Quotes of the day: Us versus them

It’s like a big echo chamber. Anything here, you can hear it perfectly.

I don’t really look at other people’s class or their racial background. I expect everybody to live in the building like I live in the building.

– Ian Swope, owner of a one-bedroom condo at the Westhaven Park Tower on the Near West Side.

I don’t think it’s our responsibility to go and confront the people having the problems.

– Kathy Quickery, president of the Westhaven Park Tower condo association.

We just don’t click in with them. They look at you up and down like you crazy and all that.

I feel that that the homeowners are racist toward the CHA residents because some of them paying their rent and some CHA residents not paying no rent. And they’ll speak and I won’t speak back because I’m kind of racist toward the white people.

– David Harris, a renter living in one of Westhaven Park Tower’s 34 homes designated for CHA public housing.

Some residents at Westhaven Park’s nine-story tower are demanding the CHA continue to pay $15,000 to fund 24-hour security that will stop loitering and keep out unwanted guests, according to a story from Chicago Public Radio’s City Room. The story suggests an “us-vs-them mentality is bubbling” at the development, due in part to the lack of a community sentiment between condo owners and CHA renters. ” Condo owners say they are happy to simply come home and enjoy their units,” the story says. “Those who spent years living in public housing say they are used to an environment where everyone knows everyone.”

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