Crain's: Dorms in the future for community college students

State Rep Nick Smith

I wonder if this legislation affects the City Colleges of Chicago. Closer to the south side imagine dorms at Olive-Harvey, Kennedy-King, or even Daley Colleges. This is an initiative of 34th District State Representative Nicholas Smith who has a history with two-year colleges.

Now that he’s a member of the Illinois General Assembly, Nick Smith isn’t embarrassed to say he struggled early in college. As he bounced back and forth between classes and his job, he spent little time on campus.

It wasn’t until Smith got a work-study job at Olive-Harvey College, a Far South Side community college, that things changed. “I started to feel immersed in the academic setting. I started to feel focused,” he recalls. After completing the two-year program, Smith went on to get a bachelor’s degree from nearby Chicago State University, and since 2019 he has represented the 34th District in the State Assembly.

With his personal experience in mind, Smith introduced legislation in Springfield this year that allows community colleges to add student housing for the first time. Signed into law July 9 by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the measure allows for residential projects to begin on or near campuses throughout the state starting in January.

The law is an empty vessel at the moment, expressing the ambition to do something new to address housing insecurity for people aiming to lift themselves out of poverty via a community college education. Nontrivial matters—most crucially, how the idea will be paid for—aren’t addressed in a piece of legislation that is only a few paragraphs long.

Here are some things specific to the city colleges:

At City Colleges, a network of seven campuses in Chicago, more than half of all students said they lacked stable housing in the last 12 months, according to a survey conducted in 2018 by the Hope Center for College, Community & Justice at Temple University. About 15 percent of students said they experienced homelessness in the same period. Black students, students identifying as LGBTQ and those who were independent of their parents or guardians in financial aid packages were more likely to experience needs insecurity, the report found. “Housing insecurity and homelessness have a particularly strong, statistically significant relationship with college completion rates, persistence, and credit attainment,” the report said.

City Colleges Chancellor Juan Salgado issued a statement to Crain’s saying the schools are committed to addressing students’ “comprehensive needs,” including housing and food insecurity, so attendees can focus on their schoolwork. The network looks forward to “exploring partnerships that would create affordable housing for our students, in particular the many City Colleges students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity,” the statement said.

For students who are homeless and not connected to their parents, there’s a specific way their academic program is harmed, said Niya Kelly, director of state legislation at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Because of “the presumption in this country that your parents help you until you’re 23 or 25 years old,” Kelly said, colleges generally require a parent’s Social Security and other tax information.

Students who don’t have that “get dinged and have to go through an appeal process,” Kelly said, which results in “getting their packets later, which means registering for classes after other people and dealing with that uncertainty of not knowing whether they’re going to get to go back to school or not.”

Removing any of these obstacles, Smith said, “is adding to our students’ chances of succeeding” and using that college degree to improve their circumstances.

You know how could this affect the surrounding area. With Olive-Harvey and Kennedy-King for example could this be a good thing for the surrounding neighborhoods? 

Generosity of a stranger keeps mother and child from living in her car

 

[VIDEO] I hate to see stories like this, however, its an interesting twist. You own the property you rent it to someone else, however, that party refuses to move out. Eviction proceedings are useless because due to this pandemic the state has issued a moratorium because well if you're not working and unable to make an income how can you reasonably pay rent.

I'm glad to see that for now, thanks to someone's genorosity that someone helped this mother out and allowed her to stay in an apartment rent free. At least until that moratorium runs out and whenever that tenant is forced to move. In the meanwhile this still isn't an ideal situation.

Tribune: ‘I’ve never had to think about my own safety in this way before’: Shaken by summer looting in affluent neighborhoods, some Chicagoans are moving away.

I'm sharing this wondering how many of you are looking into leaving the city with what's been going on crime-wise in this city?

They understand why protesters and rioters have poured onto the streets of downtown, and some acknowledge that crime is worse in other parts of Chicago. Some also agree with protesters that something systemic needs to be changed.

But they don’t want to wait it out here in the city, fearful of stepping outside at night and hoping for things to maybe get better.

They want out.

“Not to make it all about us; the whole world is suffering,” said Amber, a 30-year-old nurse who lives in River North. “This is a minute factor in all of that, and we totally realize that. We are very lucky to have what we do have.

“But I do think that I’ve never had to think about my own safety in this way before.”

