. Regarding the rest of the book’s content, a 3 would be more than generous.
November 17, 2022
Actual footage of me any time I read a nonfiction book . . .
Seriously, though, NonFiction November forces my dumb ass to add some #smort things to my annual recap and for that I am truly thankful. I read High Risers a couple of weeks ago and said all the facts and figures just weren’t for me. I immediately requested this one from the library and am happy to say it was exactly what I was looking for. I need stories about the people who live in the place rather than simply the place itself and these vignettes of the lives of those who resided in Chicago public housing delivered. It even included several who were mentioned/featured in High Risers. Certainly not a feel good read, but completely authentic and brutally honest.
Recommended.
Seriously, though, NonFiction November forces my dumb ass to add some #smort things to my annual recap and for that I am truly thankful. I read High Risers a couple of weeks ago and said all the facts and figures just weren’t for me. I immediately requested this one from the library and am happy to say it was exactly what I was looking for. I need stories about the people who live in the place rather than simply the place itself and these vignettes of the lives of those who resided in Chicago public housing delivered. It even included several who were mentioned/featured in High Risers. Certainly not a feel good read, but completely authentic and brutally honest.
Recommended.
August 9, 2017
Years ago, I attended graduate school in Chicago. Even then I liked climbing to the top of the tallest edifices in the world so one fine morning I was standing on the top floor of the John Hancock building. Back then, the John Hancock building was the second tallest building in Chicago (the Sears Tower, now called the Willis Tower, being the first). As I looked out the window of one side I saw, according the to map on the wall, Cabrini Green.
I had heard of Cabrini Green. The government housing had been made famous by the seventies TV show, "Good Times", but I was surprised to see that it was situated smack dab in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in all of Chicago on the near north close to Lake Shore Drive. I had assumed it was on the South Side where the bulk of public housing and where most of Chicago's ethnic minority lived.
Apparently the thought behind putting Cabrini Green in the near north was that a projects housing development would thrive surrounded by wealth rather than poverty.
It didn't work. Cabrini Green became infamous for being the most dangerous neighborhood in Chicago.
High Rise Stories are a collection of essays written down as they were told by people who lived in the government housing experiment that began in the 1940's and ended in the late nineties when the buildings were finally razed to the ground. The book includes stories by families that lived in Cabrini Green as well as the Robert Taylor Homes, Ida B. Wells Homes and a few other housing development that were built inside mixed income neighborhoods in hopes that the association would allow the black community to integrate with the larger society.
That the experiment became one of the most catastrophic travesties in the history of human rights is a matter of record and the reason why these neighborhoods were ultimately destroyed. While this book does not try to answer how this came to be, the stories from the twenty-five tenement dwellers offer a lot of insight.
Stories from the older inhabitants, people who moved into the apartments during and after WWII, have mostly good memories of living there. The renters had jobs, they paid the affordable rent, their lives were centered around their families-which were intact and nuclear- and the neighborhood community.
Then, starting in the sixties the neighborhoods started changing for the worse. They became more and more dangerous throughout the seventies until in the eighties, they were virtual war zones. Gang violence and drug trafficking were so prolific that it wasn't safe to leave your apartment. Snipers from different gangs staked out on top of the buildings and would shoot passersby, often for random reasons. The most famous incident was when seven year old Dantrell Davis was killed by a sniper as he walked to school.
The stories by people who lived in these homes during the seventies, eighties and nineties have very different stories to tell. Families are no longer intact. None of the narrators in their forties or younger come from a home with a mother and a father. Each had children before reaching their twenties, some were involved in gangs, all of them had gotten involved in drugs. It was the same story of poverty, violence, and criminal records that prevented them from breaking out of a vicious cycle.
As the violence got worse, so did the living conditions. The land lords and maintenance workers refused to make repairs, which caused the apartments to become rat and roach infested, utilities didn't work. People began using the halls for toilets. The elevators wouldn't work and eventually the shafts became filled with trash.
But it didn't start out that way. The tenants of the forties and fifties did not live like that, so what happened?
One can only form conclusions since the book only provides us with stories told by individuals who lived there. One thing that stuck out was the break down of the family. The book records this fact through the narrators but gives no explanation as to why this happened. Neither does it provides any explanation as to why drug -related and gang violence became so prevalent. There is an apparent correlation with the break down of the family unit, parent absenteeism, and crime and violence, but how did this develop?
Another obvious conclusion is that government assistance doesn't help. Families started out strong and ended up dysfunctional under this limited socialist experiment. The government cannot do the families' jobs for them.
