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Tasha Collier: "I got tired of moving "

All Tasha Collier wanted from the Plan for Transformation was a stable, safe place to raise her four children. 

But since she moved out of the Robert Taylor Homes six years ago, Collier said her family has moved constantly, had the gas shut off twice and now faces harassment by local gangs that hang out around her home at Mahalia Place, a Robert Taylor re-development on 47th Street and South Michigan Avenue.

The situation has become so bad, Collier said that she's packing to leave, without anywhere to go.

“I've got to go,” she said. “I've got to leave. I don't care what it takes...I've been to every newspaper, I've written everybody but God, but I have to go.” 

Collier's troubles started when she moved with her housing choice voucher to  Hyde Park,  a quiet neighborhood where her kids could safely play outside. 

Not long after she moved in, however, CHAC, Inc., the private company that oversees the Chicago Housing Choice Voucher program, found mice droppings in the building and stopped its subsidy payments to Collier’s landlord.

Under the rules of the voucher program, if a landlord doesn’t maintain buildings to CHAC standards, voucher holders have to leave.

Collier's next move was to 82nd Street and South Green Street where she moved into an apartment where the landlord lived upstairs.  

But when she discovered that she was paying the utilities for the entire building, she got her moving papers from CHAC and started searching for a new place to live.

Things finally seemed to be looking up when she found a “big, beautiful house” at West 70th  Place and South Damen Avenue, but when the landlord started asking for more rent, Collier gave up, resigned her voucher and moved her family to Mahalia Place.

At first, Collier's brick townhouse in the Robert Taylor redevelopment on 47th Street seemed to offer everything she'd been looking for: central air condition, a washer and dryer in the unit and a spacious kitchen.

It was also close to her job as a cafeteria cook for a local Chicago Public School and the inner courtyard and locked fence provided a buffer from the dangers of the surrounding neighborhood.

As she quickly discovered, though, the biggest threat came from inside the gates.

The tear downs uprooted traditional gang territories,  Collier said,  introducing rival gangs into the area around Mahalia Place and leaving its residents caught in the crossfire.

She said the buildings' back porches have become regular hangouts for people outside the development, who use them to use and deal drugs.

Growing up in the Robert Taylor Homes, Collier said, people felt safe because they knew everyone in the buildings and they shared the responsibility of raising the children. Crime was a daily reality but because she knew those involved, she didn't worry about it.

At Mahalia Place, on the other hand, the lines are unclear and she's afraid to let her kids go outside to play, especially since July, when her 14-year-old son was mugged on his way back from the grocery store.

Although the development is equipped with video cameras, Collier said, neither the surveillance, nor her continued calls to the police and the building's management have solved the problem.

Collier attributes the lack of response in part, to the constant changes in management: She said the development has been overseen by four different people since she moved in three years ago.

To make matters worse, bills are also often a struggle; Her gas has been shut off twice since moving to Mahalia Place because utilities are always the last two bills she juggles after paying her rent, her car loan and  taking care of her children's needs.

“It's not like I'm not trying,” she said. “I've been working all my life, but it seems like whenever I take two steps forward, I have to take six steps back. It's always something.”

And it's hard for her to justify her efforts, she said, when she she feels like a prisoner in her own home.

“At this point, I don't care what they do as long as I move. And hopefully it's not to a worse place.”