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.

March Madness of the community kind

Almost four years ago, I bought a house in the Back of the Yards/Garfield Boulevard area with the help of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago. Partly in gratitude, partly to make new friends in my new neighborhood, I joined their local advisory board.

Tonight's board meeting was one of the best I've been to in a long time. Though home sales are in a slump, our numbers are better this year than they were last year, largely because we were without a local director in the office. I'd like to give a big shout-out to our new neighborhood director, Emilio Carrasquillo, for his tireless dedication and visible presence in the neighborhood. It's his drive and persistence that have brought in homebuyers and increasing numbers of homeowners looking to avoid foreclosure.

Our board is also regaining energy. Before I arrived, NHS was a strong presence at local CAPS meetings. Staff and board members had worked hard and successfully to reduce crime and get problem buildings out of the hands of criminals, turning them into newly rehabbed, owner-occupied homes. Their work made news, including this story from December 2003. But everything has a life cycle, and the NHS-CAPS relationship withered a bit in later years, with changing staff and board members.

When I joined the board, I was told one of my responsibilities was to attend my local beat meeting. Frankly, I was willing, but not too excited about it. First, I know schools and kids a lot better than I know beats and cops, and my years teaching alternative high school have left me with some concern that "fighting crime" can all too easily turn into locking up our kids, not helping them grow. But I made a promise to go and have tried to keep it.

Our local beat meeting has struggled, too--there was also a leadership void there, and we're still working on having the district formally recognize the new local leadership. City cuts in CAPS community liaisons have also really hurt the grassroots organizing that gets people to the meeting.

But at tonight's NHS meeting, people were ready to get up and try again. So we've created our own form of "March Madness"--next month, all seven or so of us will go to each other's beat meetings to see what we can learn from each other. There are three of us in the same beat who are going to work together to make sure we have our end of the meeting organized--agendas, recruitment. Then, we'll put pressure on our district to start sending us the same officers more consistently, giving us better updates on responses to our tips and requests from one meeting to the next. Another board member is planning to revive his local block club; we've got his back, and maybe watching him will help some of the rest of us (like me) see what we can do on our own blocks.

To top it all off, Emilio and at least one, maybe even two of my fellow board members will be joining me at the NCP Getting It Done Conference on March 26 and 27.