morning an al jazeera america, and in part 2 of the series we follow the path of katherine groves as they try to convince their daughter to leave the church of wells. that'll do it for this edition. i'm thomas drayton in new york. thanks for watching. >> i'm lisa fletcher in you are in the "stream." chicago evicts thousands with a promise to deliver better, but what is in the future for the city desperate for rejuvenation? ♪ digital producer, co-host, wajahat ali is here bringing in all of your live feedback throughout the show.

we are talked about a lot of cities in crisis on this show, but it is never in a vacuum, a lot of cities are experiencing country. >> yeah, chicago is really experiencing it. it has a trickle-down effect that affects the entire neighborhood. mia tweets in . . . and as you can see lisa this is effecting all communities. >> it is. chicago promised new homes and a

new life for many of the city's public housing drenthzs. but nearly 15 years later, nearly 40,000 families are still on the wait list for permanent homes. and many buildings just sit empty waiting to be torn down or rehabilitat rehabilitated. >> i have been on a waiting list since 2008. i'm a certified nursing assistant. i was working, but i'm currently not working now, and i'm still on the waiting list, waiting for low income housing. and it has been a bit of a struggle. >> why? that's the question everybody been asking, are you holding units that could be lived in literally? we have 140 buildings in each unit, and over half is vacant in each building. why? and why aren't you leasing? >> the city tore down all 82 of chicago's crime-ridden high-rise projects creating a chronic

shortage of affordable housing, and doubt as to whether the city will fulfill its promise to the people. meanwhile it is moving ahead with the plan to create mixed income neighborhoods. so what does the future look like? joining us from chicago,co founder of the anti-eviction campaign. a bankruptcy and foreclosure attorney working to keep people in the chicago area in their homes. a member of the cook county commission. and the president of the apartments, most of which was demolished in 2009 but still has some units that lie vacant. the chicago housing authority denied our invitation to be on the program tonight. these sorts of crisises don't just happen overnight. point?

>> i think it's exactly what you said. this is something over a couple of generations, and then it was accelerated by the housing crisis. you had a couple of generations of the things that used to feed our population. huge waves of immigration, large family size, a lot of density. that changed over the 07s, 80s, 90s. then you have this crash in '08, and a lot of people who were able to buy homes for the first time were the first to be hit by the declining economy. then when you had the financial crisis it was all laid bare, so we see communities that never really had instability -- have an enormous number of vacancies, and you have communities that were weak going into the crisis that are really on the tipping point. so it's not just one solution, but what are the four, or five

or ten things fwheed to do about it. >> and 15 years ago the city demoll initialled 82 affording wrong? >> i mean, one of the -- the really -- what in that destruction of public housing. one of the things that kind of leaves us in a situation where so many families are still waiting to see those -- those opportunities that have been promised to some degree around affordable, low-income housing, still see those unresolved is there has really been a shift away from -- you know, the -- the local government, the city, the county, whomever, providing some form of low income housing and there has been really a push in that tearing down of the public housing developments to see the private market really be the main source of providing low-income housing for folks.

and in the midst of the foreclosure crisis we have seen that as a failing model, and one thing that has been ef accident how much affordable housing has been lost over the past several years with the housing crisis, and also how much rents are increasing, and making it increasingly difficult for low-income and working class families to find a place to live in chicago. >> natalie most of the housing units around you have been demolished or sitting v vacant. do you feel deceived by the housing department? >> yes, i do feel deceived. where i come from [ inaudible ] have been torn down. and then they tear them down and say we're going to build you 300

public housing units. we're still waiting >> our community is talking about this is effecting. foreclosures have disproportionately affected that community. myia says . . . and dave goes . . . and then liz says chicago needs ray shall integration desperate. have better access to schools and diminish the gangs. rick you are a foreclosure expert. larger clients i'm assuming are from these communities. talk to us about this house crisis, how it has disproportionately effected the low-income communities of chicago. >> certainly it has effected the low-income communities, but it's not a unique problem for the poor. there are multi-million dollars homes that are being foreclosed

upon. the poor of course have resources to defend themselves against the foreclosure, and so there -- they are often not as knowledgeable about foreclosures and the ability to stay in their home for extended periods of time. the average foreclosure in cook county, it takes over a year, and it's easily extented with a little bit of assistance from an attorney for more than two years, and so many people who can't afford an attorney and aren't affair of these factors move out early. times years before they have to, that has given rise to a new phenomenon called zombie foreclosures where banks start the foreclosure process and never finish it for whatever reason they decide not to take possession of the home. we have had clients call us having been moved out of their home two years earlier, only to

