Robert Taylor Homes

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Last Robert Taylor Home, September, 5th 2005

Robert Taylor Homes was a housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood of the South Side of Chicago, on State Street between 39th and 54th streets alongside the Dan Ryan Expressway.

1 History
2 Research
3 References
4 External links
5 Videos

[edit] History

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The Robert Taylor Homes housing project was completed in 1962 and named for Robert Robinson Taylor, the son of the first African-American architect accredited in the United States. At one time, this was the largest housing project in the USA^[1] and it was supposed to offer decent affordable housing. It was composed of 28 high-rise buildings of 16 stories with an overall of 4.321 appartments, mostly arranged in U-shaped clusters of three, stretching for two miles. Photo The Robert Taylor Homes were also home to such celebrities such as as Mr. T and Kirby Puckett. Due to social problems it was decided to replace all Robert Taylor Homes with a mixed-income community in low-rise builidings.

Robert Taylor Homes faced many of the same problems that doomed other high-rise housing projects in Chicago such as Cabrini-Green. These problems include drugs, violence, and the perpetuation of poverty.

Planned for 11.000 inhabitants, the Robert Taylor Homes hosted 27,000 people, during their prime.^[2] Six of the poorest US census areas with populations above 3 were found there. Including children who are not of working age, at one point 95% of the housing development's 27,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source, and 40 percent of the households were single-parent, female-headed households earning less than $5,000 per year. 96% were African-American. The 28 drab, sixteen-story concrete high-rises, many blackened with the scars of arson fire, sat in a narrow two-block by two-mile stretch of slum. The city's neglect was evident in littered streets, poorly enforced building codes, and scant commercial or civic amenities. Rats and roaches made an everyday appearance in these South Side apartments.

Police intelligence sources say that elevated number of homicides was the result of gang “turf wars”, as gang members and drug dealers fought over control of given neighborhoods. Its landlord, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), has estimated that $45,000 in drug deals took place daily. Residents of the Robert Taylor Homes say that the drug dealers were actually fighting over control of the very buildings that they live in. In one weekend, more than three hundred separate shooting incidents were reported, in the vicinity of the Robert Taylor Homes.^{[citation needed]} Twenty eight people were killed during the same weekend, with 26 of the 28 incidents believed to be gang related.

In 1983 an infant Vinyette Teague went missing from in the project in the hall while her grandmother went to go answer the phone. Still in May 2006, a white 21-year-old woman from California was allegedly thrown out of a seventh-story window ^[3] after she was released from the local jail, leading to severe injuries.

In 1996 HOPE VI funds were granted specifically for off-site Taylor replacement housing. The Chicago Housing Authority moved out all residents by the end of 2006. In 2007 the last remaining building was demolished.

Concurrent with the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago's murder rate has sunk to the lowest the city has seen since the 1960s. In 2004, a record low 448 homicides took place in Chicago; even with the population growing, the homicide rate continues to shrink.^{[citation needed]} But at the same time the number of homeless people in Chicago rose from 49,000 to 80,000.

2,300 low rise residential homes and apartments, 7 new and renovated community facilities, and substantial retail and commercial space will be build in place of the old high-rise buildings. The development costs total an estimated $583 million. Part of the redevelopment is the renaming of the area to "Legends South".

[edit] Research

Because of the standardized housing and near homogeneous demographics, the RTH were an ideal location for studying the effects of urban living and lack of "green space" on the human condition. This type of research in Environmental psychology was most clearly demonstrated by a group of studies done by Francis Kuo and William Sullivan of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory (formerly the Human-Environment Research Laboratory) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The history and economy of this housing development was studied by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh in his book American Project (ISBN 0-674-00830-8).