High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing

by Ben Austen

Overview

A Booklist Best Book of the Year: “The definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project,” Chicago’s Cabrini-Green (David Simon, creator of The Wire).

Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000—all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago’s ritzy Gold Coast. Eventually, Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource—it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.

In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America’s public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly though the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex’s demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation’s effort to provide affordable housing to the poor—and what we can learn from those mistakes.

“Compelling.” —Chicago Tribune

“[A] fascinating narrative.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Austen has masterfully woven together these deeply intimate stories of the residents at Cabrini against the backdrop of critical public policy decisions. Ultimately this book is about how as a country we acknowledge and deal with the very poor.” —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here

Named a Best Book of the Year by Mother Jones

Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction; the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize; and the Chicago Review of Books Award

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062235084
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	393
Sales rank:	805,109
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ben Austen has written for many publications, including Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and New York magazine. He lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Part 1 A Home over Jordan

Chapter 1 Portrait of a Chicago Slum 3

Chapter 2 The Reds and the Whites 24

Chapter 3 Catch-as-Catch-Can 50

Chapter 4 Warriors 68

Chapter 5 The Mayor's Pied-à-Terre 91

Part 2 Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson

Chapter 6 Cabnni-Green Rap 115

Chapter 7 Concentration Effects 128

Chapter 8 This Is My Life 144

Chapter 9 Faith Brought Us This Far 157

Chapter 10 How Horror Works 173

Chapter 11 Dantrell Davis Way 192

Part 3 Rotations on the Land

Chapter 12 Cabrini Mustard and Turnip Greens 221

Chapter 13 If Not Here … Where? 238

Chapter 14 Transformations 253

Chapter 15 Old Town, New Town 273

Chapter 16 They Came from the Projects 297

Chapter 17 The People's Public Housing Authority 314

Chapter 18 The Chicago Neighborhood of the Future 330

Acknoivledgments 347

Bibliography and Notes on Sources 351

Index 367

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2017
In his first book, journalist Austen (Harper's, the Atlantic) traces the birth, life, and death of one of America's most notorious public housing projects: the Cabrini-Green towers and row houses of Chicago's Near North Side. Constructed in the 1940s and 1950s as a New Deal solution to Chicago's overcrowded tenements, Cabrini-Green was intended for carefully screened working-class families. Initially integrating many different races, the neighborhood quickly became predominantly African American. Never adequately funded, Cabrini-Green's structural needs were soon neglected and it became housing of last resort for the city's poor. By the 1980s, Cabrini-Green was a national symbol of entrenched poverty, gang violence, and community neglect. In 2010, the towers were forcibly emptied and demolition began. Austen's intimate portrait of the neighborhood follows individual residents from the halcyon days of sparkling new construction and optimism to the final hours before demolition. He draws on interviews with residents, staff, and public-housing experts, as well as contemporary news coverage, popular culture, and secondary literature. VERDICT The focus on personal stories raises more questions than it answers about the historical and political reasons behind Chicago's disinvestment in public housing. Nevertheless, this is a finely crafted biography of an urban community.—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc.

Library Journal

10/16/2017
In his first book, journalist Austen surveys the development and demise of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project through the stories of four African-American residents who lived there at various points in their lives, beginning in the 1950s and up until the building’s demolition in 2011. Together their stories span the tenures of 10 mayors and illustrate Cabrini-Green residents’ slide into overwhelming poverty, as well as the disintegration of the community and the rise of crime there, exemplified in the shooting of two policemen, James Severin and Anthony Rizzato, in 1970, and the shooting of seven-year-old Dantrell Davis in 1992. Cabrini-Green—and particularly its demolition—has been the subject of much media attention; Austen examines that treatment in newspaper accounts, as well as in several films and documentaries, which by and large perpetuate a one-dimensional view of the horrors of inner-city life. Austen is an expert on his subject, and the narrative at times feels bloated with an excess of his experience and research. Nevertheless, urban planners in particular will find this an instructive guide, or, perhaps more importantly, a cautionary tale about a failed attempt to provide affordable housing for the poor. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Ben Austen’s High-Risers is not merely the definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project, but a clear-eyed assessment of what happened to public housing as a national ideal and why it happened.” — David Simon, creator of The Wire

“Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.” — Chicago Tribune

“Ben Austen has emerged over the last five years as one of the most serious and thoughtful new American reporters. He writes with a deceptively smooth and borderline conversational style that keeps pages turning, but he has something rarer, too: the patience to keep with a subject until it yields up unfamiliar questions. This book was years in the making and in some way Austen’s whole life in the making. In it a neighborhood becomes a character, a protagonist, but the character has inside it real human beings. Austen convinced me that my understanding of what goes on inside ‘the projects’ had been about as deep as a cop show. We need more books like this from him.” — John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

