HISTORIC TOWN TILTS TOWARD EXTINCTION
HUD relocation plan hits river town made famous by Mark Twain where it hurts
CAIRO, I LL . This once-bustling port town at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers has faced no shortage of struggles since explorers Lewis and Clark first landed on its muddy shores in 1803.
The city at the southernmost tip of Illinois has endured the persistent threat of flooding, the diminished importance of rivers as a transportation mode and some of the ugliest racial clashes seen in the North during the civil rights movement.
Now, this historic community of fewer than 2,400 — down from a peak of 15,205 nearly a century ago — is in danger of losing about 15% of its population, including about 40% of its public school students, as federal authorities plan to relocate residents from two decrepit public housing developments.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will start relocating about 400 low-income people living in the Elmwood and McBride apartments by the end of the month, agency spokesman Jer-
eon Brown said. The two lowrise developments built in the early 1940s are ravaged by mold, rodent and cockroach infestations as well as plumbing and electrical problems that housing officials say make the squat World War II-era apartment complexes uninhabitable.
Despite the dismal conditions, some longtime residents at the developments are fearful and angry about the prospect of moving from this storied town that Mark Twain celebrated in his Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, city leaders once boasted as a “Little Chicago” and Union soldiers used as a strategic operating base in the Civil War.
“I don’t want to leave and get pushed to live in some big city,” said Earlene Lyons, 52, whose Elmwood apartment was recently damaged by a fire she said was caused by an electrical malfunction in the kitchen. “This is what I know. This is where I feel comfortable.”
For years, HUD has moved away from building sprawling apartment complexes and instead has sought to scatter residents relying on government-subsidized housing throughout communities by is-
suing vouchers intended to help families rent quality housing through screened landlords in the private market.
In big cities such as Chicago, where the last tower of the notorious Cabrini- Green housing project was demolished in 2011, and in Memphis, where the Foote Homes — the city’s last traditional public housing complex — recently shuttered, more low-income housing is available within city limits.
Federal authorities acknowledge that the situation in a smaller town like Cairo (pronounced CARE-oh) is more complicated. There are perhaps only a few dozen vacant units in the city that could take in the displaced residents — nowhere near enough to accommodate the 183 households requiring relocation.
In a letter last month to the city’s school superintendent, Andrea Evers, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said a search for viable solutions came up empty. HUD estimates the two housing projects need $7.6 million in repairs; building new housing would cost about $70 million.
The situation, Carson said, is exacerbated by the fact that the city’s privately operated utilities company charges abnormally high rates — making it impractical to rehabilitate more than 200 vacant or abandoned properties in Cairo to fill the housing need. Many residents at Elmwood and McBride say they gritted through the deplorable living conditions because utilities were included in their subsidized rent.
“If there was another way to keep … residents in decent, safe, sanitary housing, we’d exercise that option,” Carson wrote.
The agency swooped into control of Cairo’s public housing in February 2016, taking over for the Alexander County housing agency because of what it called gross mismanagement. Residents say complaints about deteriorating conditions were ignored for years. HUD’s Office of the Inspector General is investigating.
Carson’s decision doesn’t sit well with some residents and city leaders. Mayor Tyrone Coleman said he was led to believe ahead of HUD’s announcement last month that the federal housing authority was focusing on rehabbing the developments.
“It’s easy to say I’m going to give you a piece of paper, you can go to Timbuktu and you can start your life again,” Coleman said. “We have kids now that are having nightmares over this.”
Cairo’s fortunes have been on the decline for much of the past century. Today it’s a berg without a grocery store, gas station or places to spend money in its largely vacant downtown. In the past five years, the city has seen more than two dozen businesses, five churches and five social service agencies close, according to city data. The median home value has fallen to $33,900.
The population decline, which began in the 1940s, accelerated as racial strife in the late 1960s came to a boiling point.
In 1967, the city endured violent protests after the death of a black U.S. Army soldier, Robert Hunt, 19, who was found hanged in his jail cell. That same year, the Illinois Employment Practices Commission opened hearings on racial discrimination at Burkhart Factory, then one of the city’s largest employers, and Little League baseball was discontinued in Cairo to avoid integration of the town’s ballpark.
Cairo, which remained majority white until the 1980s, is now about 70% African American, according to U.S. Census data.
Shaneka Booth, 26, who has lived at Elmwood for all but one year of her life, said she has stayed, in part, because her neighbors felt like family. But she said good neighbors go only so far.
“I will miss certain things about my town,” she said. “But I feel like it’s a chance for me to grow and let my kids see there is more than just Cairo.”