She has waited 29 years for housing assistance. Now she is fighting for change

Left: Jeanette Taylor, her mother and her youngest child in 2006. Right: Taylor, her five children and her granddaughter after she became an alderwoman in 2019. (Jeanette Taylor)

Jeanette Taylor was a single mother looking to move her family out of the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother in Chicago.

She worked in retail and as a community organizer. The thought of affording her own space in 1993, with the three kids she had then, was all but out of the question. She turned to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and applied for assistance.