find out they are still the owner of the home and they are still liable for those homes. so it has had a tremendous effect on everyone, really. and foreclosure kills people. we have had two suicides among clients here one is the direct result of a foreclosure, and one is the more indirect result of a foreclosure. but it is not just confined to the poor, but it effects more the poor than the wealthy. >> commissioner gainer, fair or not the city takes a lot of blame. we heard from a woman in chicago saying why are these units sitting empty. we have blighted and abandoned homes. that is estimated to be about 60,000 across the area. are the city's hands tied to a degree in this area?

or could more be done? >> the city only controls so much of the economy. what they can do is help clear title, clear leans, and that's how they have been a great partner on the creation of the land bank, so we started building into the cook county land bank, and the whole purpose of that was to take a lot of these communities and a lot of vacancies and foreclosures, work together with the developers to say how do we move from vacancy to turning it back to productive use? and so the city has got to -- and the point on the court system is exactly right. it is over 600 days to get a title cleared in cook county now, and that's the killer. because if you live on a block and they are four or five homes in foreclosure, and they sit 'em try for two years? nobody wants to live on a block like that. so they need to clear titles and not have water liens and other things hang over. but as far as the rest of the

economy that has to be the private sector. >> lisa our community is tweeting in about how this is not unique to chicago . . . >> not everyone in chicago is disappointed with the direction that the city is headed. >> i think it's great. mixed income. it doesn't have to be a ghetto. you know what the ghetto means. ghetto means [ inaudible ]. >> it does sound great. but what does it really take to make a mixed income neighborhood work outside of using section 8 housing vouchers. tweet us your thoughts. we're going to get them in on the other side of the break. ♪ >> i thought that she was my property, and i could do as i please. >> abusive men... >> this is completely unregulated.. >> easy access to guns... >> there's somewhere around 1600 women being held every year >> a deadly combination...

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being called chicago public housing experiment. a plan to improve the lives of residents by evicting them and relocating them. but many are still displaced. in 2009 you were one of the founders of the anti-eviction campai campaign. how does that work? >> the anti-eviction campaign was started in the housing development which think one of the people tweeted in mentioned, and it has been the sort of -- the poster child for everything that was considered wrong with public housing, not just in chicago, but in the nation. and what the -- the anti-eviction campaign really started to do, the purpose of it was to enforce the rights of folks who were really being taken advantage of in -- in this

effort to really gentrify the new north side, the part of the city where you really had this odd disparity between the rich and the poor. low-income black families and pretty well to do white, and white families, where you had massive public housing close to the downtown. and since then the campaign has been focused on taking that question of enforcing human right to housing, and takes it to other places where folks are facing displayment. and see if we have thesed a ban d - abandoned properties, and fixing them up or over. >> and commissioner gainer one of the ways that was to be done was federally funded neighborhood stabilization money. with the goal of rehabbing about

25 -- 2500 housing units. that initiative has fallen really short. i think chicago has rehand maybe 538 units and maybe only 200 of them occupied. what happened. >> that's not really connected with cha. that is more about affordable housing. their focus was on multi-unit buildings. and i think they are in the process of rehabbing them. but these buildings can be -- in some ways they can be a great edition, they can always be some of the most intruckable problems in a community. anyone on this call or on skype knows that. when you have a large building and it's a problem building, it destabilizes the neighborhood. >>

check out my screen . . . and a lot of people talk about mixed-income neighborhoods as a solution jess tweeted in . . . and we have a great video comment from lawrence. >> part of the problem is that some of the demolished high-rise were in areas of opportunity in chicago. cabrini green was on the good side where there

is access to good sites. we are losing hard units of public housing in these areas of opportunity in chicago, and that's a real shame. >> natalie everyone is talking about mixed income development how it is possible given the current situation? do you believe in it? >> no, i do not. i do not believe in mixed-income communities because it's -- to me it's a form of elimination of the public housing residents. they say -- they use it's affordable in mixed income, but affordable to me is something i cannot afford. affordable does not apply to me in mixed income areas. i can only afford public housing units to live to keep from being out on the streets. public housing unit is affordable to me.

