page_title: Cabrini–Green Homes
section_title: Recent history and future plans
hierarchical_section_title: Cabrini–Green Homes / History / Recent history and future plans
caption_attribution_description: English: Demolition of the Cabrini-Green public housing units in Chicago, Illinois, in September 2006.
context_page_description: Cabrini–Green Homes, which comprised the Frances Cabrini Row-houses and William Green Homes, was a Chicago Housing Authority public housing project located on the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was bordered by W North Ave on the north, N Halsted St on the west, W Chicago Ave on the south, and N Larrabee St on the east.
  Over the years, crime and neglect created hostile living conditions for many residents, and "Cabrini-Green" became a metonym for the problems associated with public housing in the United States. The last of the buildings in Cabrini–Green were demolished in March 2011. The Near North Side site formerly home to the William Green projects has been undergoing major redevelopment since the late 1990s, resulting in a combination of upscale high-rise buildings and row houses, with the stated goal of creating a mixed-income neighborhood, with some units still being reserved for public housing tenants. The area where Cabrini-Green once sat has become an upscale area and controversy regarding the implementation of these developments had arisen. Slated redevelopment plans had moved forward following the September 2015 settlement of a civil lawsuit.
context_section_description: While Cabrini–Green was deteriorating during the postwar era, causing industry, investment, and residents to abandon its immediate surroundings, the rest of Chicago's Near North Side underwent equally dramatic upward changes in socioeconomic status. First, downtown employment shifted dramatically from manufacturing to professional services, spurring increased demand for middle-income housing; the resulting gentrification spread north along the lakefront from the Gold Coast, then pushed west and eventually crossed the river. Then, in the 1980s, the Lower North Side industrial area (just across the river from the Loop, west of Michigan Avenue, and south of Near North Side's Cabrini–Green) was transformed into the "River North" neighborhood, a focus of arts and entertainment, now home to the city's technology sector. By the 1990s, developers had converted thousands of acres of former industrial lands near the north branch of the Chicago River (and directly north, south, and west of the former Cabrini–Green projects) to lucrative office, retail, and housing developments.
  Over time, Cabrini–Green's location became increasingly desirable to private developers. Speculators began purchasing property immediately adjacent to the projects, with the expectation that the complex would eventually be demolished. Finally, in May 1995, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took over management of the CHA and almost immediately began demolishing the first of the vacant "reds" buildings in Cabrini Extension, intending to make Chicago a showpiece of a new, mixed-income approach to public housing. Shortly thereafter, in June 1996, the city of Chicago and the CHA unveiled the Near North Redevelopment Initiative, which called for new development on and around the Cabrini–Green site. Under a ten-year Plan for Transformation, which was officially enacted in 2000, the city plans to demolish almost all of its high-rise public housing, including much of Cabrini–Green (except for a few of the run-down row houses, which tentatively remain).
  Demolition of Cabrini Extension was completed in 2002; part of the site was added to Seward Park, and construction of new, mixed-income housing on the remainder of the site began in 2006. Subsidized development of mixed-income housing on vacant or underused parcels adjacent to Cabrini–Green, including a long-shuttered Oscar Mayer sausage factory, the former headquarters of Montgomery Ward, and an adjacent senior housing project named Orchard Park, began in 1994. New market-rate housing now almost completely surrounds the remaining public housing. Cabrini–Green once housed 15,000 residents. New housing built on the 70-acre (280,000 m²) Cabrini–Green site will include 30% public-housing replacement homes and 20% "workforce affordable" housing, while many adjacent developments (almost all targeted at luxury buyers) include 20% affordable housing, half targeted as public-housing replacement, with a goal of 505 replacement units built off-site.
  In February 2006, a unique partnership between CHA, Holsten, Kimball Hill Urban Centers and the Cabrini–Green LAC Community Development Corporation began a 790-unit, $250-million redevelopment of the 18-acre (73,000 m²) Cabrini Extension site, to be called Parkside at Old Town. Plans completed the  demolition of Green Homes in 2011, while the majority of Cabrini's dilapidated row houses are abandoned and slated for demolition and future redevelopment. The Plan for Transformation's relocation process was the subject of a lawsuit, Wallace v. Chicago Housing Authority, which alleged that many residents were hastily forced into substandard, "temporary" housing in other slums, did not receive promised social services during or after the move, and were often denied the promised opportunity to return to the redeveloped sites. The lawsuit was settled in June 2006, as the parties agreed to two relocation programs for current and former CHA residents: (1) CHA's current relocation program, encouraging moves to racially integrated areas of metropolitan Chicago and pr
caption: Demolition of William Green Homes in 2006. This is the demolition of 534 West Division Street, nicknamed "Tha Jube".
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