Neighborhoods Take the Offensive on Affordable Housing

(Rendering of proposed building at 3230 W. Armitage Ave., from the Zapata Apartments web site)

The Zapata Apartments development, three buildings with 66 affordable residential units and ground-floor commercial space, seems to a lot of people like a very good idea. Filling vacant spaces on and near Armitage Avenue and providing a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, the Zapata project is a response by two respected community groups – Logan Square Neighborhood Association and Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation – to the heavy local demand for affordable housing.

But there's another viewpoint, a familiar one in Chicago, that there's enough "low-income" housing already and that what the neighborhood needs is more market-rate development. A local homeowner, Zach Abel, has organized neighbors against the Zapata Apartments and filed suit to stop development.

WBEZ did a radio report that attracted quite a flurry of rants and rationales in its comments section. John McCarron wrote a piece for the New Communities Program, which supports the project, about "the risk and rancor that goes with brick-and-mortar community development in these uncertain times." And backers of the project have just launched a new web site, zapataapartments.com, where they offer details of the development and encourage readers to sign and distribute petitions.

Seems to me that building affordable housing makes a lot more sense right now than adding more condos to an over-saturated market, but maybe I just don't get it. What do you think?

Creative (and tasty) fundraising in Logan Square

"Times are tough," writes Elena Hernandez of Logan Square Neighborhood Association, "and any contribution helps."

It was one of the most appetizing fundraising pitches I've ever heard. The Dine Local for LSNA campaign sets aside four weeknights when local restaurants will donate 15 to 20 percent of their proceeds to LSNA, the 46-year-old organization serving Logan Square and the Lathrop Homes.

These are some interesting eateries, from the Ecuadorian La Humita (photo) to the Mexican/Cuban El Cid. Great incentive to get together some friends or family and have a nice meal.

Tuesday, Nov 11
Lunch - Atlas Cafe, 3028 W. Armitage Ave. (773) 227-0022 , open at 11 am
El Cid 2, 2645 N. Kedzie Ave. 773-395-0505 open at 9 am
Dinner - Atlas Cafe, 3028 W. Armitage Ave. (773) 227-0022 open until 10pm
La Humita, 3466 N. Pulaski Rd. (773) 794-9672 from 5 to 10 pm. Reservations recommended.
Fonda Del Mar, 3749 W. Fullerton Ave. (773) 489-3748 from 5 to 9pm. Reservations recommended.
Tuesday, Nov 18
Dinner - Cafe Bolero, 2252 N. Western Ave. 773-227-9000 from 5 to 11 pm. Reservations recommended.
La Humita, Fonda Del Mar (see above listings)
Thursdays, Nov 13 and 20
Lunch - Cherubs Café, 2524 W. Fullerton Ave. 773-235-8103
Dinner - La Humita, Fonda Del Mar (see above)

Recycle your cell phone, too
LSNA will also benefit from any old or broken cell phones, blackberries, pagers, or PDAs, including batteries and all of their related accessories. When you bring them to the LSNA office or one of the Community Learning Centers, Collective Good (www.collectivegood.com) will give LSNA 30 cents to $30 per item. Learn more.

600 vacant units at Lathrop Homes. Why?

Residents of the Lathrop Homes along with Logan Square community leaders will hold a rally Thursday afternoon to ask the Chicago Housing Authority why 600 units of the 900-unit Lathrop Homes development have been allowed to remain vacant when thousands of Chicago families need good affordable housing.

It's a good question to ask. The low-rise development, at Diversey and the Chicago River on the eastern edge of Logan Square, is the city’s most diverse public housing community. It has housed a blend of African-American, Latino and white families – both low-income and working class – for nearly 50 years. And in a neighborhood with rising rents and condo conversions due to gentrification, it's a potentially valuable resource for families that need an affordable place to live.

That's why the Lathrop Leadership Team, Lathrop Local Advisory Council and Logan Square Neighborhood Association will call on the CHA to put 300 of the development’s 600 vacant units back into service by 2010.

“Keeping these units empty, in the midst of a housing crisis, is a terrible waste,” says Cynthia Scott, a member of the Lathrop Leadership Team. “Leasing 300 units would help families avoid homelessness and reduce the crime and maintenance problems that come with vacancies.”