The reason for building these neighborhoods is also very telling. Both World Wars left Chicago with an acute labor shortage. This caused a massive migration of black families from the South to come to Chicago for work. The white communities in the city did not want their neighborhoods integrated and riots broke out.
In an effort to quell this, the government created neighborhoods where black people could live safely. That was the original intent of these homes: to stop racial violence. This also explains why the government homes are entirely of one race of people.
It was really a make shift solution at best. Perhaps it did initially quell violence but it also prevented large communities of people from integrating into society and becoming productive members of that society. With government assistance, the short result may have been positive but in the long run it created generational poverty and a horrible environment of squalid living conditions that sounds like something out of Somalia.
When the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) removed people from their homes to raze these building, they gave them housing vouchers so they could move into the new government buildings they were constructing to replace the old ones. It seems the powers that govern Chicago are so committed to their socialist ideologies, they believe that if they start over with the same plan but with brand new buildings, the results will turn out differently. Isn't that some kind of insanity?
The buildings are unnecessary because the original reasons for building them no longer exist. All neighborhoods are open to every race and there are laws that ensure it be so.
A majority of the former occupants of Chicago's Government Homes seem to agree. Less then ten percent have agreed to use the vouchers. The rest have chosen to assimilate with the rest of Chicago. That should tell the housing authority something.
I had heard of Cabrini Green. The government housing had been made famous by the seventies TV show, "Good Times", but I was surprised to see that it was situated smack dab in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in all of Chicago on the near north close to Lake Shore Drive. I had assumed it was on the South Side where the bulk of public housing and where most of Chicago's ethnic minority lived.
Apparently the thought behind putting Cabrini Green in the near north was that a projects housing development would thrive surrounded by wealth rather than poverty.
It didn't work. Cabrini Green became infamous for being the most dangerous neighborhood in Chicago.
High Rise Stories are a collection of essays written down as they were told by people who lived in the government housing experiment that began in the 1940's and ended in the late nineties when the buildings were finally razed to the ground. The book includes stories by families that lived in Cabrini Green as well as the Robert Taylor Homes, Ida B. Wells Homes and a few other housing development that were built inside mixed income neighborhoods in hopes that the association would allow the black community to integrate with the larger society.
That the experiment became one of the most catastrophic travesties in the history of human rights is a matter of record and the reason why these neighborhoods were ultimately destroyed. While this book does not try to answer how this came to be, the stories from the twenty-five tenement dwellers offer a lot of insight.
Stories from the older inhabitants, people who moved into the apartments during and after WWII, have mostly good memories of living there. The renters had jobs, they paid the affordable rent, their lives were centered around their families-which were intact and nuclear- and the neighborhood community.
Then, starting in the sixties the neighborhoods started changing for the worse. They became more and more dangerous throughout the seventies until in the eighties, they were virtual war zones. Gang violence and drug trafficking were so prolific that it wasn't safe to leave your apartment. Snipers from different gangs staked out on top of the buildings and would shoot passersby, often for random reasons. The most famous incident was when seven year old Dantrell Davis was killed by a sniper as he walked to school.
The stories by people who lived in these homes during the seventies, eighties and nineties have very different stories to tell. Families are no longer intact. None of the narrators in their forties or younger come from a home with a mother and a father. Each had children before reaching their twenties, some were involved in gangs, all of them had gotten involved in drugs. It was the same story of poverty, violence, and criminal records that prevented them from breaking out of a vicious cycle.
As the violence got worse, so did the living conditions. The land lords and maintenance workers refused to make repairs, which caused the apartments to become rat and roach infested, utilities didn't work. People began using the halls for toilets. The elevators wouldn't work and eventually the shafts became filled with trash.
But it didn't start out that way. The tenants of the forties and fifties did not live like that, so what happened?
One can only form conclusions since the book only provides us with stories told by individuals who lived there. One thing that stuck out was the break down of the family. The book records this fact through the narrators but gives no explanation as to why this happened. Neither does it provides any explanation as to why drug -related and gang violence became so prevalent. There is an apparent correlation with the break down of the family unit, parent absenteeism, and crime and violence, but how did this develop?
Another obvious conclusion is that government assistance doesn't help. Families started out strong and ended up dysfunctional under this limited socialist experiment. The government cannot do the families' jobs for them.
The reason for building these neighborhoods is also very telling. Both World Wars left Chicago with an acute labor shortage. This caused a massive migration of black families from the South to come to Chicago for work. The white communities in the city did not want their neighborhoods integrated and riots broke out.
