Southside - Jon Lowenstein

Driving down Martin Luther King Boulevard on Chicago's South Side change is evident everywhere. Signs advertising new condominiums dot the landscape and city blocks that once stood vacant are being completely replaced with new prefabricated housing and recently opened chain stores.

To the outside eye this infusion of housing appears wholly positive, but the truth behind neighborhood transformation is far more grim. Poor communities across the country are going through similarly wrenching change as their once isolated neighborhoods are being rapidly gentrified, and few longtime residents will remain when the change is complete.

These once proud industrial communities fell onto hard times during the 1970s and 1980s, changing from thriving areas to places far removed from local and federal resources and rife with unemployment, poverty, drugs and gang violence. Despite this adversity, many residents have stayed and have deep feelings of affection for their home neighborhoods. More recently, though, another challenge has reared its head. Residents in each of these communities face the very real possibility of being displaced from the communities they love because they can no longer afford to live there.