What went wrong with public housing in Chicago? A history of the Robert Taylor homes

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2001 by Hunt, D Bradford

Several management problems resulted directly from poor engineering, particularly in essential components such as heating systems and elevators. At Taylor, the project's heating system typified the daily management problems facing the CHA. To cut costs, CHA planners selected a heating system untried in public housing that used water at 400 degrees kept in a liquid state by 400 pounds of pressure per square inch. During construction, two workers were killed when a pipe exploded. The volatile system failed frequently, resulting in loss of heat to residents during winter months. In 1974, after four years of discussion, the heating plant was scrapped entirely and replaced with a more conventional system at a cost of $14 million.65

Equally serious were dangerous and broken elevators. Taylor's gallery design left elevator shafts relatively exposed to harsh Chicago winters, and breakdowns routinely crippled buildings. In 1963, the death of three children in a fire was blamed on a faulty elevator that forced firemen to walk up 14 flights.66 By 1967, the CHA admitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that its tenants had made numerous complaints about breakdowns and "unsanitary and unsightly conditions" in elevators, but the CHA offered no realistic solution to the problem.67 In the late 1970s, audits discovered that Otis and Westinghouse elevator maintenance repair crews had performed substandard work, padded work orders, and systematically defrauded the CHA while leaving elevators out of service for extended periods. The CHA lacked staff qualified to supervise its elevator contract, leaving it at the mercy of private mechanics while residents suffered.68

Vandalism and more serious crimes proved a constant problem as gangs overwhelmed Taylor's private security force of 40 men within a few years of opening. In 1966, the CHA began discussions with the Chicago Police Department on the feasibility of assigning officers to patrol permanently its three most dangerous developments: Taylor, Cabrini-Green, and the Henry Horner Homes. The police department recommended 160 officers at an annual cost of $1.4 million. But the CHA's appeal for federal assistance netted only enough money for 76 officers, who could be efficiently assigned only to Cabrini and Horner. Taylor was left with its ineffective 40-man security force, and security continued as a major concern.69 By the late 1960s, inadequate police protection led to increasing incidences of burglary, rape, and murder, and press reports fueled the image of a project out of control.70 In 1966, the CHA proposed fencing in Taylor's open-air galleries after youths threw objects from galleries to crowded playgrounds, resulting in numerous injuries and several deaths. The CHA completed the task in the early 1970s, giving an unsettling "prison" appearance to Taylor's exterior.71

The CHA's efforts to provide social services to tenants proved pathetically and tragically insufficient. In a 1964 letter asking for federal permission to build more playgrounds at Taylor, the CHA reported that "children lined up seven and eight deep just waiting to use a piece of play equipment [and] . . . upwards of 2,000 children may be cramped into one or two relatively small play areas."72 The CHA leased apartments to numerous social agencies to provide services, but the level of activity never matched demand, as most programs were set up on an "experimental" basis.73 When the Chicago Public Library opened a single "Reading and Study Center" in a converted Taylor apartment in early 1969, residents quickly overwhelmed the facility, but only one additional apartment was added. A neighborhood settlement organization, the Firman House, launched an ambitious pre-school program with War on Poverty funds in 1965 for 425 pre-schoolers, but several thousand Taylor children were eligible.74