>> commissioner gainer, how does the city attract investor groups to move forward with this mixed income housing when a lot of these properties that have been foreclosed upon are well below the threshold that any investor group would ever consider buying? >> that's a great question and it's something we struggle with. you have seen a lot of investor group attention in the suburbs. but it's almost as many there is an invisible barrier once you get to the city limits. one of the things we're hoping to do with the land bank is to say how do you acquire vacant homes at enough scale that you could come in there, get title, take over some of the regulatory obstacles, to stop people from investing, and then kind of facilitate that investment. i think part of it is, you know,

how do you come up with some of the things we have seen work, but do it in a way that is communities. >> we have niev on facebook . . . rick i want to get you back in the conversation. the mayor has a bounce-back plan. will that help low-income neighborhoods? because critics are saying it will only help privatization. >> it's hard to say. ron is a sharp guy. so we certainly hope it works. mixed income developments are difficult. keys are safety and -- and of

course good schools in the area. it's -- it's -- it's going to be tough for him to do that. and perhaps he is not putting as much emphasis on it as he needs to. they talk about -- i think -- was it number? >> yes. >> i don't have it in front of me. but that's actually -- for that five-year program that is actually less than was budgeted and spent in the last five years, which means he is putting less money into it than he had previously -- than the city had previously. we'll have to wait and see. he is a sharp guy. i hope he has solutions to some up. >> before we go to the break, people have accused the mayor of too much focus on land use, not enough on land development, not being engaged enough on the issue. is the mayor demonstrating the kind of leadership needed to

turn chicago's housing crisis around in your opinion? >> we haven't seen it necessarily, and one of the biggest concerns that has come up again is really what is going to happen with cabrini green, because there was a content agreement in place in terms of really replacing those hard units of public housing, and there has really been a significant question on the table in terms of whether there is going to be follow through on that. but if you come -- if you come to chicago to the south side, west side, places where you can really see the evidence of the housing crisis, you really see in a very -- like material way, how much there hasn't really been action from the city, and really how much of, you know, a question remains in terms of what is really going to happen for the future of chicago in the parts of the city. >> there are a lot of good ideas

out there, but well-placed intentions don't always translate to solutions. where is chicago really going to be five years from now. we come back. ♪ ho>>

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it now, and use it with every live stream show. >> welcome back we're talking about chicago's massive public housing overhaul, a plan that in many ways has gone nowhere. rick given the amount of blight, the estimated 60,000 or so abandoned homes, does this situation devolve, and does the affordable housing problem look worse a year from now? >> in general the housing market in chicago is tending towards devalveation. in the last two years home values have come back up 17%, which is half of what they lost during the foreclosure crisis, so in general, chicago is heading back towards stabilization, but that doesn't necessarily take care of the lower end.

so it's difficult to say where it is going to be in -- in one year. we have to see how some of these out. >> we asked our community, if you were mayor of chicago, how would you fix this problem? brittany tweets in . . . and the got a great video comment from mia. give her a listen. >> i think that the future of public housing in chicago is probably going to be something similar to atlanta. eventually the public housing project escaped the plan for transformation will probably be level two, and the low-income population will be dealt with excuse ifly through vouchers. >> natalie i'm making you mayor of chicago, how would you fix the housing crisis? >> in order to fix the housing

crisis, i believe that we have to fix the economy. because without jobs, we have no housing. and if we begin to fix the economy and create jobs for these people in public housing, then they can begin to sustain for themselves by going out to work, but if there's no jobs, how can we go to work? if there's no public housing, where do we live? >> where do you see things landing a year from now, five years from now? what is the trajectory for chicago from your vantage point? >> well, i think the trajectory is relatively -- my view is relatively pessimistic, even though the rate of foreclosures is declining, the -- the -- you know, there are really hundreds of thousands of these vacan and -- abandoned properties that

are just sitting there. and they either rot away or become magnets for whatever sort of activity right be operating. i hope some of the work that we are doing in terms of fixing up some of these properties and making them livable, and providing employment opportunities for folks who are unemployed or want to learn these basic construction skills, or something really -- solutions that really try to mary the need for public housing with the after effects of the foreclosure crisis is where i feel like the most interesting and innovative solutions are from. >> all right. i want to thank all of our guests. and remember, the conversation always continues using the hashtag ajam stream. time.

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