CHICAGO — The head of the Chicago Housing Authority has agreed to testify before a City Council committee next month after alderpeople advanced a measure to increase oversight of the agency.
As Chicago struggles with an affordable housing crisis, CHA CEO Tracey Scott and other CHA officials now plan to appear before the council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate in May, a spokesman for the agency said.
The meeting will likely focus on concerns including residents’ living conditions and vacancies at CHA properties as well as making sure that “the CHA CEO can directly respond to questions” from the council, said Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), who chairs the committee.
“That is important not only for council members but more importantly for residents,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “I think it’s important that we have checks and balances and accountability in every delegate agency.”
With a mission of helping low-income people find safe housing, the authority is formally an independent government body with its own board responsible for providing oversight. But housing advocates and alderpeople have criticized the agency in recent years for its slow pace of building new homes and its deals to sell off parcels of land while thousands of people struggle with housing insecurity and homelessness.
Alderpeople expressed more concerns and demanded Scott answer their questions after a Block Club and Illinois Answers Project investigation found nearly 500 of the CHA’s scattered-site properties are empty while more than 200,000 people are on the agency’s waiting lists for housing.
The scattered-site program was created to help desegregate the city’s public housing and expand residents’ access to opportunities. Instead, one in six of the CHA’s scattered sites are unused — and in some cases decaying, becoming neighborhood blights.
After the news outlets began asking questions, the CHA announced plans to spend $50 million in 2024 to rehabilitate 176 of the scattered-site properties. So far, the CHA has finished work on five apartments and two single-family homes, while work is almost complete or underway at several other sites, according to CHA spokesman Matt Aguilar.
In the meantime, alderpeople demanded more answers from CHA officials.
“There’s a shortage of housing in the city of Chicago — affordable housing — [and] housing is in the title of their agency,” Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) told Block Club Wednesday. “There just has to be some accountability.”
A measure passed by the City Council Wednesday calls on Scott and other housing officials to come before the Committee on Housing and Real Estate. Sigcho-Lopez said the hope is for Scott to appear twice a year, down from the quarterly meetings he requested late last year.
Villegas said he intends to ask CHA officials what their plans are to put people into the vacant scattered-site units as well as build new housing.
“For some reason, they’ve always flown under the radar,” Villegas said. “And I think that what we want to do is ask some questions, build a better relationship, so that way we can answer some of the questions that our constituents are asking us.”
In a statement, Aguilar confirmed Scott plans to join the committee for a hearing in May. The housing authority “shares the City Council’s commitment to ensuring affordable housing throughout the city. … We regularly work with aldermen and are available to answer questions from City Council.”
Quinn Myers contributed to this report.
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