Chicago's Affordable Housing Quagmire About to Get Deeper

October 3, 2017                       By: Gary Lucido

Chicago has a long standing love affair with the notion of "affordable housing" - not CHA built housing but privately developed housing that people below various income limits can afford to buy or rent and are granted access to this housing by the city. But it's not clear if they really love affordable housing or just the idea of affordable housing or if maybe they just hate gentrification. And who is "they" anyway?

In all fairness there are different constituencies who have different views on what is "affordable", where it should be located, and how it should be created. As with most things Chicago there is a messy political process for determining the policy. Best I can tell the city has had an Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO) in order to encourage the development of affordable housing going back to at least 2003, which was updated in 2007 and again in 2015..........Read More