Chicago: 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 safe for its 150,000 residents. Last month Vincent Lane, the energetic new head of the CHA, posted round-the-clock guards to prevent anyone without a tenant identification card from remaining overnight.

Initially some residents complained about the crackdown, but they have quickly become accustomed to the feeling of safety it provided. The newly married residents may bolster a tenant patrol that will soon take the place of the police. Says Lane: “Hopefully these guys who are hiding and ducking and dodging may be able to step forward and be responsible men.”