FEDS TAKE OVER CHICAGO PUBLIC HOUSING

The Department of Housing and Urban Development today took over the nation's second-largest public housing authority, in Chicago. HUD had threatened to take control of the agency in 1987, but Mayor Harold Washington successfully fought the takeover. This time, TIME Chicago correspondent Elizabeth Taylor notes, Mayor Richard Daley couldn't wait to cede authority to the federal government. Taylor calls the Chicago Housing Authority "the worst public housing agency in the nation," noting a recent census shows thatseven of the nation's ten poorest neighborhoods are in the city's public projects. There has been speculation HUD Director Henry Cisneros ordered the takeover in order to be able to show that the Clinton Administration has fixed the public housing problem in time for the Democratic convention in Chicago next year. But, says Taylor, it's highly unlikely that the public housing problems can be solved anytime soon.