The CHAs Plan for Transformation guarantees every public housing family a place to live after the agency demolishes its 52 high-rises and builds mixed-income communities in their place. But the plan makes no provision for those on the waiting list.From 1994 to 1999, 36,989 families applied for CHA housing, agency records show. In those six years, 3,754 left the list to move into CHA family units. The agency still accepts applications, which most prospective tenants fill out at the CHA Occupancy Department, 4700 S. State St. Applications are stamped with date and time, which determines their place on waiting lists organized by the number of bedrooms requested.When applicants reach the top of the lists, they are matched with the first available apartment. Families who turn down housing offers are removed from the general waiting list, but can add their names to a secondary list for specific properties or scattered-site housing, said Gregory Russ, chief of staff for the CHAs Operations Department. The thousands of scattered-site units are intended to help fulfill a longstanding federal court order to desegregate public housing.Under federal law, the CHA was required to give preference to families on the list who lived in substandard housing, paid more than half their incomes toward rent, or were homeless. Congress made those requirements optional in 1998, and the agency chose to eliminate them, Russ said.Preferences are difficult to verify and make it harder to explain to other families why they were passed over, he said.Like the Smileys, 35-year-old Charlene Brown-Priest couldnt wait. Last December, after an operation left her temporarily unable to work, Brown-Priest landed in a homeless shelter with her 17-year-old daughter, Kenya Brown.The family had been living above a storefront church near 61st Street and Vernon Avenue in Woodlawn. Brown-Priest said she could barely cover the rent with her $8.25-an-hour job as a full-time security ...
