Divided Agenda: The Chicago Housing Authority The Chicago Housing Authority is an agency that is at odds with its true nature and goals. It is an agency committed to managing the welfare of the poor and underprivileged. At the same time it is an agency that makes a commitment to the city of Chicago to "take care" of the problem of the black poor. “Take care” in this case seems to mean any means necessary. Whether blacks are transported from one part of the city to another, piled on top of each other as prisoners, or even murdered, there seems to be an unspoken agenda to eliminate the problem. The dichotomy I see is that while some politicians and the more upwardly mobile citizens of Chicago want to help the poor. They also want the problem to go away. African Americans first immigrated to Chicago during the Great Migration of the 1920s. They sought work, education and a better quality of life than the poverty of the rural South. With almost every mass migration of poor people, ghettos formed soon after. Tenements previously inhabited by ethnic whites, such as the Irish, were giving way to black ghettos. The housing was typical of the urban ghetto of the time. Dilapidated buildings, disease and crime. The Chicago Housing Authority began as a means to manage the large amount of poor black residents. “By 1949, Congress, in addressing the postwar housing crisis, had authorized loans and subsidies to build 810,000 low-rent housing units nationwide” (p. 21, Kotlowitz). During the 1950s the first of these new settlements were built. The Cabrini homes were some of these. These early developments were only one or two stories and were well received by the city and its residents. Then the Chicago Housing Authority hired architects who designed a new type of development. A high-rise building (known as a project) where each unit has at least 15-19 floors and approximately 5-15 buildings within each development. There was a political battle over where these projects would be built. After many meetings and court decisions they were finally built on the edge of the existing ghetto. In the 1960s the projects were brand new and many were still under construction. The poor blacks who moved there were happy to finally have a stable place to live, where rents were affordable and the environment was clean...