News you won’t read in the dailies, which appear to be systematically forgetting about public housing (“The View From the Ground,” March 4): “Soon after the city launched the ‘Plan for Transformation’ [of the Chicago Housing Authority] in 1999, it summarily disbanded the 270- member CHA police force. At that time, city officials reassured CHA residents that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) had adequate resources to provide full police services to public housing communities.” Now Jamie Kalven reports that as of the end of 2002, the cash-strapped CHA had given the police department $36 million; it has authorized another $13.6-million transfer this year.
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“Preachers should tell the truth about what happens to soldiers,” says evangelical preacher Tony Campolo, quoted by Martin Marty in “Context” (March 15). “It is too easy for us to forget what happens to young recruits who go into battle, and to ignore the fact that more than half of the listless, disillusioned homeless on our streets are veterans.”
I’m outta here. According to a paper presented at last fall’s Chicago Federal Reserve Bank conference on the midwest workforce (“Chicago Fed Letter,” February), midwestern states have trouble attracting college graduates from elsewhere: “The percentage of college graduates… gained via in-migration was only 9.8% versus a U.S. average of 23.5%.”
