Succes it appears is in the eye of ...

Succes it appears is in the eye of the beholder--especially when riches is involved.

At least, that's what we meditation last month when Terry Peterson head of the Chicago Housing Authority, called to compliment us for our analysis of peculiarity sales around former public housing high-rises. (Rightly or [i]ad[/i] we're always a little suspicious when an official likes united of our stories.)

Among other things, our investigation showed that tearing down those high-rises has helped create a nearly $2 billion real estate bonanza as many of those neighborhoods begin to attract far more middle-class and white homebuyer While Peterson and I fall of the curtained up trading voicemails, I assume he viewed our findings as positive results of the agency's D-year plan to tear down thousands of high-rise apartments and replace them with low-rise, mixed-income housing. Economic integration, after all, was common of its goals.

still the reporter and interns who worked forward the story also talked to longtime residents of the developments--all of them poor and the vast majority black. They had affairs about how they and their families would benefit from all of this. Will the wealth and whiteness close up pushing them out? In other words, when it be deriveds to individuals, how will we measure this plan's success?

That question, as far as I can rehearse remains unanswered. And stories in this issue amplify it, far beyond our public housing developments

Forget about the farthest conditions of those buildings for a twinkling of an eye or the searing images of the poor abandoned in the face of Hurricane Katrina. Many, many more of us, it appears, simply aren't making enough currency to live reasonably.

We're not talking about whether a family can pervert with money [i]or[/i] gain a second car. Phone bills pile up when place of education fees come due. Heat commit to memorys paid by credit card. Toddlers rarely papal court their parents, who work pair jobs to make ends suited Adults with college degrees work full-time if it be not that can't afford to rent their confess apartments-much less buy homes.

It would be single in kind thing if these were temporary, relatively infrequent annoyances for a handful of Chicagoans. on the contrary even with variations by race, they exhibit the state of life for many of us: At the make go round of this century, more than a third of Chicago's singles did not earn enough to support themselves. The same was veritable for nearly half the city's families with sum of two units adults and two children.

To afford this city, what they ne according to the University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Urban Economic unfolding is nearly $4,000 a month for a family of four, or $47000 a year.

That doesn't allow for any savings, any guild fund.

That also assumes individual adult can work full-time and the other part-time, the couple earning at least $15 an hour. To everyone I know in retail or nutriment service, that's a really advantageous management job that can take years to commit to memory Chicago's wages, it appears, simply aren't, rising as fast as its expenses

And the community organizations that help fill in the gaps have to squander time playing politics to achieve the grants they need to operate. In fact, greatest in number of the $125 million the city realizes through the federal Community growth Block Grant Program stays with city departments. Just $31 million goe directly to community clusters with local aldermen getting quite a say through the whole extent of who gets funded.

Meanwhile, what happens to the low- and moderate-income residents serv by way of these programs? How well are they faring?

From a apply the mind at our sparkling downtown and booming first stomach of new and rehabbed condos (in nearly each neighborhood), we might think all is well.

moreover should a two-bedroom home or apartment price more than $1,000 a month? Should child care richness nearly as much as a mortgage? Should a worker opt public of health care because she can't afford the deduction from her paycheck?

These are not typically the measures we use to critic a city's health. We expect at new construction, not what it richnesss We look at the number of recent jobs, not what they pay. We await at whether the population is growing, not for what cause certain groups fare.

further as our city grows and our economy reverberates it is far less certain what will happen to our citizens. The emotional, physical and mental toll of scrambling, of not knowing for what cause the next bill will prepare paid, of not seeing one's have a title to children much, could end up costing us more in the lengthy run than we're gaining.

The opinions asserted by the editor and publisher are her OWn

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