Angela Martin: "I'm ready to go"

Angela Martin, grew up in the projects, but she’s determined that her daughter won’t.

 The Ickes Homes, where she lives with her husband and four children are slowly being shut down for renovations and people relocated as necessary.

At 30, Martin said she's had enough of the cinderblock walls, the dingy hallways and the elevators that stink of urine of her building at 2310 S. State Street. But most of all, she said she's eager to leave behind the project lifestyle.  On a Saturday morning in July, a man lay sleeping on the front lawn near a group of people congregated near the playground drinking.

“You’re trying to sleep,” she explained, “it’s 8:00 in the morning. They beat their music. It’s okay to beat your music, but not at 8:00 in the morning! People are sleeping!”

As the mother of four boys—ages 13, 11, 6 and 4 – Martin also worries about the gang activity and works hard to keep them busy with sports and to enforce a curfew.

But one of the most pernicious effects of the ghetto, Martin said, was the mentality that kept many residents of the old Chicago Housing Authority buildings from even aspiring  to something better. Her mother, who had also spent her entire life in the projects is one of those who doesn't want to leave the buildings behind.

"Some people are really tired of it and some people don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “Now my mama she’s another one. [She says,]‘Well, I’m not going anywhere. They can move me to another building.”

Martin wants to move into the rehabilitated Hilliard Homes, a cluster of high-rise structures that overlook the Red Line station at Cermak Chinatown.

Even though the buildings are located across Cermak Road from the Ickes Homes, Martin hopes that the 24-hour security guard, locked interior courtyard and workout facility will provide a much safer place for her kids to grow up.

As the time of her delivery approaches, Martin said she was growing increasingly insistent with the local housing authorities regarding her living conditions.

“I tell them, ‘I’m ready to go. I’m ready to move. Relocate me somewhere. Anywhere but here,'” she said. “I’m ready to move to a good environment because I don’t want to be in the projects all my life.”

In the fall, Martin plans to return to school to finish her GED and hopes to continue her education and one day start her own business.

“I’m ready to have bigger, better things,” she said.