In an effort to quell this, the government created neighborhoods where black people could live safely. That was the original intent of these homes: to stop racial violence. This also explains why the government homes are entirely of one race of people.
It was really a make shift solution at best. Perhaps it did initially quell violence but it also prevented large communities of people from integrating into society and becoming productive members of that society. With government assistance, the short result may have been positive but in the long run it created generational poverty and a horrible environment of squalid living conditions that sounds like something out of Somalia.
When the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) removed people from their homes to raze these building, they gave them housing vouchers so they could move into the new government buildings they were constructing to replace the old ones. It seems the powers that govern Chicago are so committed to their socialist ideologies, they believe that if they start over with the same plan but with brand new buildings, the results will turn out differently. Isn't that some kind of insanity?
The buildings are unnecessary because the original reasons for building them no longer exist. All neighborhoods are open to every race and there are laws that ensure it be so.
A majority of the former occupants of Chicago's Government Homes seem to agree. Less then ten percent have agreed to use the vouchers. The rest have chosen to assimilate with the rest of Chicago. That should tell the housing authority something.
Read
February 21, 2018I don't know how this book, which was published five years ago, just hit my radar and I was convinced it was new. But I figured out pretty quickly it wasn't, given the timeframe of these interviews.
This is a really powerful look at the people who lived in the Chicago projects. I grew up hearing about them on the news, the mythology surrounding them, and it was really worthwhile to hear the stories of those who lived there. A wide array of experiences and attachments to those homes are showcased, and this should be valuable reading for anyone who has an interest in Chicago history, race in Chicago, and would make for some companion reading to EVICTED.
The appendices and notes at the end are A+++.
This is a really powerful look at the people who lived in the Chicago projects. I grew up hearing about them on the news, the mythology surrounding them, and it was really worthwhile to hear the stories of those who lived there. A wide array of experiences and attachments to those homes are showcased, and this should be valuable reading for anyone who has an interest in Chicago history, race in Chicago, and would make for some companion reading to EVICTED.
The appendices and notes at the end are A+++.
August 5, 2021
Black Chicago Summer Reading Book #4
5. Incredible. A wonderful combination of personal narrative and research of life in the Chicago Housing Authority public housing projects. I truly loved getting to read each narrator’s experience; the good, the bad, the ugly of living in the projects.
I was moved by the sense of belonging and community that most residents felt in their respective buildings, and devastated by the displacement and mistreatment of residents as the city demolished the dwellings.
This book absolutely piqued my interest in reading even more text about CHA and public housing in Chicago.
So far, this has been my favorite Black Chicago Summer Reading title.
5. Incredible. A wonderful combination of personal narrative and research of life in the Chicago Housing Authority public housing projects. I truly loved getting to read each narrator’s experience; the good, the bad, the ugly of living in the projects.
I was moved by the sense of belonging and community that most residents felt in their respective buildings, and devastated by the displacement and mistreatment of residents as the city demolished the dwellings.
This book absolutely piqued my interest in reading even more text about CHA and public housing in Chicago.
So far, this has been my favorite Black Chicago Summer Reading title.
March 10, 2016
I came across High Rise Stories in an article called "Demolished" on the National Public Radio website. It featured photographs by Patricia Evans, one of which became the cover for this book. It was a thing of luck - and turned out to be an extremely rewarding reading experience.
I had known of Cabrini Green from popular culture - mainly the 1992 horror film Candyman, a long-time favorite. Myself a photographer, I find an ever-changing, almost endless narrative richness in the urban environment, and particularly public housing developments. There are so many stories to tell. This book presents some of them - not visually, but in the oral history fashion; stories of wonderful variety, each of them part of the bigger picture of the densely populated, often demonized inner-city Chicago. A wonderful achievement; I highly recommend this book.
I had known of Cabrini Green from popular culture - mainly the 1992 horror film Candyman, a long-time favorite. Myself a photographer, I find an ever-changing, almost endless narrative richness in the urban environment, and particularly public housing developments. There are so many stories to tell. This book presents some of them - not visually, but in the oral history fashion; stories of wonderful variety, each of them part of the bigger picture of the densely populated, often demonized inner-city Chicago. A wonderful achievement; I highly recommend this book.
September 5, 2017
Although I'm not a huge fan of the oral histories format, this book provides a well-rounded and diverse look at variety of people who grew up in the Chicago projects including the infamous Cabrini Green. It is interesting to see how many people miss the sense of camaraderie they found in such close knit conditions with their neighbors, even while acknowledging the bad memories of gang violence, neglect on building maintenance, crooked police encounters, strict one strike policies, and a lack of job opportunities that kept the cycle of poverty in place.
