It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region,

and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

The West Calumet Housing Complex was made up of small duplexes and family units in East Chicago, Indiana.

Many residents say the public housing complex was a nice place to live.

The community was close, some say like family,

but it was also built on the site of an old lead smelter that polluted the ground with lead and arsenic.

The government knew about the pollution for years,

but didn't do anything about it.

The area became so toxic, with health risks so high that in 2016, the mayor ordered all the residents to leave.

More than a thousand people were given just three months notice before they were forced to move out.

Demetra Turner was one of those residents.

She had moved in just a month before the mayor's order.

I first met her at a protest over how the government had handled things.

We're here to say, climate justice is the way.

Why would they continue to move residents in a place that they have known was contaminated?

Your ear!

Tara Adams was also forced to move out of the complex.

When you plan to move and when you want to move, you save.

I wasn't prepared mentally or financially to move right now. I'm reporter Kevin Stark, and Curious City has gotten a lot of questions about Dmitra

and Tara's former neighborhood, the location of one of the largest cases of lead exposure

in U.S. history.

People wondering, what happened to folks who lived in the West Calumet housing complex?

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