Incidents of widespread looting and soaring homicide figures in Chicago have made national news during an already tumultuous year. As a result, some say residents in affluent neighborhoods downtown, and on the North Side, no longer feel safe in the city’s epicenter and are looking to move away. Aldermen say they see their constituents leaving the city, and it’s a concern echoed by some real estate agents and the head of a sizable property management firm.

2020 has definitely became quite a year with the coronavirus pandemic and issues with crime and then then riots and looting. Very tumultuous, but I do wonder how many people who are able to move are moving?

NBC News on modern day redlining

I saw this linked on NextDoor last month and decided to share it here. It's amazing that we're still talking about redlining in America and other aspects of inequality in America. One of those issues we should just as easily discussing as far as revitalizing Black neighborhoods.

NHS Chicago ribbon cutting/grand opening of new south side housing services hub #6WardChicago

I saw this via Nextdoor over the weekend. Sorry to have not been able to advertise this in advance. There were posts from NHS Chicago and Ald. Sawyer on their respective ig pages. The new NHS office is located on the first floor of the Seaway National Bank building on 645 E. 87th Street or actually the office is given an address of 639 E. 87th Street.

The interesting part about the space that NHS now takes up is that for many old timers it used to be the offices for ComEd where customers can pay their electric bill and get a few complimentary light bulbs. It also had been the offices of Seaway National Bank's loan department once ComEd moved out of this space.

Al Capone's former house on Prairie Ave has been sold!

We've occasionally followed the stories revolving around this home which was once where infamous Prohibition-era mobster Al Capone once resided. When it had been in the news often it was for sale and now during this past week it had found a buyer.

According to the Tribune

The red brick two-flat in the South Side Park Manor neighborhood that legendary mobster Al Capone once lived in sold April 5 for $226,000.

The 2,820-square-foot two-flat, at 7244 S. Prairie Avenue, sold for more than double its $109,900 asking price.

“We had like 80 offers on it,” listing agent Ryan Smith of Re/Max Properties told Elite Street. “We had a lot of press on it, so I think that helped it out.”

Capone moved into the two-flat with his mother and sister in 1923 after moving to Chicago from New York. Although Capone's name was never actually on the purchase deed, his mother's and wife’s names were on it, and the family owned the two-flat until the 1950s, when his mother died. After Capone got out of prison in 1939, he lived in Florida until his death in 1947.

Built about 1909, the two-flat, which sits on an extra-wide lot, has had several owners since the Capones, and in 1989, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council both rejected bids to make the house an official landmark.

Also Curbed Chicago picked up on the sale of Capone's old hime.

Just last night I looked for any YouTube video regarding this house. Some tourists came to Park Manor to check this home out and shot some video outside. It was uploaded to YouTube in June 2018 [VIDEO]

Crain's: Al Capone's two-flat, a recent foreclosure, for sale #6WardChicago

Pic via Chicago Historical Society

Al Capone - an infamous 1920s prohibition-era gangster - formerly had his home in the Park Manor area at 7244 S. Prairie Ave. is on sale again. We've seen this property on this blog before over the years. And Dennis Rodkin of Crain's writes:

Curbed Chicago: Here's what Chicago is really losing as the two-flats vanish

Worlee Glover shared this to Nextdoor over the weekend and it's something to be shared here. Why is this important? Well consider the issue of affordable housing.

Do we need to have major corporate real estate companies owning a vast number of rental units throughout the city? And why not allow mom-and-pop landlords to be able to rent out their own unit, especially their two or four-flats?

Finally what do we do about those units that are in disrepair?

What you see below is via CurbedChicago.

Here's what Chicago is really losing as the two-flats vanish. https://t.co/84NVH5wFtM

— Curbed Chicago (@curbedchicago) January 5, 2019

Tribune: Race, poverty and fair housing: Chicago's landmark Gautreaux case winds down

Just wanted to share this with you. Housing and real estate has been a frequent topic of this blog over the years. And this is probably something you might not know much about.

A federal judge, several lawyers and representatives of the Chicago Housing Authority on Friday formalized a special date: July 31, 2024. If all goes as planned, that last Wednesday of July more than five years from now will close out one of the nation’s longest and most impactful housing discrimination cases.

