Should 200 Locust be destroyed?
July 12th, 2008An article worth reading appears in the current edition of the Atlantic Monthly. It’s about how the dismantling of Section 8 housing in large cities, like Chicago, has increased the level of crime in smaller satellite cities.
Falling crime rates have been one of the great American success stories of the past 15 years. New York and Los Angeles, once the twin capitals of violent crime, have calmed down significantly, as have most other big cities…
Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year…
Studies show that recipients of Section8 vouchers have tended to choose moderately poor neighborhoods that were already on the decline, not low-poverty neighborhoods. One recent study publicized by HUD warned that policy makers should lower their expectations, because voucher recipients seemed not to be spreading out, as they had hoped, but clustering together. Galster theorizes that every neighborhood has its tipping point—a threshold well below a 40 percent poverty rate—beyond which crime explodes and other severe social problems set in…
In each case, Suresh has now confirmed, the first hot spots were the neighborhoods around huge housing projects, and the later ones were places where people had moved when the projects were torn down.
Still, researchers around the country are seeing the same basic pattern: projects coming down in inner cities and crime pushing outward, in many cases destabilizing cities or their surrounding areas. Dennis Rosenbaum, a criminologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me that after the high-rises came down in Chicago, suburbs to the south and west—including formerly quiet ones—began to see spikes in crime; nearby Maywood’s murder rate has nearly doubled in the past two years.
The problems that plague some of Elgin’s neighborhoods predate these developments, so I don’t think the perceived crime (according to Chief Womack crime has actually declined 11%) in parts of the Near West Side for example can be attributable to destruction of Section 8 housing in Chicago. Rather I find this article interesting because it’s something that we have to keep in mind if the problematic apartment complex on Locust Avenue is ever demolished, as some are advocating.
Demolition could be a good idea, but the city will have to make sure that crime does not travel with the inhabitants to wherever they disperse. That means ensuring that they do not go into marginal areas, but into high income areas, something that will naturally result in a high level of resistance.
My thought is that developments on the Far West Side should all be required to incorporate a minimal amount of affordable housing–not too much or else crime will travel as suggested by the Atlantic article, but enough to absorb all the people who would be leaving the area that is now troubled. Such a requirement will also ensure that the much vaunted diversity of Elgin is not limited to the older sections of the city.
Simply destroying the apartment building without creating replacement housing is not an option, as far as I know. The building itself was created as a result of a federal mandate during the construction of the Civic Center, which eliminated low income housing in that section of the city.
But removing the apartment building and spreading its inhabitants very thinly across the Far West Side could be a good idea. I think it has the potential to reduce crime citywide, and make the Far West Side more diverse so that we dont’ have a situation of two Elgins. By giving them a better environment, it would increase opportunities for the low income families that move. Any problems near or in the downtown are highly salient, and the image of downtown is the biggest factor in Elgin’s image as a whole, so if the environment in the area surrounding the downtown and in the downtown itself can be improved, the image of Elgin as a whole improves.
I am a proponent of mixed income housing. You’re right though, it’s hard to get into action–especially when a city is trying to attract higher income individuals/families. Forcing them to live near lower-income individuals/families could be what makes them choose a different suburb.
Overall it is generally considered better for the low-income households and the city overall (which includes people with higher incomes) if the low-income households are not concentrated in one area.
There are many people who think trying to spread people w/ Section 8 around is a way to take away their political and organizing power. Probably applies more in larger cities and less here.
Posted July 12th, 2008 at 3:21 pmFar west development would need a substantial change in policy for it to accommodate subsidized housing. You need a more diverse housing stock to start, mass transit (PACE bus service only extends to Randall Road), and employment opportunitites (neighborhood businesses). All of these items fit with a higher density development.
If I were planning where to place subsidized in Elgin, I’d follow the bus routes. Come to think of it, my little 2 bedroom brick bungalow on Mclean would be a good candidate. Maybe the city should buy my house!
Posted July 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pmI can see where spreading out low income housing would be of benefit but I am with Jessica on this. I’m thinking that putting low income housing on the far west side would prevent upper income people from choosing Elgin as their place of residence. I see the problem of having 2 Elgins but I also think the upper income families moving into the city will be good for Elgin’s overall reputation….maybe once the far west side is settled and stable, incorporation of low income housing can be achieved. The 2nd comment by TDM also has an interesting point. Low income housing should be along bus lines to give low income families more choices in employment and trasportation. This would also be good for the transportation system.
Posted July 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pmWhen I first heard that Paula was engaged in a blog applying “rose-colored glasses” to Elgin, I thought here we go again with another bit of Pollyanna froth about the joys of living amidst environmentally-sensitive, genuine Third World poverty in “Not Naperville.” Wrong. She is laying it on the line and applying clear-eyed 20-20 eyesight to the troubled Elgin condition. Her last two posts on Lovin Elgin are outstanding.
I’m particularly impressed with her sceptical insights about Chief Womack’s crime statistics - you know, the ones that always show that crime in Elgin is decreasing and that it’s less than in Naperville. Well, as Paula points out, if you have a police department that ignores crime you will have lower crime statistics. And as Paula does not mention, if a large portion of your town’s residents are here illegally and come from an impoversihed “heritage” of corrupt police relationships it is highly likely that they will avoid reporting crimes or having any other police contact. I think we are all aware that there is something rotten in Elgin. I don’t know when I’ve been downtown without seeing some police activity. Kudos to Paula for speaking out.
