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Blizzard Rips Upper Midwest; End of Public Housing Era

Aired December 11, 2010 - 22:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. Up to 2 inches of snow per hour. Right now, the upper Midwest is in a deep freeze beneath a thick blanket of fresh snow. The snow is tapering off but the wind is wicked and the mercury is in a free fall.

Flights in and out of Minneapolis came to a standstill. And for the New York Giants who were supposed to play the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, it meant an unwanted detour to Kansas City. The game has been postponed to Monday night.

Let's turn now to our meteorologist Jacqui Jeras.

Jacqui, and then all these freezing temperatures coming behind is going to freeze that stuff. Bad news all the way around.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it really is. It's so terrible out there. I mean, nobody should be traveling across a big, big part of the Midwest for tonight. Really, from Missouri, through Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin into Illinois, it's really wicked.

The worst of the weather now at this hour is kind of stretching across central Iowa, pushing up towards the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area. So all in here, we've got interstates shut down tonight. Many, many highways shut down. The winds are so strong, 50 miles per hour. They're creating snow drifts three to four feet high at this hour in Iowa. I-29 here shut down. Parts of I-80 shut down. Parts of I-94 in the twin cities, shut down tonight. It is just miserable in this area.

Now where is that accumulating snowfall going? All right, you're done with it already in the twin cities. That's some good news because take a look at some of these snowfall totals. More than 20 inches there in Shakopee. That's the suburb of the twin cities. St. Paul over 15, nearly 15. Minneapolis and Eau Claire at 14 inches.

The rest of the snow is going to be focused into this area right here. Green Bay getting up to a foot. Milwaukee, maybe 8 to 10. Chicago, you're going to get off pretty easy on this one. Outside of the winds and those plummeting temperatures. We're talking 15 to 30 degrees where you should be for this time of the year. It's going to be feeling like 20s and 30s below zero as we head into tomorrow morning.

The northeast is going to see mostly a rain event as this thing moves on through the area. And then you'll see those temperatures plummet. And just to give you an idea, Don, of how bad things are out there, this is a snowplow that's in the ditch. This was taken by my friend Tessa Andrews (ph) in the twin cities on highway 36 earlier today. So even the snowplows can't get through all this stuff.

LEMON: You know it's bad when the snowplow gets stuck.

JERAS: Yes, it's not a good thing.

LEMON: You are in deep, deep trouble.

All right, Jacqui Jeras, thank you very much.

JERAS: Sure.

LEMON: We turn now to other news. An apparent terrorist attack in Sweden has killed one person and wounded two others, but it could have been much, much worse. Police say two explosions about five minutes apart went off in an area of Stockholm full of Christmas shoppers. The first blast came from inside a car, the second happened at an intersection. But it is not clear what caused it.

A Swedish news agency says it received an e-mail about ten minutes before the blasts, referencing Swedish troops in Afghanistan and a Swedish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad in a bad way. Swedish police have not confirmed if the e-mail is connected to the blasts.

Bernie Madoff's $50 billion swindle has claimed another victim, his eldest son, Mark. Mark Madoff was found dead this morning in his New York City apartment, an apparent suicide. His wife was in Florida. But their 2-year-old son was asleep in another room. Mark Madoff was never implicated as a conspirator in his father's Ponzi scheme, but he was beset with legal and financial problems since reporting his father to the authorities two years ago.

It is one housing project in one major U.S. city, but it symbolizes a problem that exists all across this country. Next, a special report, the closing of Cabrini-Green and the challenge of housing low-income and at-risk Americans.

And I'm connected and I know you are, too. Check out my social media accounts. And you can always connect to me. I want to hear from you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Tonight "What Matters," our partnership with Essence magazine. An in depth report on a struggle for every major city. How to house its poor. Cabrini Green in Chicago is probably the best known name for the worst in public housing. At its peak 15,000 low- income tenants live in its high-rises. And this week, the final residents moved out as part of what the city of Chicago calls a transformation.

Here's more from those who were the last to go.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LATASHA RICKS, FORMER RESIDENTS OF CABRINI GREEN: It's been a great ride but it's over.

D. BRADFORD HUNT, HISTORIAN, ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY: Cabrini Green is the most infamous public housing development in Chicago because of its violent past, but that doesn't capture the whole story.