At 4 p.m., residents and community leaders will march through Lathrop Homes, starting at the corner of Clybourn, Wellington (3000 N) & Leavitt (2200 W). At 5 p.m. (just in time for the local TV news), participants will gather outside one of the vacant homes on Leavitt just north of Diversey Parkway.

When the CHA began its Plan for Transformation in 1999, it put Lathrop on the back burner, listing its future as “to be determined.” Nine years later, there is still no plan to revitalize the development. But since 1999, the CHA has barred Lathrop’s manager from leasing units after families move out. As a result, the number of vacancies has soared to more than 600.

Thanks to Logan Square Neighborhood Association's Tami Love for passing on this information. A resident vision for Lathrop is here. For more information, contact Tami Love, 773-549-2525, x 1 or John McDermott, 773-384-4370 x38 or 773-617-3949 (cell).

Wanted: CDC for Third Ward

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend a symposium at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration about how to revitalize a community without gentrifying it and displacing existing residents. Breakout sessions looked at questions like:

• Why is my child's school closing? Is there a connection between school closings and gentrification in North Lawndale?
• How have community organizations in Austin worked to help residents stay in their neighborhood?
• How do city and other governmental policies affect housing and economic development? What's politics got to do with it?
• How can community development help grow people's strengths and social resources?

I attended the session on government and how policy plays into development issues. We looked at the situation in Lathrop Homes, where the Logan Square Neighborhood Association has been working with residents to develop an alternative to the CHA Plan for Transformation process. Organizer John McDermott compared the Plan for Transformation to a set menu that doesn't fit everyone's nutritional needs. He noted that because Lathrop is so close to expensive neighborhoods like Bucktown and Roscoe Village, building market-rate homes there would only cater to the wealthiest residents of Chicago.

Instead, residents want to see Lathrop become one-third public housing, one-third affordable rental, and one-third affordable homeownership, to give existing residents the opportunity to "move up" in income without having to move out of their home community to buy a house. Alderman Manny Flores has publicly supported the plan, which is still under discussion with CHA.

Another guest in the session was Third Ward Alderman Pat Dowell, who spoke candidly about the challenge of managing development in a ward that ranges from "White Castle to White House" in demographics and mindset. A big question she faces is how to build homes for families earning $50,000 a year or less. (If you don't know Ald. Dowell, this profile from The Windy Citizen does a good job of capturing her unassuming style and thoughtful approach to her ward.)

She's working on an affordable homeownership project in Fuller Park, where homes would sell for between $160,000 and $190,000. But the median household income in Fuller Park as of 2000 was only $18, 412, putting those homes out of reach for many current residents. Also in 2000, about 30 percent of the neighborhood's homeowners were paying 40 percent or more of their income to keep their homes.

During the session I asked her if her ward had been able to take advantage of New Homes for Chicago, a city program which builds single-family homes, condos and two-flats for moderate-income buyers. Dowell said she'd like to bring in that program, but right now there's no active community development corporation to do the construction work. (The fastest way to find out more about New Homes for Chicago is to put it in Google. I tried to paste in the long and complex link from the City of Chicago web site, but it didn't work.)

I wonder if any of those bright-eyed social work graduate students have buddies in business school they could partner with to start up their own CDC. Social entrepreneurs, opportunity may await you in Chicago's Third Ward.

Artists as neighborhood assets

For the last decade or so, the arrival of artists in a gritty neighborhood has generally meant one thing: real estate developers were not too far behind. A classic example is the case of Wicker Park, once a scruffy neighborhood that became hip after attracting a slew of arts and music professionals, and now rivals Lincoln Park in home prices and general chi-chiness. The irony, of course, is many of the artists who once called Wicker Park home have now been priced out.

At the same time artists are seeking ways to live and work affordably, some neighborhoods are courting artists as community assets. Earlier this week, WBEZ aired a segment about artists in search of live/work space and featured the Chicago Lawn and Woodlawn neighborhoods as welcoming places for them.

