Chicago Will Remake Cabrini-Green Project

The infamous Cabrini-Green public housing project, long viewed as a gang-ridden pocket of poverty and mayhem, will be remade under an agreement signed Tuesday, housing officials said.

As part of a 10-year plan to downsize and transform the city’s moribund public housing projects for its 130,000 residents with $1.5 billion in federal funds, the Chicago Housing Authority reached agreement with tenant groups to transform the decades-old Cabrini-Green complex.

“This historic opportunity allows us to not only rebuild, but to chart a new future for an entire Chicago community,” said Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Terry Peterson.

The CHA will tear down three vacant, boarded-up high-rises where residents pictured behind caged walkways came to represent often disastrous efforts to house the urban poor.

The CHA, under the management of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, plans to whittle down the number of people living in public housing and create communities with a range of incomes.

Construction has begun on what the CHA officials said will be a balanced, mixed-income Cabrini-Green community, with fewer poor residents than before. The rest will receive housing vouchers to move into private apartments elsewhere.

Half of the development will have homes costing $300,000 or more, 30% will be public housing for the poor with the rest mid-priced at around $150,000 each.