by Worldchanging Chicago local blogger, Patrick Rollens: True affordable housing — modest units that rent for less than $750 — are few and far between in Chicago. According to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), just 353,000 of the city’s 2 million residences fell into the category at the end of 2005. And a new report from the firm suggests that the city’s affordable housing portfolio will continue to drop by about 38,000 units by 2020 — while demand increases steadily. In light of this, the ULI collaborated with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and more than 100 civic groups to produce The Preservation Compact: A Rental Housing Strategy for Cook County. The ultimate aim of the plan is to preserve and strengthen 75,000 residential units “that might otherwise be lost to condominium conversion, demolition, or rising costs,” as well as encourage sustainable development of more affordable housing units. The Preservation Compact comes at a time when foreclosures are increasing sharply as the subprime mortgage market implodes, which affects many low-income Chicagoans who became homeowners in the last five years. From a supplemental report entitled The State of Rental Housing in Cook County (1.3 MB PDF download): If… (more)
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Community at 11:12 AM)