RICKS: The good memory, we was homeless before I was 8 years old. We slept on the streets. And we didn't have nowhere to go. And carbine was the only place that took us. This place means happiness. It's all happiness. The families that was here, it was just good living over here.

HUNT: The Cabrini Homes which were completed in 1942, a series of low-rise building, 540 apartments. And then later in the 1950s, even more land was cleared next to it. And that was when the high- rises were built in two stages known as the Cabrini Reds and the Cabrini Whites. And the complex is really made up of those three developments.

Why is Cabrini Green so famous? Because it's very close to one of the wealthiest communities in Chicago, The Gold Coast. And so for that reason, it attracted a lot of attention. Cabrini has had a series of really tragic events over its years. And as a result, has in the minds of Chicagoans has become symbolic of public housing failures.

RICKS: The worst thing I saw, one of my friends was murdered, one of my friends, her name was Keshia, rest in peace. And I had another friend named Tasha Bronson. And she was murdered, innocent bystander.

HUNT: The problem of how do you police youth became the central problem of Cabrini Green. No one had ever had that high youth density in any community anywhere in the country. And public housing in Chicago and at Cabrini Green in particular suffered because they couldn't figure out how to create social order.

HUNT: They wanted to demolish Cabrini for a long time. In part because it could be easily redeveloped. From the housing authority's perspective, they wanted to get rid of these eyesores. Many residents saw this as their home. They lived there most of their lives, they had grown up there. The sense of attachment to this place was really intense.

RICKS: The sense of community is great. It's a great bond with the families, the kids.

HUNT: What we'll have in 20 years is a less visible public housing program where people won't really know where the public housing residents are in terms of the built environment, in terms of the apartment that is they see.

RICKS: This day for me, it's a sad day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?

RICKS: Because it's the last of Cabrini and all the Cabrini families it's like spread out. And, you know, we know it's Cabrini. HUNT: The last residents of Cabrini Green have a tremendous sense of community. They've been through an awful lot in the last ten years. There had been a lot of uncertainty. Is their building going to be torn down? Where are they going to go?

RICKS: It's a sad feeling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Now a public housing postscript. What happens to people who are forced out of projects like Chicago's Cabrini Green?

Dr. Susan Popkin researches just that question for the Urban Institute. Also joining us is Mark Pratt who lived most of his life in the Chicago project.

Mark, you moved out in 1999, but before you did, you were in a documentary. It's called "Voices of Cabrini," and in this clip, your son just asked you, why are you quitting?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK PRATT, CABRINI GREEN FATHER: It just come to the point, what's wrong with me moving? What's wrong with me wanting something better? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And I'm not going to move from Cabrini into another area that's just as bad, you know. But I think you all deserve a backyard. I think I deserve a basement. I think we just deserve a peace of mind. And we can't get that here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, Mark, did you find any peace of mind after you left Cabrini Green?

PRATT: Actually, I did. I found a lot of peace of mind. But by continuing to work in the neighborhood, the stresses of living there continued to follow me home, so --

LEMON: How so?

PRATT: Just dealing with a lot of my family that were still residents there and a lot of the residents and their children who, as you stated in the piece earlier, who was uncertain about where they were going to be housed once they started to tear down the buildings.

So just a lot of that stress on a day-to-day basis, working in the public school system. Sometimes it was insurmountable. And it was really hard to deal with because the kid was always up in arms because they kept seeing demolition all around them and they could barely focus on their school work.

LEMON: You say many folks simply went across and not up, meaning their situations didn't improve. You think residents should have stayed at Cabrini Green and the money should have gone into fixing up the complex. Why is that?

PRATT: Well, I mean, when you look at the crime rate here in the city over the last ten years, instead of growing up in the high-rise, the crime spread out around the city. Inglewood, particularly, is one of the areas that's hardest hit because of the influx of public housing residents.

Have they torn down the building and on that site built new homes and repopulated with most of the Cabrini residents? You would still have that sense of community that Cabrini had. Most people would still be familiar with the area and familiar with one another even though the change was happening. But when you drop them in an area like Inglewood, where the northern part of the city or further south, people are pretty much put into an area that they have no connection with. And it's -- they're just forced to fend for themselves with no support system whatsoever.

