guard.The $400 per month apartment had no running water, no working toilets and mice running everywhere, Brown-Priest said. Living there was six months of hell, but it was still a place to put our heads.She said she added her name to the CHA waiting list in December, then squatted in a Taylor apartment with her daughter and her husband, Stanley Priest.This is heaven, Kenya Brown said, standing in the sparsely furnished, but clean and newly painted, two-bedroom apartment. Weve got heat over here. It is so good to have a flush toilet again, she said.The CHA threw the family out the same day as the Smileys, forcing them to double up with friends, Brown-Priest said.Robert Taylor isnt the only CHA development with available, vacant apartments. Alfreda Moore, 20, wants to live in the Cabrini Rowhouses on the Near North Side. Her 6-year-old son, Ramone, attends the nearby Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, at 363 W. Hill St. They now live with 10 other people in her aunts one-bedroom apartment in Rogers Park, but in mid-April she said she was planning to move to a homeless shelter.Getting a subsidized unit would allow her to finish high school and continue working as a stocker at a Gap clothing store. In March, Moore started taking GED classes with Jobs for Youth, a non-profit job placement service at 50 E. Washington Blvd.When she first applied for a CHA apartment in June 1998, Moore said officials told her they didnt have any available units. But I walk around here and see vacant units, she said. After CHA officials told her they lost her application, Moore said she reapplied on May 11, 1999, and received a waiting list number in January.CHA records show 120 rowhouse units are vacant. About 80 percent cant be leased because of leaky roofs or lead-based paint that must be removed, said Charles Price, development manager for the Cabrini Rowhouse Resident Management Corp., a resident group that manages the homes.Price said it is difficult to re...