Artists looking to find or keep a place to live got tips recently at the Creative Chicago Expo, which held workshops on buying a home, finding live/work or commercial space and preventing foreclosure. The expo also offered tips on how to get arts-related gigs with schools and win public art commissions, which help artists make money by helping schools and neighborhoods.

One local effort I know that has done much to integrate artists into the life of a particular community, is Voice of the City, which networks artists and community organization to produce art and arts education in Logan Square.

But I wonder how to interrupt the dynamic of artists arrive, put the neighborhood "on the map" to wealthier outsiders, then wind up unable to afford to stay. There's a national effort to answer this question: Leveraging Investments in Creativity, or LINC, which operates in Chicago and 13 other cities around the U.S>

As Adele Fleet Bacow wrote for the Chicago Artists Resource web site:

We recognize that in many communities, artists are being forced to become "developers by default," particularly in markets with high housing costs, limited supply of space, and/or areas where the space does not meet their unique needs. LINC is working to help artists find accessible information and support, to answer complex questions related to the development of affordable space.

I'll be interested to know what they find out. In the mean time, readers, if you have stories to share of artists who have been assets to their neighborhoods or creative ways artists have found to integrate into neighborhoods without sparking Wicker Parkian gentrification, post your comments here.

Foreclosure in the news and in the neighborhoods

This week's Crain's Chicago Business has a big cover story, "Foreclosure Fallout," on the impact the subprime mortgage crisis is having in Chicago neighborhoods, both city and suburban. Since you can't read it online unless you subscribe, stay with me here for some of the details.

Over 800 Austin homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure last year, the most of any Chicago neighborhood. Although home prices have fallen in Austin after a steep three-year rise, prospective buyers are finding it harder to get a mortgage due to the credit crunch. Homes sales have plunged to 79 in the last six months, from 192 in the same period the year before.

It's well known that empty houses often become nests of drug dealing and prostitution. I see it firsthand. We have an empty house on my block, and it's been a constant battle to keep squatters involved in those illegal activities out. Right now we're winning, but that could change any minute.

The Crain's story also profiles a pastor fighting drug trafficking in abandoned houses in Humboldt Park and a Logan Square business owner whose cafe, Cherubs, has seen sales fall 20 percent since December.

Times are tough and will get tougher. Many homes bought with adjustable-rate mortgages will shift to higher interest rates over the next two years. This includes the house next door to me, which is in worse shape than mine and costs my neighbors at least $200/month more than mine costs me. They are talking about selling when the mortgage resets, but I shudder to think how hard it will be for them to find a buyer. There's a brand-new brick three-bedroom house across the street that's been on the market for nearly a year.

Despite all the gloom and doom, a few relentless optimists remain in action. One is Carlos Nelson of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation. I stopped by his office a couple of weeks ago and asked how the mortgage crisis and slowing economy were affecting Auburn Gresham. Rather than give me a long list of new businesses on 79th Street or an explanation of how one person's challenge is another opportunity, Carlos and board member Byam Alexander shifted gears from community developers to rap artists and delivered a quick remake of this famous Public Enemy song:

We ain't in a recession
We in a progression
On the 7-9
Don't. . . don't. . .don't. . .don't believe the hype!

LSNA web site makes Chicago mag's "best"

The Logan Square Neighborhood Association's web site at lsna.net is one of the best web sites in Chicago, according to the cover story in Chicago Magazine 's February issue. The site offers newsletters, calendar items, job and volunteer listings and policy papers, the magazine says, to help readers "keep abreast of this diverse and still changing community."

Not mentioned is that the site, edited by LSNA's Monica Garreton, includes a bilingual button to flip much of the text over to Spanish translations, deep directories of local organizations and businesses, and regular news stories that reflect the organization's advocacy work in affordable housing, immigration, education and other issues important to the neighborhood's mostly Latino families. The site is one of 10 created by New Communities Program lead agencies to provide "portals" for community information. Congrats to LSNA!

Other sites on the list include Alexander Russo's District299.com, a long-running source of news and commentary about the Chicago Public Schools, now hosted on the Catalyst Chicago web site; MarshfieldTattler.blogspot.com, a journal of community life in Back of the Yards; and ChicagoLatinoNetwork.com, which helps Latino professionals keep up with events and meetings.