ARMESHA JONES, 46, CABRINI- GREEN / DIVISION STREET
Armesha Jones can’t believe she’s living in what used to be Cabrini- Green. “I would never have imagined Division Street could be this beautiful,” she says.
Jones, 46, was a young mother with four kids when she moved in to a Cabrini rowhouse at 532 W. Chestnut in 1999. “I had a two- bedroom at the time. I used bunk beds — girls on one side, boys on the other.”
A neighbor taught her to navigate gangs’ territories. “She would tell me, ‘ Don’t come to Division — take a different route.’ ”
Jones always worked — at Starbucks, then at a medical center. She tried to keep her kids safe and busy. But her teenage son got involved with a gang, and one night the police brought him home after catching him with cocaine and a gun. She was grateful he wasn’t in jail, or worse.
“He gave my son a second chance,” Jones says of the officer.
By 2007, she’d had a enough. “I said, ‘ I’m moving out. I don’t have the money, but I’m going to make something work.’ ”
Jones and her kids moved from apartment to apartment. Years later, she learned she had the right to go back to a redeveloped Cabrini building — one of the promises of the Plan for Transformation.
Her kids are grown now, working and on their own, and Jones lives in a new mixed- income building on Division in a CHA unit. About a third of its 106 units are reserved for CHA residents. Some other apartments are “affordable.” The rest are market- rate, with some CHA tenants living there with the help of a CHA- issued housing voucher. Jones says her share of the rent is $ 407 a month — about a third of the total.
“That’s something I can afford,” she says. “I have a south view that’s phenomenal. I love the environment” — there’s a Target down the street, built on former CHA land, and a new park on the other side of her building. “All these amenities, we didn’t have that then. To go out and walk around, to go into a park and watch my granddaughter play, it would have been impossible in 1999.” — Mick Dumke