She Left Robert Taylor Homes For 'Permanent' Residence; Now CHA Says She Has To Move
CHICAGO (CBS) – Kelly King saw it as a promise of a permanent home, but the Chicago Housing Authority said "permanent" didn't mean she would never move again.
CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports on the CHA contract that has left the Bronzeville woman confused and wondering where she is going to live.
Demolition of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, once the nation's largest housing project, took place some two decades ago.
King remembers life there—the gun violence and "the stuff that went on at Robert Taylor."
King and her two small children at the time were relocated by the CHA to a three bedroom, two-story apartment. It is a mixed-income complex on a quieter and less violent Bronzeville corner.
There, she said, life changed.
"I am in a whole new place," she said. "A new way of living."
She still keeps the letter from 2002 confirming her "permanent new or rehabilitated public housing unit" located at the address she now calls home.
Remember that word—permanent. It's also mentioned 46 times in the contract she signed with the CHA.
"Permanent means to me fixed, unmovable, unchangeable," Kelly said.
But King says weeks ago, in confidence, a leasing agent told her that with her children grown, the CHA was legally obligated to relocate King from that permanent unit by July.
"For it to be swept from under my feet, that's not right and that's not fair," King said.
Confirmation only came in a letter after King took the first step of writing the CHA to ask why.
The CHA told us King's agreement meant she could still count on some form of CHA housing.
The CHA, in a statement, said permanent, "was not meant to construe that a resident's subsidized housing unit would be their permanent home."
King remembers the concerns of many CHA residents 20 years ago, and wonders if the CHA chose their words carefully. Robert Taylor residents were scared back then, worrying where the CHA would relocate them, she said.
"Was this all a trick to get us out?" she said.
After CBS 2 got involved, the CHA said that property managers would be working to find her a home within her current development.