Foodie Rant - Properly Sauced? Try Properly Ripped Off.
Oprah-geddon: Winfrey To Quit Show In 2011
Daley Blames - Who Else? - The Media For Oprah-geddon
NYT Preps For Chicago Edition
Chicago Gets Googled
From Rogers Park up north to Pullman in the wild-wild hundreds, Chicago is a town full of renters. But there is a problem.
The Center for Housing Policy, a national organization that examines housing policies and programs, has reported that Chicago ranks 17th out of 31 areas studied in their Least to Most Affordable Rental Markets. Even more distressing is their finding that 43,000 families are spending more than half their income on rent. Another 20,000 are living in distressed housing. And the rental market is shrinking.
Why the shrink? One word: condos. More after the jump ....
Loyola University's Chicago Center for Urban Research and Learning has found, based on the Cook County Assessor's data, that "somewhere between 45,000 and 100,000 rental apartments were replaced by condominiums between 1989 and 2004." They also found that for every 1,000 condos that a neighborhood gains, 27 small apartment buildings and six large apartment buildings are lost. Ouch. But it's not surprising if you've walked around the city lately. Condos really are the new black, springing up at light speed around town.
But there is a glimmer of hope. The Preservation Compact aims to provide some key housing initiatives to help improve and retain around 75,000 apartment dwellings in the city. This project is backed by one of the biggest names in grants in Chicago, namely The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who laid down $10 million in seed money. That's $10 million of a $100 million goal mind you. We hope we'll actually see this public project pan out. Fingers crossed.
Image via Flickr User Ursus Maritimus.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
How is 17 out of 31 especially "distressing"? And does the loss in apartments caused by the new condos account for condo owners that choose to rent the condo they just purchased?
It seems like the study cited doesn't support the argument this article is trying to make.
I wanted to get a job in sales and one of the places i applied to wanted to start me off in "tear-downs." That is, you call a landlord, say we will take the property off their hands for a certain price - which is more than you will make in rent even if you throw your money in just a savings acount at 5% - then have a developer knock it down and build condos.
It made me sick to my stomach and i realized how and why Lincoln Park looks the way it does today - cause of these guys (and the buyers of course).
Maybe I am going into the wrong business (I am historic architecture lover), but really, I cannot wait for the condo development boom to be over. What a shit industry.
That said, there are some nice condos going up around the city that look particularly sexy, but I am really just talking about the private gated communities that sprouted up all over west lincoln park.
It's tough. The problem as I see it is that it seems you can't have well-maintained historic architecture and affordable real estate. Am I wrong? Please tell me I am. Most of the historic single-family building in my neighborhood (Ukie Village) go for ~$600K, and they're in terrible condition. So either you fill your neighborhood with beautifully rehabbed historic homes and highly affluent buyers, or build much cheaper condos that first-time buyers can afford.
AMERICAN INVSCO are parasitic scum.
From Rogers Park up north to Pullman in the wild-wild hundreds, Chicago is a town full of renters. But there is a problem.
Jesus Chicagoist Editors! Pullman is south of Rogers Park!
uh ... From Rogers Park up north to Pullman in the wild-wild hundreds, Chicago is a town full of renters. But there is a problem.
I think Chicagoist knows where Pullman is.
I think Chicagoist knows where Pullman is.
Perhaps--but this is pretty poor sentence construction. You should generally avoid confusing adjective-preposition combinations and more prepositional parity. A cleaner way of composing the sentence would be: "From Rogers Park in the north to Pullman in the wild-wild hundreds...."
This still is a dreadful deployment of adjectives, but it makes more sense.
I understood it.
i didn't.
Makes you wonder why they keep trying to raise our sales tax to some ridiculous amount when they are obviously collecting so much more in real estate taxes as a result of this phenomenon..
Last week I heard on the news that there are so many condos in Chicago sitting unsold that they were being offered as rentals and driving up rental prices. It made sense to me. It doesn't help people in my economic group but it at least you don't need a large down payment.
Curmudgeon,
How does more rentals available drive up the rental prices? I probably misunderstood your statement - can you clarify?
thanks
Yeah extra supply means lower prices. Not higher prices.
Curmudgeon makes an important point. It is kindof silly to sit around saying "Oh No, Condos!" when the nation is in the beginnings of a housing glut. A lot of first time buyers are not going to be able to qualify for loans anymore, and those condos are going to sit empty until someone turns them back into DUN DUN DUNNNN Apartments.
You simply cannot discuss this without at least mentioning what is goign on in the real estate industry nationally. There is a huge housing glut right now, and prices in chicago have finally started dropping last quarter.