November 6, 2023
I greatly appreciated the many people who shared their story of living in public housing in Chicago. The editing was poor though. The stories felt disjointed. Additionally, it was clear the interviewers always asked the subject what they liked about living in Public Housing. It felt really forced when a harrowing story of poverty ended in a clearly fake positive note
December 15, 2018
This was my first book in the voice of witness collection, and what makes it really good isn't just the oral histories, which are valuable, but the excellent appendices which give context to the firsthand accounts. I'll definitely be on the lookout for more from this collection.
March 15, 2015
Should you happen to say the phrase "public housing," barely will the syllables escape your mouth before countless targets of blame are identified. The failure of public housing is the fault of: architects for their soulless and impractical high rise designs, planners for their misguided modernist technocrat sensibilities, housing agencies for their incompetence and gross mismanagement, bureaucrats for their usual inefficient meddling, contractors for profiteering and shoddy construction, city governments for cronyism and corruption, the poor themselves for not taking care of what we gave them... And the list goes on.
Personally, as someone who has spent a lot of time learning and thinking about public housing, I believe its colossal failure in the US should occasion a great deal more shame than blame. Shame that we have never been able to commit to the notion that housing is an essential human right. Shame that we couldn't decide the poor deserved to share equal rights with the rich. Shame that we refused to guarantee a minimum level of dignity for those less fortunate. Shame that, when this country had the means to implement adequate public housing, it could not muster the will. Shame that, instead, we were more concerned with transforming provision of a public good into an opportunity for private sector profit. Shame that billions of dollars were wasted to build it, only to realize how inadequate was our investment, so billions more were spent to tear it down. And finally, shame that while we dithered and bickered and wrung our hands about public housing's inhumane conditions, millions of lives were wasted.
High Rise Stories does a good job of illuminating some of the more barbaric conditions that public housing residents endured, but fortunately, it does more than that as well. Through the narratives of twelve people who spent some or all of their lives in one of Chicago's "projects," it shows that even in the midst of the most degraded conditions, hope, resilience, family and community bonds, and even joy, persisted. Some of these stories are more harrowing than others -- imagine that at 13, during a regular tv-watching evening at home, you witness a stray bullet strike your sister in the back of the head, when someone shoots randomly through your front door -- but in some way they all demonstrate the strength of the human spirit.
I am afraid my overly-serious review makes this book sound all gloom and doom. It isn't. Despite frequently difficult subject matter, it's a very readable and accessible collection of narratives. Plus, the Appendices are especially helpful for anyone who wants to learn more about public housing, particularly in Chicago, as it has been affected by the CHA's Plan for Transformation.
Personally, as someone who has spent a lot of time learning and thinking about public housing, I believe its colossal failure in the US should occasion a great deal more shame than blame. Shame that we have never been able to commit to the notion that housing is an essential human right. Shame that we couldn't decide the poor deserved to share equal rights with the rich. Shame that we refused to guarantee a minimum level of dignity for those less fortunate. Shame that, when this country had the means to implement adequate public housing, it could not muster the will. Shame that, instead, we were more concerned with transforming provision of a public good into an opportunity for private sector profit. Shame that billions of dollars were wasted to build it, only to realize how inadequate was our investment, so billions more were spent to tear it down. And finally, shame that while we dithered and bickered and wrung our hands about public housing's inhumane conditions, millions of lives were wasted.
High Rise Stories does a good job of illuminating some of the more barbaric conditions that public housing residents endured, but fortunately, it does more than that as well. Through the narratives of twelve people who spent some or all of their lives in one of Chicago's "projects," it shows that even in the midst of the most degraded conditions, hope, resilience, family and community bonds, and even joy, persisted. Some of these stories are more harrowing than others -- imagine that at 13, during a regular tv-watching evening at home, you witness a stray bullet strike your sister in the back of the head, when someone shoots randomly through your front door -- but in some way they all demonstrate the strength of the human spirit.
I am afraid my overly-serious review makes this book sound all gloom and doom. It isn't. Despite frequently difficult subject matter, it's a very readable and accessible collection of narratives. Plus, the Appendices are especially helpful for anyone who wants to learn more about public housing, particularly in Chicago, as it has been affected by the CHA's Plan for Transformation.