LEMON: I want to go to Dr. Popkin now.

You spent years following people in public housing. Do you think people should have kept Cabrini Green in place, the people there? Should they have been kept in place? And should the city have tried to rehabilitation what was already there?

SUSAN POPKIN, SENIOR FELLOW, URBAN INSTITUTE: I think it really wasn't feasible to rehabilitation what was there. Certainly not to keep the buildings as they were. They really were quite decrepit and very dangerous. And as you showed in your first segment, places where kids were in danger and kids were being killed and the concentration of poverty was really harming the people who lived there.

And then the studies that we've done, I think Mr. Pratt is right, it was hard for people to leave. It was scary. Certainly people didn't want to go. But we have followed people for almost ten years now, and most of them feel that they are living in better housing, in safer neighborhoods. And their mental health has improved and generally they are doing -- they aren't in wonderful shape. But they are better off than they were when they were living in public housing.

LEMON: All right. Dr. Popkin, stick around, because I want to talk much, much more about this because the problem goes further beyond, further than Chicago, really all across the country.

When we come back, we're going to take you again beyond Chicago to talk about the growing trend of getting rid of public houses across the nation and whether it is working.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: As we mentioned, Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green symbolizes a nationwide dilemma. How do we house our poor?

Well, we're going to take this issue beyond Chicago and look at it from the east to the west coast. Rudolf Montiel joins us. He is in Los Angeles. He is the president and CEO of the city's housing authority. And right here in Atlanta with me is the city's mayor. His name is Kasim Reed. And rejoining us is Dr. Susan Popkin from the Urban Institute.

Thank you, Mayor Reid, for joining us.

So, mayor, to my knowledge, Atlanta was one of the first cities, if not the first city, to get rid of or start trying to redevelop its housing projects.

MAYOR KASIM REED, ATLANTA: Yes, in preparation for the 1996 Olympics.

LEMON: Has it been a success? Can we say that?

REED: I think across the board, you would have to say that because of the significant reductions we've had in crime, in terms of where the people who have left live. They live in communities that are stronger, more stable. There's a greater mix of wealth and incomes. So I think across the spectrum, the answer is yes. But I do believe that the sense of community has been damaged and that we need to care more about that as we continue this transformation.

LEMON: You said preparing for the 1996 Olympics. In preparing, that would have come years before. So it's been almost 20 years and it's still not done yet. It takes that long for a city to move forward?

REED: Yes. We have actually revitalized 13 of our housing projects. So we're actually moving to the completion point. But it started in about 1992, moving towards the 1996 Olympic Games. So it has taken this long. But I think when you look at 25 percent or more reduction in crime in communities where you used to have very high rates of violent crime and you look at the income mixes and the stable communities that are being built, I think that we can make a case that we've made significant progress.

LEMON: And Dr. Popkin here in Atlanta, you can go to Detroit, Philadelphia, New York City, and as well as Chicago. It has been a nationwide problem. And the trend has been to scatter the low income among people who make varying incomes. Has this worked at all nationwide, Dr. Popkin?

POPKIN: Has it worked in what sense? I mean, I think we have now, as we just saw in Atlanta, a number of mixed income communities around the country that have been open for a few years and are attracting higher-income tenants and are doing OK. The work that I've done is mostly to track what's happened to the original residents.

Most of the people who came out of the original public housing around the country are actually living in the private market and they have section 8 vouchers. And so they're living in more mixed income communities.

As I said in the previous segment, in every city we've studied, they are living in better quality housing and neighborhoods they feel are dramatically safer than where they started. They're still poor. But their quality of life has improved dramatically.

LEMON: I want to bring this to Mr. Montiel in, and I want Mayor and you to listen to Dr. Popkin because they're doing something that's very interesting there in Los Angeles. They're trying to take a new tack there.

Mr. Montiel, you have Jordan Downs. It's a setting for the movie -- remember "Menace II Society?" And you are trying to keep the residents together. Explain that and why are you doing that route?

RUDOLF MONTIEL, LOS ANGELES HOUSING AUTHORITY: We are totally committed to a one-to-one replacement of our public housing. And also committed to preserving the fabric of the community, the sense of community. So we've acquired additional land that allows us to create new units and thereby attract higher-income families to Jordan Downs and thereby mixing the incomes.

