The Chicago Reporter recently rolled out an impressive package of articles and graphs documenting the decline of the Chicago Housing Authority‘s political clout over the last eight years.
According to the feature, which drew on numbers provided by the Board of Elections, the CHA’s ongoing overhaul of its public housing developments has resulted in fewer low-income voters in each ward – thereby threatening the funding of the CHA by diluting this critical voting populace.
In 2000 about 94 percent of voters at the 22 developments analyzed by The Chicago Reporter were clustered in eight wards in November 2000. Public housing voters accounted for nearly 23 percent of all voters in the 3rd Ward, nearly 17 percent in the 2nd Ward and about 9 percent in both the 4th and 9th wards.
But by September 2007, those who still remained on the voting rolls were spread out among all 50 wards in the city and accounted for no more than 5.4 percent of the voters in any ward.
As part of the CHA’s $1.6 billion transformation plan, affordable housing units have been inserted into a number of mixed-income developments around the city. Read more about affordable housing topics on YoChicago.