“[Austen] ties the history of Cabrini-Green to broad economic, political, and social trends that played a pivotal role in the creation and undoing not only of Cabrini-Green, but also of much of America’s public housing… [presenting] the history of Cabrini-Green in such a way that invites subtle questions with no easy answers… The high-rises are gone and, in time, the high-risers will go with them. But the lessons of Cabrini-Green still weigh on us all.” — South Side Weekly

“Provides many powerful insights…A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community.” — Kirkus

“[High-Risers] is a finely crafted biography of an urban community.” — Library Journal Advance Review

“….a local history of profound national relevance… Austen’s fascinating narrative demands much consideration.” — Booklist (starred review)

“The passages about Cabrini-Green residents, interspersed among chapters about the history of the projects, take the reader into the drama of life in African-American communities…Austen combines archival work with empirical research. The hundreds of hours he spent interviewing the residents of Cabrini-Green often give his prose the depth of a novel.” — New York Review of Books

From the Publisher

[Austen] ties the history of Cabrini-Green to broad economic, political, and social trends that played a pivotal role in the creation and undoing not only of Cabrini-Green, but also of much of America’s public housing… [presenting] the history of Cabrini-Green in such a way that invites subtle questions with no easy answers… The high-rises are gone and, in time, the high-risers will go with them. But the lessons of Cabrini-Green still weigh on us all.

South Side Weekly

Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.

Chicago Tribune

Ben Austen’s High-Risers is not merely the definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project, but a clear-eyed assessment of what happened to public housing as a national ideal and why it happened.

David Simon

The passages about Cabrini-Green residents, interspersed among chapters about the history of the projects, take the reader into the drama of life in African-American communities…Austen combines archival work with empirical research. The hundreds of hours he spent interviewing the residents of Cabrini-Green often give his prose the depth of a novel.

New York Review of Books

Ben Austen has emerged over the last five years as one of the most serious and thoughtful new American reporters. He writes with a deceptively smooth and borderline conversational style that keeps pages turning, but he has something rarer, too: the patience to keep with a subject until it yields up unfamiliar questions. This book was years in the making and in some way Austen’s whole life in the making. In it a neighborhood becomes a character, a protagonist, but the character has inside it real human beings. Austen convinced me that my understanding of what goes on inside ‘the projects’ had been about as deep as a cop show. We need more books like this from him.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

….a local history of profound national relevance… Austen’s fascinating narrative demands much consideration.

Booklist (starred review)

Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.

Chicago Tribune

Author Ben Austen and narrator Ron Butler create something special in this outstanding examination of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. Butler captures the characters of residents, cops, housing officials, and others. Austen gives him much to work with—the audiobook is about the people of Cabrini-Green as much as it is about the buildings and politics and policies. What Austen and Butler do so well is counter the worn narrative of Cabrini-Green as a place of urban blight, poverty, and violence. There also were communities of people striving for a place in the world. This is a fine, sympathetic portrait of a place and its people, both of which have long been overshadowed by myth and stereotype. G.S.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile

Author Ben Austen and narrator Ron Butler create something special in this outstanding examination of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. Butler captures the characters of residents, cops, housing officials, and others. Austen gives him much to work with—the audiobook is about the people of Cabrini-Green as much as it is about the buildings and politics and policies. What Austen and Butler do so well is counter the worn narrative of Cabrini-Green as a place of urban blight, poverty, and violence. There also were communities of people striving for a place in the world. This is a fine, sympathetic portrait of a place and its people, both of which have long been overshadowed by myth and stereotype. G.S.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile

2017-11-12
The life, death, and diaspora of an American community.In a book that is part sociological study and part oral history, longtime journalist Austen takes a deep dive into the story of Cabrini-Green, an iconic American public housing project in Chicago. At its peak in the 1950s and '60s, Cabrini-Green was home to more than 3,600 families, predominantly African-American, "two-parent, working-class, and desperately in need of adequate housing." The author covers the relevant cultural, sociological, and political aspects of a place known as one of the "scariest black places in America." He also captures the flash points of the block's history, including the shooting of two policemen in 1970, the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old in 1992, and a brutal attack on 9-year-old "Girl X" in 1997. Admirably, Austen humanizes his story by telling it through the eyes of a handful of Cabrini-Green residents, including Dolores Wilson, a janitor's wife who became a political activist; Annie Ricks, who lived most of her life in Cabrini-Green; and J.R. Fleming, a peddler of counterfeit goods who learned to fight the injustice around him. "Reflecting on J.R.'s personal transformation, [a plainclothes cop] joked that his colleagues on the police force had messed up," writes the author. "They should have left the young man alone when he was just peddling DVDs and tube socks: ‘Now they went and woke him up.' " Cabrini-Green is gone now, wiped out by a sweeping urban renewal program that demolished "every remaining public housing family high-rise, knocking down some 18,000 units." So Austen covers the diaspora, too, as an island of poverty was wiped from existence by white prosperity. It's a somewhat overstuffed history, but the author provides many powerful insights. As Dolores told her brother when offered an exit from Cabrini-Green, "I'm in the projects, but that's my home. I love my home just like you love your home."A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community.

Kirkus Reviews