Don't expect a parade. With no federal cash, and no stomach for a fight, the CHA will end its inglorious 34-year struggle to desegregate public housing by moving African-American tenants to units in white neighborhoods.

As chronicled in the June issue of The Chicago Reporter, the CHA and Mayor Richard Daley are giving up on the scattered-site program, citing high property and construction costs, and the lack of land and money.

That's all true, but the unspoken reason for throwing in the towel on scattered-site housing has never changed: Middle-class white people just don't want poor black people living in their neighborhoods. They didn't want them 30 years ago, and they don't want them now. This makes everyone uncomfortable, because Chicago no longer thinks of itself as racially insensitive — at least not so blatantly.

And we have come a long way. Twenty years ago, as a young reporter working on the city's Northwest Side, I remember hearing the term "scattered site" and wondering what the hell everyone was talking about. Home-owners spoke those words in hushed tones, and at community meetings their aldermen would fire up the crowd with a veiled reference or two. To these folks, scattered-site housing was insidious, like communism. Open the door a crack, and it would creep in overnight.

That was in 1980, 14 years after a group of public housing residents led by Dorothy Gautreaux filed a class-action lawsuit against the CHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, charging them with discrimination because public housing was concentrated in black neighbor-hoods. In 1969, a federal judge ordered the CHA to end that isolation by scatter-ing public housing in neighborhoods that were decidedly not black.

Nothing happened. The CHA dragged its feet. By 1980, as I watched Northwest Siders working themselves into a lather, the agency had built but a handful of units — and most of those were in black neighborhoods. In 1987, an exasperated federal judge, concluding the CHA could not be trusted, appoint-ed The Habitat Co. to get the job done.

Habitat tried, and even managed to A VIEW FROM CHICAGO build a few units in white neighbor-hoods. But residents and politicians remained adamantly opposed to the program, forcing the developer to get creative. Over the years, Habitat built most of its scattered-site units in Latino areas, a solution that complied with the letter, if not the spirit, of the Gautreaux judgment. Latino neighborhoods weren't exactly white, but then they weren't black, either.

Now, property values have made it too expensive to acquire the few parcels still available in white communities. And in the coming year, the CHA plans to tear down about one in six existing scattered-site units, unless the city beats them to it. The Reporter found that some of the buildings, though protected by the Gautreaux judgment, already are on the city's fast-track demolition list.

No one should care about this, the politicians tell us, because the Daley Administration has come up with a better solution. Instead of moving black people into established white neighbor-hoods, the city is creating new neighborhoods, where lots of poor black people used to live. The idea is simple: Tear down those old public housing developments and build "mixed-income" units, everything from fancy townhomes to working-class bungalows, with a smattering (or should I say scattering?) of public housing.

Many of these new communities might attract whites or Latinos, but that's not the point. The goal is no longer racial integration. So if we tear down the Robert Taylor Homes and build a nice neighborhood, maybe some middle-class black folks will settle there.

The CHA estimates about 6,000 public housing residents will be displaced by this plan. They will be given federal Section 8 rent subsidies and sent into the private marketplace, where, the officials tell us, they will be much happier than living in public housing. Hey, it just might work. But if it doesn't, don't expect another federal court order. Chicago's attempt at racial integration just ended. .

James Ylisela Jr. teaches urban reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He's the acting editor of The Chicago Reporter. In with a bang, out with a whimper: Chicago's racial integration is over by James Ylisela Jr. With no federal cash, and no stomach for a fight, the city's housing authority will end its inglorious struggle to desegregate public housing.

Illinois Issues July/August 2000 | 41---Also available in PDF