Housing Boss Squeezing Thugs Out of Projects

The tough-talking new boss of the Chicago Housing Authority is determined to drive gang members and drug dealers out of the projects even if it means offending some tenants and upsetting civil libertarians.

“It’s like squeezing an orange, a door-to-door squeeze,” said Vince Lane, who last year took over as chairman of the Housing Authority, a system of 18 complexes that are home to 150,000 people.

“I want them out. I want to keep them out.”

His tactics have included unannounced police sweeps, and many homes have been searched. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit over the warrantless searches.

The chairman, however, takes credit for a 13% drop in the crime rate in the final seven months of 1988.

Lane, 47, has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. He drinks herbal tea for lunch and reads Lee Iacocca’s books in his spare time.

Authoritative Attitude

A divorced former developer and entrepreneur, he is accustomed to getting his way and considers himself anything but a civil servant. His supporters call that an asset. His critics call it a detriment.

“I think some of the things he’s done have been questionable legally, but they’ve been understandable--in dealing with the social decay, the frustration of tenants,” said Gary Orfield, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago. “It’s a lot better than doing nothing.”

For example, at Rockwell Gardens--where eight in 100 residents were reported robbed, raped, assaulted or murdered in 1987--the crime rate fell 32%.

Still, living at Rockwell is no picnic.

“It’s kind of tough,” said Antonio Woods, 14, as he and a group of youngsters cruised the project grounds one afternoon. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know who comes up to you.”

Woods lives in a building recently sand-blasted to remove graffiti and guarded by door monitors who check the identification cards of everyone who enters. When Lane visited this building recently, some residents shouted “Stop the lockdown!” as he passed by.

“It’s like jail,” Woods said of the arrangement.

Plans for Improvements

The shootings on the playground have stopped, but life is still far from perfect, Woods and his friends say. “We need a new playground with some basketball rims,” he added.

Lane would like to see that happen. He has a plan that comes from childhood memories. In the 1950s, he lived across the street from a housing project on the city’s South Side.

“They had neat, nice basketball courts, swimming pools, the whole bit,” he said. “It was far preferable to where I lived.”

Swimming pools might be pushing it, he says, but his plan does call for reseeding the mud-caked lawns, flowers instead of weeds and recreational programs instead of gang activity. Many of the improvements are to come from resident-organized groups financially independent of the housing authority.

“Right now, gangs are the only organized activity for young people,” he said. “When residents are able to not worry about staying alive, they will actively participate in any other activity of a normal community.”

Jack Kemp, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has called Lane’s plan a model for the nation, but praise is more forthcoming than money.

‘Unorthodox’ Approach

“He has a lot of ways and ideas that are not orthodox for public housing, and those unorthodox methods get people’s attention,” said Gertrude Jordan, regional director of HUD, which pays the major share of the Housing Authority’s $150-million annual budget.

But Lane says he is frustrated by a lack of money and the quagmire of bureaucracy he must wade through to get it. Although he has managed to add $8 million to this year’s budget, he estimates it would take $740 million to bring Housing Authority buildings up to par.

Ultimately, what happens in the Housing Authority depends on what happens in Washington, Orfield said.

“(HUD secretary) Jack Kemp wants to pretend housing problems can be solved by good will and enthusiasm at the local level, but you need money to solve the basic problems,” he said. “My feeling is that if Lane doesn’t get some support on a serious level from Washington, his enthusiasm will deteriorate.”

Much of Lane’s ability to get things done comes from his consolidation of power. Since previous Housing Authority chairmen had found policies blocked by infighting and obstinacy on the housing board, Lane said he would not take the job unless he would both chair the board and be the day-to-day operator.

Surprise Searches

The arrangement allowed him to begin the clean-sweep plan in September. Security teams and Chicago police raided seven buildings, searched apartments for squatters and went through dresser drawers and closets for drugs and guns.

“It’s a very gray area here having police do these searches, because they had no warrants,” Gwen Osborne of the ACLU in Chicago said.

The ACLU filed a class-action suit on behalf of the tenants, challenging the searches as violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful searches and seizures and First Amendment rights of freedom of association, she said.

“What we’re saying is people who live in public housing have the same rights as people who live in private housing,” Osborne says.

A settlement between the Housing Authority and the ACLU now prohibits police from searching personal property and entitles the tenants to two days’ notice of inspection unless the Housing Authority determines there is an immediate threat to a building. Under that gray area of the agreement, the Housing Authority can define a threat as the daily living conditions at the projects.

Praise From Police

Deputy Superintendent Rudolph Nimocks, head of the Chicago police investigative services, says Lane’s aggressive attack on gangs and drug dealers was responsible for much of the decline in crime last year.

“Vince Lane’s activism has helped quite a bit,” Nimocks said. “With Vince Lane, we have a stronger day-to-day relationship with the CHA. I talk to him almost every day.”

In the five years before Lane stepped in, the Housing Authority had eight executive directors and five chairmen. By 1987, HUD was threatening to take over the agency because of inefficiency and mismanagement.

Back in the 1930s, the Housing Authority had leading national reformers at the helm, and it was smooth sailing into the 1950s, Orfield said. But in the 1960s, the properties began to represent dead-end housing rather than a steppingstone to middle-class.

The agency became crippled by patronage jobs and contracts, and gross mismanagement, Orfield said.

‘Refreshing Change’

“Lane came in at a time when the CHA had enormous problems and a record of very poor leadership that went back for many years,” Orfield said. “He’s such a refreshing change, people aren’t blaming him for the problems that still plague the projects.”

Lane sees the underlying problem as breaking the cycle of poverty.

“Kids have got to see somebody get up and go to work, rather than sitting around waiting for the welfare check,” he said. “Kids have got to have role models other than the drug dealer or the pimp or the gang leader.”

He wants changes in the federally regulated rules for residency and rent policies that keep people of the same income level in the same buildings. By allowing middle-class families to live in some buildings, Lane thinks, the working people will inspire youngsters to stay in school and out of trouble.

If that takes changing laws, Lane wants to do it, if only to bring back the pleasant, livable communities of the 1950s.

“I don’t consider myself a rocket scientist,” he said. “We’re not talking about going to the moon. The form is there. It worked back then.”