Dorothy Gautreaux, an Altgeld Gardens resident and lead plaintiff when the case was filed in 1966, died two years later at age 41. But her activism had helped launch a movement extending beyond the landmark legal battle that originated in Chicago: Her cause, housing fairness, also had broadened the goals of the civil rights movement. The anti-discrimination marches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had come to embrace equal access to housing as a national cause.

For more than 40 years and with countless twists and turns, CHA has been trying to reverse what the U.S. Supreme Court determined in its 1976 Gautreaux ruling: Federal and local housing authorities in Chicago were violating the constitutional and civil rights of public housing tenants by concentrating and isolating them in low-income neighborhoods.

Over time, the court’s ruling slowed the purposeful crowding of black tenants in concentrated high-rise developments and accelerated the distribution of housing vouchers to integrate black families into communities throughout the city and suburbs. That remains the case today.

The Supreme Court decision also spurred CHA to build and renovate thousands of units and scatter them in more prosperous areas of Chicago. And it nudged a housing revolution, led by former Mayor Richard M. Daley, that included the teardown of the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex and others comparable to it.

BTW, the Sun-Times also wrote about this recently.

#ChiMayor2019 What Does the Next Chicago Mayor Have in Mind for Affordable Housing?

From Next City. Something to consider citywide:

The main portion of the forum consisted of questions presented by representatives of each of the co-sponsoring organizations.

As the first questioner, Raymon Barrera, Logan Square Neighborhood Association inquired about closing loopholes in the Affordable Requirements Ordinance that impede on the development of family-sized units. In response, Enyia cited growing up in a large family and understanding the acute need for housing that is adequate to accommodate families. Lightfoot called for outright elimination of the opt-out clause of the ARO.

Reina Meja of ONE Northside asked about Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) reform and preserving public housing. All the candidates present broadly criticized CHA. Preckwinkle cited evidence that public housing units were being torn down and replaced with commercial developments. She criticized the finding, and called for 1-for-1 replacement of public housing units torn down. She also stated that public housing should be more equitably distributed throughout the city, with more units located in affluent areas of the city, rather than concentrated in low-income areas.

Annie Hodges of Kenwood Oakland Community Organization asked specifically about each candidate’s support for rent control — specifically, about lifting the statewide ban on rent control that has been in place since 1997. Green was particularly passionate in his support of rent control, stating that the real test would be whether a future mayor would resist developers and their financial clout and “stand with the people”. McCarthy deviated from other candidates on this topic, claiming that broad-based rent controls were not the answer, that landlords would simply cut services in less affluent areas to maintain their profit margins. His response was met with a significant number of red cards — but also a smattering of green cards.

Jon Adams of ONE Northside inquired about raising revenue to provide services for homeless individuals, like the 1.2 percent transfer tax on high-end real estate transactions proposed by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Mayor Emanuel shot down the idea earlier this year. In contrast, all the candidates present agreed to the idea.

Lanessa Young of Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP) asked candidates about their positions on obtaining a community benefits agreement for the proposed Obama Center and additional developments. This question generated enthusiastic support from candidates and spirited responses from the audience. Green specifically emphasized the need to separate admiration for Obama from allowing the Obama Foundation to ignore the needs of the community. McCarthy expressed support for community benefits agreements, but added that “stimulus measures” were also needed.

In response to a question about environmental justice from Cheryl Johnson with People for Community Recovery, there was general consensus around the need for more accountability. Green stated that the city should make a serious effort to address lead contamination, stating “we should be dealing with this problem now. We don’t want to be like Flint in 20 years.”

Monica Dillon of Neighbors for Affordable Housing posed the final question about fair housing and aligning city departments and planning processes to advance equity for citizens. She cited the O’Hare region, which is rich in jobs but lacking in affordable housing. The candidates expressed consensus. McCarthy in particular, stated bluntly that Chicago was a place where “you have to have a guy to get things done,” and insisted, “that this situation needs to change.”

h/t CapFax

Chicago Reader: Pullman to get first new residential building in nearly 50 years

Via Chicago Neighborhoods

More changes coming to the historically and architecturally significant Pullman neighborhood.

