Chicago: Get Married Or Get Out

Get Married Or Get Out

For a week Michael Gipson did not dare to leave the three-room apartment he shared with his girlfriend and their infant son in Rockwell Gardens, the public-housing project with the highest crime rate in Chicago. Gipson rightly feared that the Chicago Housing Authority would throw him out because his name was not on the apartment's lease. His solution: marry his girlfriend and become an official tenant.

The impending weddings of Gipson, 32, and Laticia Wilson, 22, and as many as 16 other Rockwell Gardens couples are the unexpected result of the CHA's belated attempt to make the city's notorious public housing...

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