CHA toughens work rules

I have always had my preconceived notion of CHA residents. Sadly there isn't much out there to prove me wrong about these individuals. Once upon time we'd hear about them in the news. For instance someone gets shot and it's likely to be a very young child.

There are still high rises around the city. All too infamous I might add since we've also heard of children either being thrown out of high rise windows to their deaths, falling out of these windows, or indeed losing their lives playing in the elevator shafts. And yet there are those who seems to want to continue staying there.

I'm sure there are those who have no where else to go and no money to go anywhere. Some of this might be thru no fault of their own just hard times and it's possible that we're in some hard times right now. Still there are those who take public housing for granted and thankfully it's still changing. The high rises of the part are gone and projects all over the city are getting refurbished. The high rises are being torn down in favor of smaller scale developments.

They are even changing rules for residents. If you have to live in CHA it should be obvious that you're giving up a lot in order to have a government provided roof over your head. Once upon a time it might have been safety although that is an issue beyond public housing. Still now it's mostly you have to either work or be in school. That's a way to force people to be self-sufficient to want to live on their own.

I forgot to mention one summer in the last couple of years, I drove by some of the still standing projects. Some children were sitting on the curb and they looks dirty and they weren't doing anything exactly so they just so happened to throw stones at the automobiles as they rolled by. This was on State as we just crossed the Stevenson Expressway.

I should wonder, how many of these residents as their buildings are being torn down are leaving willfully? How many are literally forced to the point of having their belongings placed into the public way? How many pretend as if there is no where else for them to go? Or even pretend like they don't know what else to do about their predicaments?

This almost reminds me about this story I blogged about a couple of years ago. Kids playing in another person's yard and engaging in simple assault because someone told them to leave her premises. It's almost as if they're still living in the projects where that kind of behavior was tolerated. I suppose when it comes to moving people out of public housing this type of behavior has to be a concern as well.