According the the recent C.U.R.L. study (posted on Beacon Neighbors) 

18% of the housing in Uptown is subsidized. What they did not say was 

that there are tracts in Uptown that are above 40% subsidized. Also, the 

study (sought by O.N.E.) forgot to count people in homeless shelters 

(Uptown has 7 homeless shelters, not counting the many transitional 

homeless shelters), nursing homes and centers that house people with chronic 

mental illness. No one knows for sure, but it is believed that less 

than 5% of the housing in Chicago is subsidized.

The author, Jill Khadduri from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban 

Development, states most analysts follow social scientist Jargowsky’s 

guidelines and use 40% poverty as the level above which a neighborhood is 

clearly  experiencing extremely high poverty.  Less than 4% of all U.S. 

neighborhoods fall under this heading. According to Jill Khadduri,  HUD 

and CHA do not encourage the building of new subsidized housing in 

areas that are above 30% poverty because of the ill effects it would have 

on the poor already living in the area. 

According to the “Prospects” report, a congressionally mandated, 

four-year study of about 27,000 students, school poverty seriously depresses 

the scores of all students in schools where 75% of the students live in 

low-income households. On the other hand, poor students who attend 

middle-class schools performed significantly better. One member of COURAJ, 

who is also a teacher at Arai Middle School, stated that 93% of the 

students in her school received subsidized lunches.