June 27, 2015
The recording of oral histories is, to me, a crucial necessity, be it for war survivors, marginalized communities, or whomever else pop culture and the puppet-media ignores across generations and cultures. Having grown up in the '70s and '80s at the far fringe of Chicagoland, I too fell prey to the awful stereotypes, media portrayals, and horror stories surrounding "the projects," with Cabrini-Green as the foreboding centerpiece. Of course Gary, Indiana, wasn't a playground either.
While unraveling the complex issues that gave rise to--and ultimately tore down--such housing projects is painful to know about, they provide a valuable learning experience for future ideas and policies to better help those who need it. I have no doubt that we can build strong communities that can be immune to disrepair and disenfranchisement with proper opportunities and social-support systems created and maintained. This is me being uncharacteristically optimistic. Of course with political classism/racism being ever-present, there are powerful reasons to doubt.
Here, we get some choice first-person accounts from people who actually lived in these buildings in Chicago, with a nice range of ages to cast light on different eras. This type of stuff is a sociologist's wet dream. There's also a wonderful documentary film called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that was on Netflix (not sure if it still is), and covers the construction-to-demolition timeline of a similar housing project in St. Louis.
While unraveling the complex issues that gave rise to--and ultimately tore down--such housing projects is painful to know about, they provide a valuable learning experience for future ideas and policies to better help those who need it. I have no doubt that we can build strong communities that can be immune to disrepair and disenfranchisement with proper opportunities and social-support systems created and maintained. This is me being uncharacteristically optimistic. Of course with political classism/racism being ever-present, there are powerful reasons to doubt.
Here, we get some choice first-person accounts from people who actually lived in these buildings in Chicago, with a nice range of ages to cast light on different eras. This type of stuff is a sociologist's wet dream. There's also a wonderful documentary film called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that was on Netflix (not sure if it still is), and covers the construction-to-demolition timeline of a similar housing project in St. Louis.
Read
December 3, 2013"This is a somewhat odd recommendation, because I have only just begun reading the book, High Rise Stories—Voices from Chicago Public Housing, by Audrey Petty. My students and I spent six years working from the ground floor of Stateway Gardens, a family public housing high rise as the development was gradually demolished building by building as a part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation. Much like the personal stories in this book, our experiences at Stateway complicated our understanding of life in Chicago public housing communities. While the communities were often most known from the outside by conditions of extreme poverty and violence (images of “gangbangers” and drug dealers had a tendency to eclipse all other life), we came to know a real community—individuals and families who adapted to conditions of abandonment. We experienced regular acts profound generosity, care for others, and downright neighborliness that are often lacking in modern neighborhoods. As I recognize the many problems faced by the people there, I also find myself tearing up as I look at the vacant land where hundreds of families once lived. Audrey Petty, whom I know to be a gifted writer and teacher, shares a number of personal narratives in this book that have the potential to complicate all of our understanding of Chicago public housing communities." - Craig Futterman
January 29, 2014
Fascinating insights into a world that we know a little about from movies TV and the news, but which is often wildly misrepresented. All the expected stories of drugs, teenage pregnancy, random shooting, gang-banging and police indifference and brutality are here, but so also are stories of community, shared lives, overcoming disadvantage and belonging. The experiences and struggles of the individuals who tell their tales in this book reinforce the underlying common humanity that so often is denied by those that want to write off the most marginal members of society.
This book also makes one happy to live in a country where we managed to do slightly better at these problems, but also acts as a warning against sliding down the same slippery slope as America did.
This book also makes one happy to live in a country where we managed to do slightly better at these problems, but also acts as a warning against sliding down the same slippery slope as America did.
August 28, 2025
“Chicago's Black Belt took shape at the turn of the twentieth century. As a result of the Great Migration, the city's black population increased eight-fold from 1910 through the 1940s, and this growing population was relegated to a space that didn't expand to keep apace with its numbers. Black Chicagoans were hemmed in principally to areas on the South Side (and secondarily on the West Side) of the city.“
“Defunded by city, state, and federal governments over the course of the 1970s forward, high-rise public housing was chronically neglected and mismanaged. Common physical plant troubles encountered by residents have included backed-up incinerators, perpetually broken elevators, and infestations of roaches and vermin. These problems were compounded by ongoing crises that occasionally made the national nightly news: rampant gang drug dealing, turf wars, and gun violence.”
“Rebuilding has not kept apace with demolition, and a great number of displaced families find themselves in poor and underserved neighborhoods. The city government demolished twenty-five thousand public housing units and simultaneously relocated over one hundred thousand people. And nothing is settled.”
