Mary Baggett

Mary Baggett
Lived at the ABLA rowhouses from 1987 – 1997.

Just seeing our kids on the streets with nothing to do kinda made me want to step up to the plate to see them have a better life. I looked at them and like, we have all the resources to help get these youth off the street, to send them out job hunting, to put them in a program to show them that they can learn different trades to get the job that they need. And I just felt like nothing was getting done. It was time to make a change, stay on top of them, stay on top of CHA, stay on top of management and everybody who’s supposed to deal with this community overall.

Rhoda Jean Hatch

Rhoda Jean Hatch
Lived at Jane Addams Homes from 1959–1974.

We didn’t know who lived in the project. We didn’t know until we found out much later, that’s where we actually lived, in the Chicago housing authority. Growing up as kids, we didn’t think of it as that. We just thought of it as a beautiful building we lived in, the home, there was ten of us in the apartment that we lived in.

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