High Rise Stories by Audrey Petty

Author:Audrey Petty [Petty, Audrey; Kotlowitz, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940450056
Publisher: McSweeney's
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CABRINI-GREEN, DEMOLITION

CHANDRA BELL

AGE: 39

OCCUPATION: Hospice caregiver

FORMER RESIDENT OF: Cabrini-Green

Chandra lived in Cabrini-Green between 1972 and 1995. She now lives with her youngest child in a town home in Orchard Park, a mixed-income development blocks from where the Cabrini-Green towers stood. In fact, from the gateway of Orchard Park, the final tower of Cabrini (set to be demolished within two months of the time of this interview) is visible in the near distance, wrecking ball suspended at rest right next to it. Chandra is a spirited and welcoming host. When we get to her kitchen, she has a book about Cabrini out on the table for us to peruse. Chandra moved out of Cabrini-Green in 1995 when the demolition began, and she moved several more times before finally acquiring her current home in 2000. As a leaseholder at Orchard Park, she has experienced the CHA’s one-strike policy first hand. According to this policy, a tenant can be evicted if anyone listed on a lease is charged with a criminal infraction. Chandra’s youngest son was arrested a year ago (at age seventeen) on a drug charge. Chandra now grapples with the fact that once he is released from prison, he will be permanently barred from her home at Orchard Park.

CABRINI’S MY REAL HOME

All your kids play together. That’s when you become a big family. One of us might get a job and be like, “Hey neighbor, can you watch my kid?” That’s how it went, and it was real nice. Friends and family living there. Me, my mother, my aunties, some of the uncles, and some of my friends. Cabrini’s really my home. When I was a little girl, we used to have ramps to run up and down off the balconies, we used to play jump rope and hide-and-go-seek, but we also used to be safe from the bullets. There was lots of the neighbors outside and we was on the ramps, so we were safe.

My apartment was on the fifth floor, number 509 in Cabrini. I had a three-bedroom. We had good heat because the heat came from the floor. You would never be cold. The place was pretty nice and spacious. It was comfortable. Me and my sister shared a room and my two brothers shared a room and my momma had her own room. But there were problems in the building, like water leaking from the ceiling; the hallways weren’t kept up. Some of the residents was trifling. There was garbage chutes but some people used to just throw trash everywhere, all in the hallways, and that’s what made Cabrini go down. Also, the maintenance was weak. My family was clean, but if you had a neighbor that had roaches, there’s not much you can do. We had roaches and mice because they were everywhere. You’d have holes in the walls where the mice were coming out. We’d make work orders asking management to make repairs, but a lot of the time we’d have to take care of things ourselves.

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