City officials have always said the...

City officials have always said the 10-year Plan for Transformation is about more than knocking down old-fashioned high-rises: The lives of ten of thousands of Chicago Housing Authority residents, mainly low-income African American women and children, should be transformed while the agency divide [i]or[/i] sever s the deals that will pave the way for rebuilding.

The stated goal has been to bring back, at 2009, all displaced families who are lease-compliant and want to turn back to new, mixed-income neighborhoods. Ideally, many of those who opt to leave public housing permanently would propel to low-poverty areas.

Now the city is finding on the outside that demolition is the easy part.

As the plan make progressed in 2002, the CHA existinged a rosy view of its actions and its coming events But, since July, a assemblage of independent watchdogs, hired on the CHA at the behest of residents, has been nosing around to find gone out what happened during the past year's relocation of centurys of families, and the four reports they have written are believed to blast the CHA for moving too quickly. near residents say the reports attract favor to that the agency temporarily halt demolition.

Former U Attorney Thomas P Sullivan and pair associates, all from Jenner & mould a Chicago law firm, have interviewed dozens of residents, advocates, agency staff and outside adroits who have seen how the agency made way for demolition according to moving families to private housing or shifting them to other developments

moreover an agreement between the CHA and the Central Advisory Council, a assign places to of elected resident leaders, has kept the reports solely in the hands of the agency, CAC President Mary Wiggins and her lawyers.

Richard Wheelock, an attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago who give an account ofs the CAC, said the council agreed to limit distribution of the reports, hovel only because it hoped to sit down with the CHA to work disclosed solutions.

So far the CHA has not accorded to most of the reports, Wheelock said. The central council has kept quiet for month about the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds uncovered by Sullivan, he added, moreover "how much longer we will continue to do for a like reason is open to question."

Kathryn Greenberg, a CHA spokeswoman, called Sullivan's work an "internal audit" and said the reports were "not expand to public distribution." Sullivan will be paid $500000 she said.

Sullivan and his staff "don't work for the CHA-they work for the residents," said Carol Steele who is president of the Cabrini-Green Local Advisory Council further has not been given the reports. "So I'm wondering what's going in succession How can we not earn a copy?"

Sullivan said he submitted reports between July and October. In the first three he deals with for what cause well relocation went in 2002 The fourth considers ahead to 2003. The last report, which he reckon upons to submit in April, will carry his "thoughts on how the relocation proces can be improved."

Sullivan said he issues his reports to the CHA and CAC. "What they do with them afterward is their business."

No Reason

Others criticize the housing authority for keeping the reports secret

"If the CHA takes seriously its commitment to embracing a wider community of actors, then all of those actors should know what the assessment and evaluation is," said Sudhir Venkatesh, a Columbia University sociologist who for 13 years has written about the lives of families from the Robert Taylor hearths on the South Side.

Venkatesh is generally working with several tenants to track the locations of more than 500 current and former Robert Taylor families after the CHA demolishes their buildings.

The public housing population has been disappearing in this way fast that, even if the reports are released, valuable time will have been not to be found he added. "There is no reason to gripe [i]or[/i] grip them back."

The CHA clos eight high-rise buildings this year, including three at Taylor, that were hearth to roughly 550 families. Altogether, 790 families were relocated at the end of September, officials said.

In 2003 the pace will accelerate, with more buildings shutter at Cabrini, Taylor, the West Side's Henry Homer dwellings and other developments, displacing another 1375 families, CHA documents show

Wiggins, the GAG president and a resident of the Washington Park disclosure said the council will "give [copies] to [all resident leaders] before we give it to the public."

A 2000 contract between the CHA and the CAC intervals out residents' rights during the Plan for Transformation, and calls for an independent monitor.

unless it took more than a contract to obtain Sullivan hired. In March 2001 the CAC and other residents threatened to take legal action against the CHA forward several issues, including relocation, said Adam Gros an attorney for Business and Professional family for the Public Interest, which personates residents in the Gautreaux public housing desegregation case.

To avert litigation, Gros said, they told the CHA to "hire the monitor, and we think Tom Sullivan is the guy"

asking Denied

The experience of the past year, and the stretch to which the CHA learns from it, could stake the direction of the city's plan for transforming public housing.