The Chicago Housing Authority announced in June that they would meet with former residents who didn't receive the contract, which gives them the right to return to their old neighborhoods. A number of residents who moved between October 1999 and March 2001 did not receive the Relocation Rights Contract, which gives them the option of returning to a mixed-income community after they are built on the site of old developments.

Under the CHA Resident Relocation Rights contract, all residents who were lease compliant in October 1999 have a right to return to a new or rehabbed unit after redevelopment. Residents who relocated with Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as a Section 8 voucher or certificate) in late 1999, 2000 and early 2001 did not receive a Relocation Rights Contract because the contract was not put into effect until March 2001.

This situation affects residents like Janice Patton, a former Robert Taylor Homes tenant who relocated with a Housing Choice Voucher in November 2000. Patton said she wants to return to one of the CHA's mixed-income communities after redevelopment.

Patton spoke with Sharon Glenn, director of the CHA Section 8/Relocation office, at a Grand Boulevard Federation meeting in January 2002. Patton asked when CHA would notify and meet with the residents who had not received the Relocation Rights Contract.

"I asked them (the CHA officials) when would they be getting to the people that had moved out in 2000," Patton said. "Sharon Glenn said after they got through servicing the (current) Robert Taylor residents. That's when they were going to get in touch with Section 8 about us. But I still haven't heard from them."

In July 2001, CHA received a $1.7 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $225,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help pay for an automated tracking system for more than 14,000 families as they move into temporary housing.

CHA official Raine Martin told Residents' Journal in late June that with the help of CHAC - the company paid to run CHA's housing voucher program - all lease-compliant residents who moved before receiving the Relocation Rights Contract would be notified by mail some time this year to determine whether they qualify for the right of return.

"If they are out on Section 8 and they left during that time frame, in all likelihood they have the same right to return," Martin said. "What we will be doing this year is actually doing outreach to individuals to have them talk to us and find out what their situation is and make those determinations."