Quit isolating poor or face riots, Daley warns

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cha16.html

Paris-style riots could "come very quickly" to America's cities unless something is done to end the "isolation of the poor," Mayor Daley said Thursday.

The mayor issued his dire warning on what Chicago Housing Authority chief Terry Peterson called a "historic day for the State Street corridor," where Chicago isolated its poorest residents.

Ground was broken on Park Boulevard, the first new mixed-income development along the State Street corridor since the CHA launched its $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation. The 311-unit development, where the CHA's Stateway Gardens once stood, is bounded by 35th, Federal, State and Pershing.

"We're the only city in the nation attacking this problem. If they don't attack the problem and do something about it. . . . You keep reading all about Paris, outside of Paris. Isolation of the poor, what has taken place there. That could come very quickly to the United States," Daley said.

Didn't it already happen here many times? Remember Watts and the D.C. riots?

When I live in one of Chicago's burgeoning tax-increment financing districts that will inevitably be converted from $500/month apartments to half-million dollar condos.

We were lucky, our family bought the thing and we pay the mortgage.

I'm terrified for my neighbors who don't have the same kind of support. :(