LEMON: Dr. Popkin, what do you think of this approach of keeping residents together?

POPKIN: Trying make more low-income housing in the same place? I think it's an interesting idea. I think it's the next generation of housing redevelopment. We are seeing other cities that are trying to do that like in Washington, D.C. near Capitol Hill.

I think it's hard to do unless you have enough land, as they must have at Jordan Downs. And you have an area where you can really attract higher-income tenants in. But I think that as we go forward with the next generation of public housing redevelopment that is one of the changes that seems to be under way.

LEMON: And Mr. Mayor, have you seen that this economy affecting your goals when trying to get rid of housing or at least change the way you deal with housing? Because, I mean, Atlanta's in a boom now. There's lots of building. Do people who -- higher-income people, are they willing to go into lower-income housing?

REED: There's no question about them. We're seeing an absolute willingness, primarily because of traffic patterns and the desire for people to return to Atlanta. Our population between 2000 and 2010 increased about 20 percent. So we added 100,000 people between 2000 and 2010. So people have a real desire to move into the city. And we're seeing this excitement about the mixed income concept. Where I think the unreadiness is and the area where we have got to pay close attention is giving people that used to live in the housing projects an opportunity to return and giving them more flexibility and more choice.

That is an area that I don't believe that we have done as well as I would like to see. And I think that when we fix that part of the equation, we will really have a story to share with the United States.

LEMON: I want to go to Mr. Montiel real quick. How do you plan to attract families of all incomes to -- what is it called? It's called the new Jordan Downs? How are you going to attract people there?

MONTIEL: Great housing, amazing schools, outstanding public safety and then the services that any family looks for when they're choosing a place to live. So essentially you want to make it a place where people want to go to.

LEMON: All right. Our thanks to Dr. Montiel, to Dr. Popkin, of course, Mayor Kasim Reed here in Atlanta, and also to Mark in Chicago.

Best of luck to you.

It's an important subject to come out on a Saturday to talk about. As I said, it's an important issue. Thanks.

REED: Absolutely.

MONTIEL: Thank you for having me.

LEMON: Thanks to all of you.

And still ahead here tonight on CNN, the Obama administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan hospitalized tonight in critical condition.

Plus, Elizabeth Edwards is laid to rest. We'll take you inside today's funeral -- next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Let's check your top stories right now on CNN.

U.S. Diplomat Richard Holbrooke is in critical condition in a Washington hospital following surgery for a tear in his aorta. Holbrooke, who is 69, is the Obama administration's special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The White House says President Obama has called Holbrooke's wife and told her he and the first lady have Holbrooke in their prayers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Holbrooke at the hospital this morning.

Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" tells me Holbrooke is crucial to U.S. foreign policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS: He is really the senior American diplomat dealing with the most critical American foreign policy challenge right now. If you believe that the war in Afghanistan, the battle against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, is the sort of critical foreign policy challenge we're engaged in, you've got 100,000 troops there, then Holbrooke is the guy who is negotiating and handling all the civilian, all the non-military aspects of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Fareed Zakaria GPS airs tomorrow 10:00 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

More than 1,200 people gathered today in North Carolina to remember Elizabeth Edwards.

The estranged wife of former senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards died on Tuesday after a six-year battle with cancer. Her daughter Cate called her mom a lighthouse to all of us and read from a letter Elizabeth Edwards left for her children. Elizabeth Edwards was 61 years old.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is in Haiti tonight as part of a humanitarian delegation led by Evangelist Franklin Graham. Her visit comes as Haiti fights a massive cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2000 people. The delegation stopped at a cholera clinic to deliver holiday gifts to children.

And big news tonight from college football. Here to tell you that Auburn University quarterback Cam Newton is the winner of the 2010 Heisman trophy given annually to the nation's top player. Newton overcame suspicions that he was involved in a purported pay-for-play recruiting scheme before signing with auburn. He will lead the Tigers into the national championship game against Oregon, January 10th. Please stay tune.

I'm Don Lemon at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you back here tomorrow night, 6:00, 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Have a great evening, everyone.