Housing Plans and Policy
Housing Plans and Policy
Announcement
Garfield Park Community Council supports several efforts to increase housing equity in Garfield Park and develop plans that ensure that Garfield Park is an affordable and desirable place to live for legacy residents.
We want to see equitable, innovative, community-driven planning processes and development in Garfield Park without displacement.
Preserving Affordability Together
We contributed to a community-driven planning process conducted in East Garfield Park, led by Metropolitan Planning Council with input from the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, and informed by many community residents and stakeholders. The vision is that East Garfield Park is a community where all residents, businesses, and civic institutions are stable, healthy, safe, and able to access opportunity. We came together with these stakeholders to ensure new investment and development greatly benefits legacy residents, legacy businesses, and civic institutions by preserving affordability, preventing all forms of displacement, and creating economic opportunity.
To meet the goals that come with this mission, this planning process identified the following five as priority strategies needed to advance over the next two-to-three years.
- Build a strong, independent community coalition that builds power and advances housing affordability and stability strategies
- Develop a community benefits strategy that requires significant new development to provide benefits to local and legacy community members
- Support legacy homeowners in preserving existing housing that is affordable, including property tax assistance and support for home repairs
- Establish Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives to create ownership opportunities for low-income residents
- Create a Community-Driven Land Trust to advance community ownership and create permanent housing affordability
To learn more about the process and gain access to additional resources visit metroplanning.org/garfieldpark, or our housing resources page.
Property Tax Appeal Project (PTAP)
GPCC is partnering with the Property Tax Appeal Project (PTAP) to help Chicago homeowners lower their property tax bills by protesting Cook County's inflated property tax assessments. The Chicago-Kent College of Law is partnering with Dentons Law Firm to provide free representation to Chicago homeowners who want to appeal their property tax assessments.
Cook County sends homeowners a tax bill twice a year: once in March and once during the summer. The assessment notice, which the County typically sends in early spring, informs the owner of the valuations that the County is using to calculate their tax bill. Submitting a protest is the only way to lower a property’s assessed value. The assessment notice is not the tax bill. PTAP helps homeowners protest their property tax assessment for free.
Email chicagoptap@gmail.com for details.
Just Cause for Eviction
As part of our effort to increase housing stability, GPCC supports the The Chicago Housing Justice League’s fight to end no-fault evictions in Chicago. Currently, Illinois and Chicago law allows a landlord to terminate the landlord-tenant relationship for any reason or no reason at all, as long as proper notice is given before an eviction case is filed in court. The Just Cause movement allows residents the ability to live in one's own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.
Why do we need Just Cause?
- No-fault eviction is a principle vehicle for escalating displacement.
People are forced to leave their homes as landlords and property investors sell, rehab and flip old buildings for profit. There are 850,000 African Americans in Chicago, down from 1.2 million in 1980 largely due to gentrification and lack of affordable, accessible housing.
- No-fault evictions discourage tenants from exercising their rights and mask illegal or questionable landlord conduct from eviction courts, a tactic used frequently against working class and low-income renters.
- No-fault evictions perpetuate discrimination by taking away the freedom to maintain housing anywhere.
Majority Black areas have eviction filing rates two to four times higher than majority Latinx or White areas. Persons of color and households headed by women face disproportionate rates of eviction.
- No-fault evictions threaten seniors, who are the most vulnerable to rising rents and evictions compared to any other age group.
Just Cause supports aging in place by allowing residents the ability to live in one's own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level. No-fault evictions disrupt a senior resident’s existing access to medical care and social services, family and friends, transportation, and food.
Learn more and join the campaign: https://www.justcausechicago.org/
C40 (Garfield Green)Community Garfield Park
Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) was selected through a competition in the spring of 2019 to develop city owned land at the corner of 5th Avenue and Kedzie as an affordable housing community with neighborhood-serving retail.
The project has gone under multiple updates in 2020 and the early months of 2021 through Community Conversations that discussed Design, Green Building Standards, and Retail plans. Future conversations will be held the 2nd Thursday of each month from 6pm to 7pm, which can be found on the website calendar.
Follow along with the updates on the project. Community feedback is encouraged.
Chicago Flats Initiative
Started by a coalition of community organizations, the Chicago Flats Initiative works to save a multifamily housing stock that helped build Chicago during its boom years: 2-to-4 flats. It is focusing its efforts on getting financial assistance to the owners and renters of those 2-to-4 flats.
Chicago Flats Initiative programs offered through Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago include:
- HUD-certified financial counseling services and homebuyer education classes
- Foreclosure prevention resources to keep homeowners of 2-to-4s in their homes
- Competitive mortgage loans
- Home purchase assistance up to $20,000; home improvement grants up to $25,000
- Health and safety inspections
- Construction management services
Organizations involved with the initiative include Communities United, Elevate Energy, Enterprise Community Partners, Garfield Park Community Council, Greater Chatham Initiative, Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, The Preservation Compact and Resident Association of Greater Englewood.
C40 (Garfield Green)Community Garfield Park
Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) was selected through a competition in the spring of 2019 to develop city owned land at the corner of 5th Avenue and Kedzie as an affordable housing community with neighborhood-serving retail.
The project has gone under multiple updates in 2020 and the early months of 2021 through Community Conversations that discussed Design, Green Building Standards, and Retail plans. Future conversations will be held the 2nd Thursday of each month from 6pm to 7pm, which can be found on the website calendar.
Follow along with the updates on the project. Community feedback is encouraged.
Chicago Flats Initiative
Started by a coalition of community organizations, the Chicago Flats Initiative works to save a multifamily housing stock that helped build Chicago during its boom years: 2-to-4 flats. It is focusing its efforts on getting financial assistance to the owners and renters of those 2-to-4 flats.
Chicago Flats Initiative programs offered through Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago include:
- HUD-certified financial counseling services and homebuyer education classes
- Foreclosure prevention resources to keep homeowners of 2-to-4s in their homes
- Competitive mortgage loans
- Home purchase assistance up to $20,000; home improvement grants up to $25,000
- Health and safety inspections
- Construction management services
Organizations involved with the initiative include Communities United, Elevate Energy, Enterprise Community Partners, Garfield Park Community Council, Greater Chatham Initiative, Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, The Preservation Compact and Resident Association of Greater Englewood.
Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD)
With Elevated Chicago we've been supportive of Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) in Garfield Park. Equitable housing and transit go hand-in-hand in Chicago; Elevated Chicago launched in 2017 to present collaborative, community-led solutions to neighborhood displacement and inequities using an underutilized asset: our public transit system. Elevated Chicago is working in transit areas across the city, one of them being in the Kedzie Corridor of Garfield Park.
In September 2020 the City of Chicago released a preliminary ETOD policy plan. Collaboratively developed by Elevated Chicago, city departments and leaders from community and citywide organizations, including GPCC, the proposed policy aims to lever tools of urban planning to address historic disinvestments in Black and Brown communities, and avoid displacement triggered by gentrification.
The general public was invited to review and make comments on the new ETOD policy through Thursday, October 29, 2020. The policy, hosted at https://chi.gov/etod, was developed with support from the Office of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and a cross-section of City departments including Housing, Planning and Development, Transportation, and Public Health, with input by the Chicago Transit Authority. A preliminary summary of the public response and comments to the policy can be found here and a final report was published in June 2021.