“Even when the elevators were working, the lights were out half the time. They used to call them death traps. People got their arms or their body caught up in there. The elevator closed tight, like a clamp. You'd have to hold it with both hands and try to open the door if it was shutting. There was no safety sensor. People were routinely stuck, hurt, or trapped in there. They had one red button bell to ring, but that didn't do anything. People got hurt, but when I grew up I never saw ambulances.”
“Around 1988, someone shot and killed a policeman in the neighborhood. Maybe hours later, early morning after the shooting, there were forty-five policemen lined up on the fire lane right outside. They were about to go door to door to search each apartment. It’s sad that a cop got shot, but where were these raids when children were getting killed? They never went door to door when a little kid got shot. They never went door to door when a woman was abused, or shot or whatever. What was so different? Why were some lives valued more than ours? I never understood that.”
“One time, when I was very young, this girl, my older sister's friend, was playing around in the front of the building and the gate actually fell on her. It was a really big, wrought iron fence gate and it fell on her. It messed her leg up, and it’s still messed up to this day.
Management staff would say, "Well she shouldn't have been playing on the gate." But the gate was broke. It had been leaning for months, maybe more, and nobody ever came to fix it. We always complained about it, and nobody ever did anything. It took the gate falling on a child and her breaking her leg for building management to actually do something. They fixed it a couple days after the accident. And it was a really big deal in that neighborhood, because we always, always, always told them to fix that gate, and they just wouldn't do it.”
Good stuff, yet I’ve read too much just like it to be really educated or surprised. Still, I keep returning, and both sadness and anger continue to accompany me.
“Defunded by city, state, and federal governments over the course of the 1970s forward, high-rise public housing was chronically neglected and mismanaged. Common physical plant troubles encountered by residents have included backed-up incinerators, perpetually broken elevators, and infestations of roaches and vermin. These problems were compounded by ongoing crises that occasionally made the national nightly news: rampant gang drug dealing, turf wars, and gun violence.”
“Rebuilding has not kept apace with demolition, and a great number of displaced families find themselves in poor and underserved neighborhoods. The city government demolished twenty-five thousand public housing units and simultaneously relocated over one hundred thousand people. And nothing is settled.”
“Even when the elevators were working, the lights were out half the time. They used to call them death traps. People got their arms or their body caught up in there. The elevator closed tight, like a clamp. You'd have to hold it with both hands and try to open the door if it was shutting. There was no safety sensor. People were routinely stuck, hurt, or trapped in there. They had one red button bell to ring, but that didn't do anything. People got hurt, but when I grew up I never saw ambulances.”
“Around 1988, someone shot and killed a policeman in the neighborhood. Maybe hours later, early morning after the shooting, there were forty-five policemen lined up on the fire lane right outside. They were about to go door to door to search each apartment. It’s sad that a cop got shot, but where were these raids when children were getting killed? They never went door to door when a little kid got shot. They never went door to door when a woman was abused, or shot or whatever. What was so different? Why were some lives valued more than ours? I never understood that.”
“One time, when I was very young, this girl, my older sister's friend, was playing around in the front of the building and the gate actually fell on her. It was a really big, wrought iron fence gate and it fell on her. It messed her leg up, and it’s still messed up to this day.
Management staff would say, "Well she shouldn't have been playing on the gate." But the gate was broke. It had been leaning for months, maybe more, and nobody ever came to fix it. We always complained about it, and nobody ever did anything. It took the gate falling on a child and her breaking her leg for building management to actually do something. They fixed it a couple days after the accident. And it was a really big deal in that neighborhood, because we always, always, always told them to fix that gate, and they just wouldn't do it.”
Good stuff, yet I’ve read too much just like it to be really educated or surprised. Still, I keep returning, and both sadness and anger continue to accompany me.
October 11, 2025
A great read right after High Risers - just additional stories and voices highlighting the stories from multiple Chicago housing projects. It really is enlightening on the cycles of poverty and mass incarceration, and how housing is fundamental to human rights. Highly recommend
March 19, 2025
such an interesting project. i enjoy reading about the lived experiences individuals with very different backgrounds, and being from chicago and going to elementary school in “the old cabrini green” has made this read especially personal and meaningful.
March 9, 2015
I appreciated the work that went into this anthology. The editors collected oral histories from people who lived in high rise public housing in Chicago, and completed the book with articles about housing policy, the decision to tear down high rise towers, and maps of Chicago.
