“It was beautiful to live there. There were trees all over the place, rabbits were running all over the place, every now and then you’d see a raccoon or something coming through,” Miguel Suarez recalls as he sifts through memories of his neighborhood. “African-Americans, Latinos, whites—there was no real differences in whom we were as a class, as a people. We were just totally happy living amongst each other.”
It wasn’t just the unique architecture and unprecedented integration that made Lathrop unique among public housing projects in the city. Its location offered easier access to some of the city’s better jobs and its integrated schools, which meant Lathrop’s residents had a better shot at the social mobility that was mostly denied to public housing residents in more segregated and isolated parts of the city.
Though Lathrop was supposed to be rehabilitated—and to remain 100 percent public housing—the CHA’s position shifted over the years. In 2000 the CHA stopped accepting new residents (in anticipation of rehabbing the property), and each subsequent year families were encouraged to move out. The buildings were shuttered one by one as Lathrop shrank from 747 occupied units in 2000 to about 140 today.
Molly Metzger, assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in Saint Louis, wrote her dissertation on the exodus of Lathrop families. She conducted interviews with 40 former Lathrop residents and concluded that the most common reason for leaving was pressure from the CHA.
Persistent problems with rats and mice at her first two Section 8 apartments in Albany Park and Humboldt Park forced her to keep looking for a new place. “It seems like everybody I know who’s on Section 8 continuously move.”
Many of the residents who have moved maintain close ties to those who’ve stayed. Some former residents come back daily to check in on friends or family, or bring their kids to the Boys and Girls Club—one of Lathrop’s best assets.
