JOB VACANCY TEAM LEADER PT. INDO PEIXIN

 A year later, under President Donald Trump and his HUD secretary, Ben Carson, the federal agency announced the closure of two family housing complexes in Cairo, and 10 months after that, two more in nearby Thebes. The buildings were home to about 500 people, and most of them ended up leaving the area to find housing. The community was livid — not at HUD’s decisions to tear down buildings long past their prime but at the fact that HUD would not commit to replacing even a small fraction of what had been lost.

At the time, federal officials promised they would do what they could to maintain the public housing that remained in Cairo, including the high-rise where Logan lives. At least 14 families forced out of the demolished homes moved into the Smith building. And residents were hopeful that President Joe Biden’s administration might take a different approach.

But to residents in Cairo, last month’s announcement is another broken promise in a long line.

“Here we go again,” a frustrated Thomas Simpson, Cairo’s mayor, quipped on his way out the door of the meeting with HUD officials. He’s working with other community leaders to open a co-op grocery store. And he’s hopeful that plans to build a new inland river port in town — a development that Gov. J.B. Pritzker — will boost the region’s economy.

Cairo’s mayor, Thomas Simpson, would like HUD to come up with a plan to keep residents of the agency’s buildings in Cairo. Credit:Julia Rendleman for ProPublica

But HUD’s continued gutting of his community makes it hard to stay a step ahead, he said. After more than seven years under HUD control, the local housing authority has not managed to replace a single unit in his town. The mayor believes HUD has overstated the urgent need for people to move. (HUD does not typically assess seismic risk; it ordered an architectural assessment after an agency official noticed cracks in the building in 2021. The study identified problems but did not make any recommendations, and there’s no HUD policy that dictates what is an acceptable seismic risk for a public housing property). He’d like to see the agency slow down and come up with an alternative solution.e is already on the table.

A developer with extensive affordable housing experience has offered HUD a plan to build a 40-unit housing community in Cairo at the site of one of the previously demolished homes. The roughly $5 million needed for the project already exists in the housing authority’s coffers. And the developer who pitched the solution, Nashville, Tennessee-based U.S. Management Services, is already under contract with HUD to develop a long-term plan for the housing authority and its tenants in Cairo. The owner of the development company told HUD he could complete the Cairo project in six months by shipping in manufactured homes.