Posted July 19th, 2008 at 7:20 pmI congratulated Paula on her posts, and I want to congratulate Elginite/RS on this July 12 effort. It’s substantive and on point with valid pressing concerns.
I noticed none of the comments to the post refer to the Atlantic article. If you haven’t read it, you ought to. It’s an enlightening article in an issue that has several good pieces (e.g. “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”).
That said, the article goes only part way toward understanding the social and economic dynamics that are pounding Elgin. The article focuses on Memphis, the traditional capitol of the Mid-South and the Old Plantation and sharecropper cotton culture. The article reflects all the continuing problems of Black isolation and exploitation, broken families, narcotics, poor educations and alienation from middle class values, skills and opportunities. However, the article nowhere refers to the impact of “immigration” as a driver of increased poverty and crime. This is hardly surprising because, to be blunt, Memphis is so backward that even the Mexicans avoid it. The 2000 Census recorded Hispanics as comprising only 3% of the Memphis population compared to 26% in Chicago.
The problems afflicting Elgin and the greater Chicagoland area, however, really represent the impact of the New Plantation. The New Plantation has arisen from a variety of elite policies of “globalization” that focus on cheap labor, increased ethnic division and the erosion of middle class jobs, values and neighborhoods, including the sponsored movement - often illegal - of more than one million Mexican poor into Northern Illinois. In short, all the developments described in the Atlantic article take place in Northern Illinois against the backdrop of surging and uncontrolled levels of Mexican poverty. There is simply no way to maintain a safe, crime-free and progressive middle-class American environment in a community afflicted by such conditions. According to the Daily Herald of April 16, the poverty rate increased from 1980 to 2006 by 91 percent in suburban Cook County and by 26 percent in the collar counties while going up only 4% in Chicago. Between 2000 and 2006 the median annual household income in real dollars declined by over $8,000 in Kane County. Elgin, which has some of the highest unemployment in the Fox Valley, is ground zero for the impact of these developments.
These developments took place because there are powerful business and political interests that wanted them to take place and have benefited from their results. To the extent that they couldn’t coverup altogether the resulting problems of their policies, Elgin’s leadership and other elites are content to pass the social costs and burdens of illegal and impoverished “immigration,” including crime, onto stressed middle class Americans such as the frustrated residents of Elgin’s Near West Side. That doesn’t mean our leaders don’t try to cover it up. Look, for example, at the Street Gang report presented to Elgin’s city council in June. Nowhere does it discuss the relationship between Elgin’s organized crime and illegal aliens. Nowhere does it discuss or even consider connections between local Mexican gangsters, Elgin’s booming drug trade, and the violent narcotics cartels that are such a major part of modern Mexican society. Surprised? Not if you know that the chair of the report committee was George Irizarry, head of the Elgin Latino Political Action Team and erstwhile enthusiast of the illegal alien agenda. And then there’s Chief Womack who told an Elgin audience last year that there is “no correlation between a rising immigrant population and gang-related crimes…” Even if one were prepared to credit the ridiculous idea that exploding local levels of foreign poverty have no correlation with crime, the recent arrests of several illegal alien gang members certainly extinguishe Womack’s crediblity. And then there’s Mike Powers who is on record as opposing police 287(g) training to combat illegal aliens “because our already shorthanded police force should focus on the department’s primary mission of maintaining public safety and fighting crime.” I guess our “shorthanded police force” can’t provide a new ROPE officer for the Near West Side because Powers thinks the city’s money is better spent on subsidizing a women’s professional softball team.
The Atlantic article, however, does raise one point of especial significance in regard to the questions about the Locust Avenue complex, so-called affordable housing, and the fate of Elgin west of the river. It’s the concept of the “tipping point” - the threshold of neighborhood poverty beyond which “crime explodes and other severe social problems set in.” That point long has been passed in East Elgin. It is gaining fast on the West Side with no clear reason why it should not surge across Randall Road and on into the so-called Far West. Already substantial Mexican gang activity is infecting the McClure, Edison, and Alfred areas, gang signs are vandalizing the walls of businesses along Larkin Avenue, mini-ghettos fester in the Mill, Mulberry Lane and Mark Avenue, and the economic malaise of downtown is spreading to the Larkin Avenue and McLean corridors. In sum, the question about affordable housing, Locust Avenue and “diversity” may be moot. Criminal poverty is flooding Elgin on its own schedule, regardless of what do-gooders or social engineers want. And the impact of such events will only accelerate with the election of a new President inasmuch as both candidates seem committed to an “immigration reform” insuring the continued and increasing presence of Mexican poverty in the United States. Obviously, that’s all good news for those business guys living in Barrington and St. Charles who regard Elgin as the dormitory for their Mexican landscapers and cheap labor. And it’s great, too, for the local Chicago-style political hacks who serve Blago’s campaign to draw the Fox Valley into The Machine’s corrupt kick-back culture of poverty and ethnic division. For honest, law-abiding mainstream Americans in Elgin and elsewhere it’s all bad news and will only get worse as our deteriorating economic condition shrinks the sort of subsidies from gambling or taxes which prop up the crumbling appearance of a stable, prosperous and safe American environment.
Posted July 20th, 2008 at 2:03 amAll very interesting comments.
RM, thanks for pointing out Paula’s recent post. She asks a good question about low crime statistics.
Jessica, TDM and Paula, I think affordable housing on the Far West Side can be made to work if we apply some ingenuity towards the design. It does have to start with a desire though. The city has to decide that including affordable housing on the Far West Side is a worthy goal. Then the genius of city planners and architects can be tapped.
Posted July 21st, 2008 at 3:36 am