Rent and vacancy data for the entire county are updated quarterly and enable policy makers, community groups, and other stakeholders to better understand the rental housing stock in suburban Cook County and five Chicago submarkets.
The report found:
There are signs that the national economy is recovering, albeit slowly. For example, reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago...
Tenant Issues
Renters are often absent from the debate about how to help those affected by foreclosures. However, just like in the single family market, foreclosures on multifamily buildings are rising at record rates and concentrating in low- to moderate-income communities.
While a federal law passed in 2009 gave protections to renters in foreclosure, such as the survival of the lease beyond foreclosure and at least 90 days of notice before month-to-month tenants have to move, many tenants are not aware of these rights. Some tenants are not notified that their buildings are in foreclosure, and even if they are, it can be unclear to whom tenants should pay rent. Some tenants receive inaccurate information from the new owners stating that tenants have less time to move than they actually have. During and after the foreclosure process, new owners can be reluctant to maintain the property and tenants may not know who to contact for repairs. Tenants may accept offers of money in exchange for moving, without fully realizing what rights they are waiving or what are their other options. While there are federal programs in place to return single-family or small owner-occupied multifamily properties to productive use, there are few resources available for large or investor-owned multifamily properties, risking the loss of a great number of affordable housing units.
There must be stronger provisions in place to require lenders and servicers who take over ownership of multifamily rental properties to maintain these properties, collect rent, pay utilities, and notify tenants of a contact person who handles those services. Programs need to be developed to maintain and redevelop multifamily housing after foreclosure and preserve the affordable housing stock.
This page details the efforts of Regional HOPI partners to directly assist tenants in foreclosure, document the effects of the foreclosure crisis on multifamily properties in the Chicago region, and advocate for stronger policy solutions.
The foreclosure crisis is an opportunity to reorient housing strategies to focus on creating and supporting neighborhoods that offer residents an attractive place to live. The Building Resilient Regions Network, funded by the MacArthur Foundation through the University of California at Berkeley, is developing applied knowledge about how regions can be resilient in the face of significant...
Beginning in the Spring of 2009, the Lawyers' Committee for Better Housing's Tenants in Foreclosure Intervention Project began collecting and reviewing current data related to tenants in foreclosure in Chicago. We use this data to create weekly reports for 14 community areas in Chicago. These reports are designed to alert our community partners of issues in their neighborhoods and to...
While much of the response of the foreclosure crisis has been focused on the negative effects on homeowners, they are far from the only victims. Tens of thousands of Chicago region renters have been displaced—sometimes illegally—due to rental buildings going into foreclosure as well. The Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH) recently released a...
By John McCarron
LISC New Communities Program
Home prices keep falling and mortgage foreclosures keep rising.
A new study on renters, meanwhile, counts 12,334 apartment buildings going into foreclosure during 2009-2010 and with them a whopping 37,726 rental units. LISC/NCP neighborhoods were among the hardest hit, with five losing more than 200...
By DePaul University Institute for Housing Studies
The weakened local economy has significantly affected the rental apartment market. Since the second half of 2007, overall vacancy rates in the city of Chicago have increased from 5% to 5.7% in 2008, and to 6.2% in the second quarter of 2009.
Low-income rental markets...
The Lawyers' Committee for Better Housing sends out weekly reports on the locations of foreclosed rental buildings in Chicago neighborhoods. The data is of interest to community groups who want to keep track of foreclosed rental buildings in their neighborhoods, as well as researchers and policymakers who wish to study foreclosure and tenants' issues. To be added...
The Suburban Cook County Multifamily Preservation Initiative (SCCMPI) is a new financing program created to encourage the rehabilitation and preservation of quality rental housing throughout suburban Cook County for municipalities and jurisdictions participating (currently or potentially) in the Cook County HOME Collaborative.
For properties that support the...
New foreclosure filings on condominiums are a rising share of foreclosure activity in the Chicago region, new data from Woodstock Institute show. New filings on condominiums in the...
The foreclosure crisis continues to evolve and pose new challenges for communities working towards recovery. Chicago area municipalities, community and policy groups, and financial institutions have been working together for years to develop tools and strategies to handle the problems associated...