As a response to the new welfare reform bill, public housing tenants in Chicago formed eight custodial companies in partnership with commercial firms. The companies train and employ public housing residents.

• One company, the Clean Up Committee, has grown in less than a year from nine employees to 48 and has a $730,000 contract to clean 17 Chicago Housing Authority buildings.

• The company has applications from nearly 200 residents for jobs which entail mopping floors, sweeping stairways, polishing elevators, changing light bulbs, scrubbing toilets and cleaning windows.

• Eleven out of the 15 poorest census tracts in the U.S. are located in Chicago Housing Authority developments.

• Of the more than 125,000 people who live in public housing in Chicago, less than 10 percent work and more than 90 percent receive some kind of government assistance.

The companies are the result of efforts by the Chicago Housing Authority's Resident Employment Development Initiative -- which so far has placed 2,000 residents in entry-level jobs, with plans to increase that to 5,000.

While enrolled in a one-year training program, residents are allowed to keep their government health and child-care benefits. But for every $3 they earn, they lose $1 in public assistance.