About two weeks ago, Nashawn Williams says, she emerged from her South Side Chicago apartment and found a new addition.

"There was barbed wire everywhere," says Williams, 22. "We felt like prisoners in our own homes."

The barbed wire, which ran along two sides of the property, is now gone. Ted Luca, owner of the building at 4420 S. Drexel Blvd., says he took it down on Wednesday, as soon as officials requested it.

While the wire has disappeared, tenant advocates say the episode raised old questions of civil and human rights, and that it reinforced racial and class stereotypes. They say they are angry that Luca put up the wire without consulting with residents first.

"We're not in a penitentiary," says Herman Bonner, president of the Drexel Tenants Association. "Him throwing up this barbed wire — I take it as a personal slap in the face because of our ethnicity."

The apartment complex serves predominantly black residents, and it is subsidized by vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The vouchers are part of a HUD program formerly known as Section 8, which helps low-income residents pay for rent in privately owned buildings. Under the program, residents pay 30 percent of their income toward rent, and the government pays for the rest.

HUD officials in Washington did not immediately respond to requests about whether it was against regulations to install barbed wire at a government-subsidized property. George Gilmore, senior project manager at HUD's Chicago office, did not respond to requests for comment left in voice and e-mail messages earlier this week.

But Luca says an official at the agency did ask him to remove the wire, and that he promptly complied.

"HUD told me very formally to remove the barbed wire," he says. "They're the boss, and I should listen to them."

Luca says he initially installed the barbed wire for safety and security, thinking a higher, less climbable fence would discourage trespassers. He says he was not aware — and is still not sure — that it violated any regulation.

"I thought I was doing a good thing," Luca says. "I tried to do something good."

If that were the case, he should have discussed it with residents first, says John Bartlett, executive director of Chicago's Metropolitan Tenants Association.

"Even if it's allowable, you don't put it up without talking to people," Bartlett says. "The reality is that it's mostly lower-income people of color living in that building. That kind of creates a really negative stereotype when you do something like that."

Williams, who lives in the complex with her boyfriend, says Luca has otherwise maintained the property well. He operates it with help from staff at MLG Management Services Inc., located a few blocks from the complex.

"They keep the apartments up," she says. "You don't hear noise and stuff about the building."

Luca says he is waiting for a follow-up meeting with HUD officials so they can explain how, or if, he violated any rule. He says it was his mistake not to check before he spent "a couple thousand" dollars to install the wire.