Introduction	What is the Plan for Transformation?	Stories	Links	About

	Christine Klepper As executive director of Housing Choice Partners, Klepper helps residents find new homes.
	Bernadette Campbell Campbell, 53, said her new apartment helped her make a fresh start from a past troubled by addiction.
	Angela Martin "I'm ready to go," Martin, 30, said. She hopes to move to the renovated Hilliard Homes.
	Tasha Collier Moving to a mixed-income development has brought disappointment and fear for Collier and her kids.
	Kassey Ross "It's a mess over here," Ross, 27, said about her home at Mahalia Place.
	Tracey Robinson Robinson,41, said the Plan for Transformation gave her the extra push she needed to move on.

The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation is an attempt to address the need for affordable housing among low-income residents in Chicago by replacing high-rise housing projects with mixed-income communities.

By the fall of 2006, as the last residents at Stateway Gardens near 35th Street and State Street were moving out, they could look out through the grates covering their open walkways to see the new townhouses springing up where their community had once stood.

What awaited those who left that day is a question that many in Chicago have asked since the tear downs began almost eight years ago.

This website is one response to that question.            

What quickly becomes clear in researching the Plan for Transformation is that this is the story of mothers, many single, and their children.

If there is a common thread that they all share it’s their fortitude in surviving despite the obstacles and their sincere willingness to change their lives.

Maintaining stability in their new lives has not always been easy, though.  

Staying on top of the utility bills, maintaining their eligibility for their housing voucher and dealing with landlords, who fail to comply with housing standards are only some of the problems residents face in living in the private market.

And while some look back nostalgically on the feeling of community, or the loud parties that went on day and night in the projects, no one I interviewed wanted to return.

The women profiled here are only a small sampling of the voices of those relocated through the transition, but amazingly their experiences seem to resonate with the research conducted by scores of public policy researchers and academics.

I hope that their stories may offer some answers, inspire more questions and start a public dialogue about what the Plan has achieved and the promises it has yet to fulfill.