Ask a handful of Chicagoans to name the city's most pressing problems, and most will include public transportation and low-income housing. What they may not know is that one woman is shaping the city's policies on both issues. Valerie Jarrett, '78, is chair of the board that oversees Chicago's transportation system. She also runs the company charged with rebuilding the Windy City's dilapidated and crime-infested public housing.
If anyone has the right background to succeed in Chicago politics and business, it's Jarrett. She served as Mayor Richard Daley's deputy chief of staff in 1991, and then as the city's commissioner of planning and development from 1992 to 1995. Her maternal grandfather was Robert Taylor, chair of the Chicago housing authority from 1943 to 1950. Her mother heads the prestigious Erikson Institute for child development in Chicago. Her former father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, is a former columnist for the Sun Times, much respected for his articles on race issues. And her great-uncle is Vernon Jordan, a Washington superlawyer and Clinton confidante.
Jarrett is one of the city's most dedicated boosters. "Chicago is one of the few great cities in the world today, one of the few that's truly vital and alive," she says. "And I feel like I'm right in the midst here, because this is where I grew up and have a family with strong roots."
Jarrett was strongly influenced by her family's commitment to the public sector. "I view it as a privilege to work in these areas of challenge," she says, "and I mean that in the true hokey sense of the word."
Facing those challenges means full days for the 40-year-old lawyer. As part of her job as executive vice president of The Habitat Co., a development firm appointed by the federal government to oversee the rebuilding of the city's public housing, she often starts her day meeting with architects or contractors. Then, if she is not strategizing over the budget of the nation's second- largest public transportation system, she may be holding a press conference. Afterward, changing hats again, she may meet with residents concerned that new public housing in their neighborhood will decrease the value of their own homes.
Both jobs require creative financing. Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has allocated money directly to Habitat rather than through the housing authority. At Habitat, Jarrett handles everything from acquiring land to managing contractors to meeting with community activists. And she needs to do it all within her existing budget.
The financial problems may be even more difficult at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), where raising money is Jarrett's biggest challenge. The CTA needs to spend $2.7 billion over the next five years on capital improvements just to maintain the 100-year-old train system. Jarrett was also faced with a $20 million deficit in its nearly $800 million operating budget, which she and the board wiped out by getting rid of overtime, cutting back on shifts and eliminating bureaucratic duplication. Fares, which provide about half of the CTA's operating budget, have not been raised since 1994, and the rest of its budget comes from a shrinking pool of government funds and sales taxes.
About 1.4 million people each day use the city's transit system, with its 2,035 buses and 1,134 train cars serving Chicago and 38 suburbs. CTA ridership had plummeted 30 percent in the past decade but, under Jarrett's customer-friendly reign, ridership is now increasing for the first time in 25 years. Since Daley appointed Jarrett to her seven-year term as chair at the end of 1995, she has helped riders by publishing train schedules, cracking down on panhandlers, improving lighting, buying high-powered machines to wash the grime off trains and doubling the customer-service hotline staff. Jarrett also wants to make riding public transit as pleasant as possible; last year the CTA put poems in vacant ad space in buses and trains.
"She is very concerned with the person who is riding the bus or the train every day," says Dave Mosena, president of the CTA. "She understands that our job is not to serve the bureaucrat. She has little patience for b.s., doesn't suffer fools and is very committed."
Since November 1995, Jarrett has brought that same commitment to her job at Habitat, where she has been advocating the distribution of low-income homes throughout the city. In traditional public housing, people virtually live on top of each other, and positive role models are tough to find. "Geographic concentration of poor people in isolation breeds an unhealthy community," she says. "Families do far better when the person next door is going to work and taking control of their environment. You need to have economically integrated communities."
Her grandfather, Robert Taylor, resigned as chair of the Chicago housing authority in 1950 essentially because Chicago aldermen wouldn't support the building of public housing in white neighborhoods. Jarrett finds it ironic that, almost 50 years later, she is still persuading people they should support the distribution of public housing throughout the city rather than concentrating it in particular neighborhoods. It is a task that calls for real diplomatic skills. The Chicago projects suffer from a horrible stigma, and that has led to resistance from people who worry that public housing will bring crime and blight into their communities.
Jarrett is not afraid to confront that resistance head on. "She knows how to be strong without offending the people she's talking with," says Daniel Levin, Jarrett's boss at The Habitat Co., who praises the way she combines "personal charm" and "personal strength."
Apparently that combination has paid off. Under Jarrett's tenure, 707 replacement units (both two- and three-story houses) have been developed. The figures are satisfying, but Jarrett says that her real reward comes when she sees people's faces "as they walk into these spanking new homes."
Whether it is building new homes or getting Chicagoans to and from those homes and work safely and efficiently, Jarrett is determined to improve her native city. "These are really important issues," she says, "and it gives me goosebumps when I think that what I am doing could have an impact on my daughter when she's an adult."
Karen Springen, '83, is a Chicago-based correspondent for Newsweek magazine.