The $18 million Pullman Artspace Lofts will be built on land that's been vacant for 88 years.https://t.co/BlW7gLqdgk

— Chicago Reader (@Chicago_Reader) July 10, 2018

Marynook 1962: "Decision at 83rd Street"

[VIDEO] 56 years ago Hugh Hill produced this documentary for CBS Chicago (or WBBM-TV) looking at racial integration in Marynook. On the other hand, what is seen here is an anatomy of "white flight". It's mentioned that realtors are "block busting" they're attempting to stir fears in white homeowners that Blacks are coming to buy homes on their blocks. Of course as we know in the 50+ years most of the south side is mostly Black today.

I can consider the many communities of the south side that since the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, or even 1980s experienced white flight. We can talk about Englewood, Woodlawn, Chatham, South Shore, Roseland, or Auburn Gresham. All of those communities experienced this "white flight".

I also want to note the example of Pill Hill - remember this was a neighborhood that at one point had a high prevalance of doctors working at a nearby hospital. I would recommend this book The South Side: The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood to see another angle to white flight. I had checked this book out of the library over a decade ago. The author contacted me years ago to clarify some points I made on another blog.

Tribune: Emanuel plan to get police to buy homes in more violent neighborhoods hasn't netted many sales yet

You know I sort of get the point of this program. How likely is it criminal activity would take place in front of a first responder like a police officer or a fire fighter? Though it's good to know that city workers will still choose Chatham :)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s latest attempt to get Chicago cops and firefighters to spread out into the city’s struggling neighborhoods has yet to draw much interest.

Six months after the mayor dangled a monetary carrot to try to get them to purchase homes in high-crime parts of the South and West sides, just two police officers have taken advantage, according to the city Department of Planning and Development. And both closed on houses in the South Side Chatham neighborhood that’s already known as a favorite landing spot for first responders and other city workers.

Emanuel’s program offers $30,000 loans to police officers and firefighters to buy a home in certain more violent areas of the city. If they stay for at least 10 years, they don’t have to pay the city back. It’s an idea employed by former Mayor Richard M. Daley in previous decades that Emanuel restarted last year.

Because of the low participation so far, some aldermen are suggesting changes. But the mayor’s administration wants to see if the program gains steam as the weather warms up and more young officers enter the homebuying market.

The proposal set aside $3 million to pay for the loans and passed the City Council easily last year, but not without skepticism from some aldermen about whether it would spur investment in areas that need it most.

The program was organized to promote homebuying by police, firefighters and paramedics in parts of Chicago’s six most statistically violent police districts, which include portions of several neighborhoods beset by crime and disinvestment like South Lawndale and Englewood. The districts, though, also include less violent parts of the city, notably Chatham.

Crain's: House flipping is changing the South Side - for the better

I've been meaning to post this article from Crain's this week. Dennis Rodkin of Crain's discusses how "house-flipping" in some south-side neighborhoods are changing them for the better.

When you think about it better this than a number of homes boarded up. I almost mentioned the foreclosure crisis, however, when that crisis hit that was over a decade ago. Perhaps the house-flipping is another after effect of that economic crisis that usher President Obama into the White House.

Anyway here's a bit of the article:

Ten years ago, a map of ZIP code 60629, a swath of the city just east of Midway Airport, was filled with hundreds of red dots indicating foreclosed homes. Now, thanks to a decadelong wave of rehabbers flipping distressed homes, that same area has homes that have been refreshed and resold.

In 60629, which encompasses parts of Chicago Lawn, West Lawn and Marquette Park, 692 homes have been flipped in 10 years, the most in any Chicago-area ZIP code, according to figures provided exclusively to Crain's by Attom Data Solutions. The data cover about 300 ZIP codes in the region, for 10 years, 2008 through 2017, a period in which more than 41,900 Chicago-area homes were flipped.

Five ZIP codes—four on the city's South Side and one in suburban Bolingbrook (see the chart)—emerged as the epicenters of home flipping, each of them with more than 500 properties going through the process in the past 10 years.

If you see the graphic above we see the zipcodes that include Auburn Gresham, Roseland, and West Pullman are among those neighborhoods with the most homes flipped.

"When you see these houses all redone, you might say, 'I can live here. I can help build this community back'" https://t.co/qgS4YeJDR4

— Crain's Chicago (@CrainsChicago) March 13, 2018

Are there houses in your neighborhood being flipped? Are there houses in your neighborhood worth flipping?