I loved the variety of perspectives the editors chose: people with fond childhood memories of their communities, parents who struggled to keep their children safe in the high rises, community advocates and organizers. These human stories should be required reading for anyone who works on the issues of affordable housing and homelessness. These voices demonstrate the true effects of policies that sound good on paper, but have different real world implications. A woman relocated to mixed-income housing refuses to have her children's birthday parties at her home, because of the prejudice of her higher income homeowner neighbors. An elderly woman's son cannot visit her at home upon re-entry because of the one-strike policy. Overall, it's a complex, humanizing portrait that avoids any easy, prescriptive answers on poverty, prejudice, and the need for affordable homes.
I loved the variety of perspectives the editors chose: people with fond childhood memories of their communities, parents who struggled to keep their children safe in the high rises, community advocates and organizers. These human stories should be required reading for anyone who works on the issues of affordable housing and homelessness. These voices demonstrate the true effects of policies that sound good on paper, but have different real world implications. A woman relocated to mixed-income housing refuses to have her children's birthday parties at her home, because of the prejudice of her higher income homeowner neighbors. An elderly woman's son cannot visit her at home upon re-entry because of the one-strike policy. Overall, it's a complex, humanizing portrait that avoids any easy, prescriptive answers on poverty, prejudice, and the need for affordable homes.
August 28, 2014
I really liked this book although it was tough to read and it took me a long time to finish it. The authors or compliers really set out to just tell people's stories but by the end it seems as if they are as outraged by the injustice as we are and they conclude the oral narratives with pages and pages of dry reports about the design, building and destruction of the projects. The real story, of course, is told in these appendices.
One quote stands out. "...cumulatively about 17.5% of CHA 10/1/1999 households (16,500 HOUSEHOLDS, not individuals, as counted on October 1, 1999) with a Right of Return (an offer of vouchers or a priority placement in mixed-income housing) may have lost their housing assistance due to the Plan for Transformation (the destruction of the projects)."
All this means is between the condemnation of the projects and today, 3000 households were permanently displaced, without accounting in addition those who have died or who the CHA was unable to track. This is the real story of this book, the story of displaced persons whose homes, however violent and unsafe, were demolished out from under them.
One quote stands out. "...cumulatively about 17.5% of CHA 10/1/1999 households (16,500 HOUSEHOLDS, not individuals, as counted on October 1, 1999) with a Right of Return (an offer of vouchers or a priority placement in mixed-income housing) may have lost their housing assistance due to the Plan for Transformation (the destruction of the projects)."
All this means is between the condemnation of the projects and today, 3000 households were permanently displaced, without accounting in addition those who have died or who the CHA was unable to track. This is the real story of this book, the story of displaced persons whose homes, however violent and unsafe, were demolished out from under them.
October 25, 2013
According to this amazingly well-edited book of personal narratives, there actually were some good times in the projects where Good TImes, the TV show took place. But the similarity ends there, and horrific times were more plentiful. What I can't get over is how this kind of living causes the people who live there to, at their worst and frequently, snipe each other from their windows and balconies, even children—cops I get (and they do that too.) But this is what we hear about in the news about what's going on in the middle East and other parts of the third world--right here. I was fascinated and horrified by the stories in this book. What's even more amazing than the actual events of terror that happen daily is how the narrators clearly adapted to it, and often didn't think it was really so bad. Other times, they were afraid to cross in front of their own front door when it was closed—WHEN THEY WERE INSIDE—for fear of gun shots. Yeah.
October 6, 2013
This is such an important book. It doesn't posit answers to the huge social problems of poverty, racism, urban blight and overcrowding; it simply presents the stories, in their own vivid and strong voices, of twelve people who lived the experience of growing up in CPH and then being forced out when the buildings were pulled down. For those who believe that sociopolitical issues are never abstract but rooted in the lives of individuals, answers can only arrive when we hear those actual individuals and know the details of their experience, their feelings. I read the book in two days, riveted by the narratives and helped in my larger historical understanding by the appendices at the back of the book. These are people who live all around me. I need to know about them. I am now going to seek out other volumes in the Voices of Witness series.
September 24, 2014
If you ever looked at a high rise project you need to read this book.
A compelling and informative read about Chicago's public housing system. As someone who has worked around, and responded to emergencies in public housing for 20 years I found the stories both heart wrenching and illuminating. The stories are complimented by appendices that track the development of public housing in Chicago by time line, excepts from CHA and Architectural analysis of the low and high rise projects, and an article from Harpers that ties the whole thing together. If you have an opinion about public housing in any way your should read this book and consider why public housing in Chicago became the environment that it did. This is only one piece of a wider economic, sociological, and legal system but it's an important one.
