Entrepreneurship Solves Low-income Housing in Chicago - Essay Example

This violence did not stop as they continued for long, whereby it claimed the live of a seven-year old boy in the year 1992. The boy was downed by a stray bullet as he was on his way to school. However, the most aggressive attack that was experienced in the area happened in the year 1997, when a nine-year old girl was cruelly attacked, choked, raped and then poisoned, which left he in a position that she could not be able to talk or walk. The then mayor of Chicago, Jane Byrne, in the year 1981 decided to move into the complex and stay there for some few months so as to ascertain and see for herself the seriousness of the problems of the housing project (Venkatesh, et al 37).

Abolishing the project to eradicate the problem The arrangement to demolish the Cabrini-Green project was part of an extensive program. The Chicago Housing Authority, in the year 2000, made an announcement on an arrangement to bring down ass the public housing projects that were in the city as part of the Hope VI, which is a national project aimed at abolishing housing projects across the nation due to their apparent failure in solving the problem of cheap and affordable housing in the city and country as a whole (Venkatesh, et al 41).

Notwithstanding the terrible conditions of the Cabrini-Green, the people who lived there ganged up against the plans of redevelopment that had been offered by the planners of the city. Nevertheless, the community was apprehensive of the fact that the new mixed-income housing project would force out the longtime residents of Cabrini-Green. However, some individuals decided to stay in their units vowing never to vacate, instead of moving to what to what they perceived as the same conditions of living further removed from the center of the city.

Whereas their schemes were successful in delaying of the demolition of numerous buildings, the interference did not last longer. At present, the area whereby the famous Cabrini-Green stood at one time has been changed and what is currently there is a mixed-income neighborhood, which is only a few minutes away from one of the most developed or affluent areas of Chicago known as the Gold Coast (Brian & Beauty 20). Majority of the former residents have ultimately been replaced. In total, they consist of about twenty thousand apartments, nearly half of the funded housing units that are under the management of Chicago Housing Authority.

The drab flats are heavily concentrated in the deteriorated areas just beyond the flourishing central business district, and confront several commuters that are Loop-bound everyday. Their broken elevators, garbage, crime, stairwells that are urine-stained and crime just show the several years of desertion and neglect, and deride the dreams that established them. As initially considered by the reformers, we find that public housing program was supposed to be a place whereby the people of low-income category lived until they were in a position of affording something better.

The idea was establishment of decent and integrated homes; but instead, Chicago’s public housing is characterized by communal despair, poor conditions of living, poverty, segregation and criminal acts (Brian & Beauty 24). This is much common in the projects of high-rises. They were at one time conceived as ideal for the housing of