Jackson Park Highlands neighborhood expecting more notice with #Obama library

So as Leon's Barbecue gets notice with it's return in the Woodlawn neighborhood - and armed with knowlege that the Obama library will be coming soon to Jackson Park - another neighborhood south of Jackson Park begins to gain some notice. That neighborhood is Jackson Park Highlands. Which was seen in YoChicago's video back from 2010. [VIDEO]

Anyway with the accompanying tweet from Tribune Graphics that contains a map of Jackson Park Highlands and a link to the recent Tribune article by William Lee to how home sales are booming in the Highlands.

Ahead of Obama center arrival, home sales are booming in small enclave of Jackson Park Highlands https://t.co/MSJaTCGR8q via @MidnoirCowboy pic.twitter.com/NykLbOByFf

— Tribune Graphics (@ChiTribGraphics) March 9, 2018

And one of the people quoted in this article and the video you will see when you click to the article is Ms. Alisa Starks who formerly owned the Chatham Theaters currently owned and operated by Studio Movie Grill:

[Alisa] Starks, a lifelong South Shore resident who moved into the Highlands as a new mom in 1997, is hoping to be part of the resurgence with plans to build an entertainment complex that includes a dine-in movie theater, restaurant and bowling alley on the site of the old ShoreBank branch on Jeffery Boulevard in May 2019.

But the businesswoman, who was part of the team that founded the former ICE movie theaters in Chatham and Lawndale, said some of her hardest work has come after she was drafted to chair a special business development task force within the homeowner’s association. She and other Highlands residents are trying to learn what type of businesses and services their neighbors want while challenging them to get actively involved.

Highlands residents are insulated not only from the violence of the outer community, they’re also unaffected by the lack of options many other South Shore residents face, Starks said. Most if not all Highlands residents drive and can travel to Hyde Park and other places for grocery shopping and dine-in restaurant service, while poorer residents must rely on public transportation.

Starks blamed much of the disconnect between the Highlands and the outer community on a lack of communication, involvement and shared purpose between Highlands residents and community organizations.

“We’re complaining (about the disconnect). We’re sitting here watching it happen. We’re letting it happen!” Starks said.

The article starts off with referring to this area as something of a secret not many people know it exists. Technically speaking it is within the South Shore community area. As you see from the map the enclave is roughly within the area of Stony Island to the west, 67th to the north, Jeffrey to the east and 71st to the south. If you believe this video by Victor Maggio, the rest of South Shore is a very violent community. Of course the crime is noted in the article and I'm sure many residents doesn't want the crime from outside the community to affect it.

If the Obama library brings in more tourist to this part of town this neighborhood is in luck as the Highlands is a city landmark district. Out of town tourists can come here and check out the nice homes.

Is "redlining" still a problem today?

In the videos shown on this blog - regarding Roseland & Englewood - about the top 10 most violent neighborhoods (or community areas) in Chicago a factor noted in those videos is redlining. So according to the Tribune redlining is still a factor in other cities around America. That is certain segments of the population still have some difficulty getting mortgages to buy a home, and that's regardless of the type of jobs they hold.

Found this article via R.A.G.E. check out this post and why they shared this link.

Ice dams

[VIDEO] This story is for those of you who are concerned about those icicles around your housing hanging from roofs and gutters. Found this story interesting as I'm concerned about the icicles. Of course at the end of the story a reminder that it'll warm up this week and the ice and snow around your home will begin to thaw.

And just remember according to an ig post from ABC 7 we'll a little over a month away from spring. Less snow and we're closer to the warm temps of summer!

A post shared by ABC 7 Chicago (@abc7chicago) on Feb 12, 2018 at 9:12am PST

Tiny houses for the homeless

Perhaps an idea whose time has come and the city council is talking about it:

The City Council held a hearing about tiny houses after powerful Southwest Side Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, introduced a resolution for the city to consider them. The homes measure about 160 square feet, and builders say they can be completed in less than two weeks.

Catholic Charities would like to put up seven tiny homes for homeless veterans on a couple of lots near 78th Street and Emerald Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood, said Eileen Higgins, a vice president for the organization.

The houses would be put up near an existing Catholic Charities campus with services for veterans. Higgins said building tiny houses is less expensive in most cases than renovating an existing house, and she added that veterans often prefer a much smaller place to live without the upkeep of bigger residences.

So far the development is just a proposal, and Higgins said the organization is looking into zoning issues at the site.