A compelling and informative read about Chicago's public housing system. As someone who has worked around, and responded to emergencies in public housing for 20 years I found the stories both heart wrenching and illuminating. The stories are complimented by appendices that track the development of public housing in Chicago by time line, excepts from CHA and Architectural analysis of the low and high rise projects, and an article from Harpers that ties the whole thing together. If you have an opinion about public housing in any way your should read this book and consider why public housing in Chicago became the environment that it did. This is only one piece of a wider economic, sociological, and legal system but it's an important one.
June 23, 2015
This is an insightful abook about the demise of the public housing buildings in Chicago and the people who lived there. Each chapter is about a person's living experiences in a partticular project, the dismantling of that building, and life thereafter. It was, overall, a difficult life, although many seemed fairly happy there. It was after they left the projects that many suffered even more because of lack of education, support, and the inability to get and/or hold a job that would support them.
It is also portrays a picture of how the government and city planners built and then so poorly managed the housing project system. Can we trust them to help people? Is this also a lesson in trusting others with our lives or should we pull up our boot straps and do it ourselves, if at all possible.
It is also portrays a picture of how the government and city planners built and then so poorly managed the housing project system. Can we trust them to help people? Is this also a lesson in trusting others with our lives or should we pull up our boot straps and do it ourselves, if at all possible.
October 1, 2014
Incredible and moving oral histories, in the tradition of Studs Terkel, from residents of Chicago's high rise public housing units. When I moved to Chicago, it was two years into the CHA's "Plan for Transformation"-- now its 15th anniversary-- and some families had already been displaced while other high rise buildings still stood. It was fascinating to read these stories, across generations and time and neighborhoods, and to hear the ways people remember home and community. Though the high rises are all gone, Chicago's housing crisis is ever-present-- but no doubt it looks different now that the towers don't flank the highways.
December 6, 2014
I've never read a book quite like this. The only thing that comes close is "Voices from Chernobyl," also an oral narrative, but while that one chronicled the horrors of post-meltdown Russia and Ukraine, this one leavens the horrors of public housing (and there are plenty: gang activity, rodent infestations, random apartment searches by police, drugs, prostitution, snipers, etc.) with the joys of family life and burgeoning community identity. A startling, remarkable, moving, and necessary read. I'll be recommending this to a lot of people.
March 20, 2015
This book consists of transcribed interviews with former residents of "the projects," as well as appendixes pertaining to the history of public housing in Chicago. While the projects were far from ideal, the former residents speak of the sense of community that was fostered there, a community that was severely disrupted when the buildings were destroyed. Most of those interviewed have a connection with incarceration, shootings, drug use, violent crime, poverty. This book describes and makes real a part of America that one does not often read about. Studs Terkel lives!
May 9, 2018
Fascinating true stories from people that have lived so unlike how I have. A very excellent look into the lives of people that grew up in housing projects and how they think and feel about it and it definitely made me feel differently about it. Each story feels like you're actually hearing it straight from the person as the writing mirrors their speech patterns, so each story is unique in that way.
October 6, 2013
I love the Voice of Witness books. What I would really have liked about this one would have been if it was longer. Or fact-checking. A lot of the residents alleged things that would have been possible to fact check.
Even so, the book is memorable. I really did get a picture, a feel, for how it was living in CHA housing in Chicago.
Even so, the book is memorable. I really did get a picture, a feel, for how it was living in CHA housing in Chicago.
November 18, 2013
I wanted to be more into this than I was. As one good friend put it "Why aren't you on the bus with me?" These stories are crucial, and it's important that everybody 1) recognize these voices, 2) *hear* these voices, and 3) hear these stories. On the other hand, it's just difficult for me personally to get this kind of storytelling off the page, because I am so used to getting it aurally.
January 27, 2014
Interesting collection of first person stories from the "projects" of Chicago. Reinforces my thoughts that poverty and lack of opportunity is what leads to most of the violence in these communities. Also reinforces that most people seem to try to act in their best interests; broken incentives are frequently at fault of "poor" decisions.
January 4, 2014
This collection of first person narratives from former residents of Chicago's public housing is an eye-opener. While the narratives differ greatly from each other, each voice is brave, genuine, and earnest. Editor Audrey Petty has done a fantastic job compiling these very important stories. If you have any interest in public housing, city planning, or urban poverty, I highly recommend this book.
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