Whitey Ford
08-04-2019, 07:44 PM
CHICAGO (AP) — When word spread that the Obama Presidential Center was coming to the lakefront park Tara Madison has watched through her apartment windows for a decade, she was elated at the idea of a gleaming facility honoring the president she supported and reviving rough sections of her neighborhood.
Then the 52-year-old social services worker and daughter of civil rights activists began to worry luxury condos might replace subsidized housing, including where she lives with her two children and two grandchildren, and she'd be forced to move.
"Because our area has become attractive to developers now, they'll count us out," she said.
Her sentiments represent a tangled conflict that's unfolded since Barack Obama announced his $500 million presidential center would be built in Jackson Park, near Lake Michigan and where he started his political career, taught law and got married: Could the legacy library of the nation's first black president propel the displacement of thousands of low-income black families right in his backyard?
https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/ap-top-news/2019/08/04/obama-library-brings-elation-but-also-fear-of-displacement
Then the 52-year-old social services worker and daughter of civil rights activists began to worry luxury condos might replace subsidized housing, including where she lives with her two children and two grandchildren, and she'd be forced to move.
"Because our area has become attractive to developers now, they'll count us out," she said.
Her sentiments represent a tangled conflict that's unfolded since Barack Obama announced his $500 million presidential center would be built in Jackson Park, near Lake Michigan and where he started his political career, taught law and got married: Could the legacy library of the nation's first black president propel the displacement of thousands of low-income black families right in his backyard?
https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/ap-top-news/2019/08/04/obama-library-brings-elation-but-also-fear-of-displacement