Anthony Simpkins, of the city planning department, said the city is also in the preliminary stages of considering whether it should build lots of little houses to increase affordable housing around Chicago.

"Can it be publicly financed? Should it be publicly financed?" Simpkins said. "Is it on city land? Is it not? What are the design elements? Are there wraparound services involved? We're sort of looking at all that stuff right now."

Now if you want to see what these tiny houses could involved, check out the video below by Reason. This was more done by an individual instead of the city and unfortunately there was some controversy that included taking away the houses because they were in city streets & sidewalks. I'm glad the city is looking into this and better still will place these houses in lots instead of on city streets and sidewalks. [VIDEO]

West Chesterfield moves up on leader board State Farm neighborhood assist

From The Chicago Neighborhoods

We got an e-mail recently from West Chesterfield's Michael LaFargue

• THANK those who have voted! and ask PLEASE VOTE TODAY, TOMORROW, THURSDAY and FRIDAY!
  
  UPDATE!
  We have moved up on the Leader Board to #145. We need to be at #40.
  
  VOTE:
  GO TO: www.neighborhoodassist.com
  SIGN UP: name, personal email…
  SEARCH: type in West Chesterfield
  VOTE: Today *
  VOTE: Daily **
  
  Please help the West Chesterfield Community Association Inc. win a $25,000 State Farm "Safety" Surveillance Camera Grant!
  
  Only the "The forty (40) Causes earning the highest number of votes by 11:59:59 P.M. ET, Friday, August 25, 2017 will be designated the winners"

Also there was a press release attached to this e-mail which includes reference to Cook County Judge Raymond Myles who had been murdered this past spring. The private surveillance camera network of West Chesterfield was instrumental in capturing his killers.

Crain's: Rehabs stabilizing market in this South Side neighborhood

Via The Chicago Neighborhoods

You might have seen this over at Worlee's Concerned Citizen's of Chatham fb page. Perhaps this is the expected outcome that we've been waiting for with Chatham referred to by Dennis Rodkin as "a longtime center of Chicago's middle-class black population":

In the past 12 months, nearly one in four of the houses sold in the neighborhood have been recent rehabs, typically by builders and investors, according to Crain's analysis of Midwest Real Estate Data records. Of 199 houses sold in the period, 48 were rehabs.

That's 24 percent, a far higher proportion than in other South and West Side neighborhoods that were hit hard by the downturn. Rehabs were fewer in nearby neighborhoods South Shore (15 percent), Park Manor and South Chicago (both 17 percent) and Auburn Gresham (19 percent).

"You're watching Chatham get rejuvenated," said Virgil Landry, a rehabber and Kale Realty agent.

In January, Landry paid $39,000 for a house on 90th Street that had recently completed a seven-year foreclosure process. He put the four-bedroom house through a rehab that included repairing a faulty foundation and installing new flooring, kitchen appliances, furnace and air conditioner. Landry put the 2,000-square-foot home half a block from Tuley Park on the market in late July, asking $199,000.

The median price of a house sold in Chatham has jumped this year, largely because of the higher-priced sales of rehabs. At the end of June, the median sale price of a house was slightly more than $120,000, up 42 percent from the year-earlier figure, $85,000, according to the Chicago Association of Realtors. That's not evidence of skyrocketing home values but of the shift from a market that was heavy on bargain-priced foreclosure sales last year to resales of improved homes this year. Data provided by Renovo Financial, a Chicago-based lender that funds many rehabbers' projects, shows that rehabbed houses in Chatham are selling at an average of nearly $212,000 this year.

Chatham was hit hard in the foreclosure crisis. At its worst, in 2009, the neighborhood had 4.2 foreclosure filings per 100 properties, according to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. Some neighborhoods, including Burnside, Chicago Lawn and East Garfield park, peaked at more than seven filings per 100. Yet like most of the South Side, Chatham saw a stark slide in home values. By November 2011, they had dropped 57 percent from their December 2007 peak, according to a study Crain's published last fall.

Not all of the rehabs are former foreclosures. Some are homes that longtime owners sold at depressed prices.

Unfortunately I'm not a real estate buff nor do I have any connections to the real estate business. With that said I wonder how many of the people who bought these rehabbed homes plan to put down roots in Chatham. Here's hoping we got new residents who plan to grow old in this longtime center for Chicago's Black middle class.