Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Razing of housing complex imperils Ill. town’s survival
A government plan to tear down a crumbling public housing complex in the southern Illinois town of Cairo has sent roughly 200 families searching for new homes and sparked fears that the once-thriving river city could be coming to an end.
Sitting at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Cairo was once a shipping hub, home to 15,000 people at its peak in the 1940s. But racial strife, flooding and economic troubles have left the town with just 2,600 residents, a vacant downtown, boarded up and abandoned buildings and little habitable housing.
If the residents of the buildings slated for demolition don’t find new homes in Cairo and end up leaving for other communities, the city’s population would be cut by 15 percent and the school district would lose nearly 40 percent of its student body.
Built in 1942, the Elmwood and McBride apartments are now infested with rodents and bugs and have heating and plumbing that don’t work properly, HUD says. Some residents say they’re afraid to let their children play outside because of crime in the area. The federal agency took over the property and other local housing authority operations in February 2016, amid allegations that the former head of the Alexander County Housing Authority had used federal funds for meals, trips and benefits while the buildings deteriorated.
HUD announced last month that it will close the buildings and relocate the residents, saying the cost to repair the complexes, estimated at more than $41 million, is too much. Residents will get a voucher to use toward housing and help finding a new place to live, with the first relocations starting this month.
But few properties are available in Cairo or in the rural areas surrounding it.
Students have written letters to new HUD Secretary Ben Carson, asking him to visit or help save their homes. Carson wrote back, saying there are few options for the “nearly bankrupt” local housing authority.