Affordable Housing

Neighbors want the building to be shorter and add parking, but Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez said changing the design now could jeopardize highly competitive tax credits needed for construction.

The developer wants the new housing to serve as a shared place for Chicago's Native Americans community — but apartments wouldn't exclusively be earmarked for Indigenous neighbors.

Worried the city could lose 800 affordable units as the arm of Heartland Alliance failed to pay its bills, city officials asked a judge to transfer control of the properties to another company.

Developers hope to secure $15 million in TIF funding to build two affordable housing units on vacant land along 79th Street, a project that's been fiercely debated nearly a year.

The much-debated project has stalled over disagreement about how much parking the area needs. "This is something we care about a lot and we want to see it move forward," one organizer said.

The project at Western and Leland has been controversial among neighbors who want affordable housing at a city-owned lot and those who want to preserve public parking in a busy shopping district.

City officials said the current plan has too much parking and accused the alderman and developer of ignoring their warnings about the issue.

City officials say they are committed to building the low-cost housing near the Brown Line. But the compromise neighbors reached on public parking is a sticking point for key funding.

The apartment complex by Full Circle Communities has been under construction since January 2020 and has 75 affordable units for veterans, older people and people with disabilities.

The six-story building, named Maria Elena Sifuentes, will include 50 apartments aimed at helping neighbors who might have been priced out of the neighborhood otherwise due to gentrification. 

The $40 million complex at the former Chase Bank site was proposed in 2016, and the bank was replaced with a smaller version in 2019. Construction on the apartments could finally wrap by 2023.

The building will have 60 two-bedroom and eight three-bedroom apartments, with more than a dozen set aside as affordable.

Separate housing developments for women facing homelessness and an affordable senior apartment building in Uptown were given the OK from a city commission.

Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation wants to turn a city-owned part of Edgewater into an all-affordable apartment complex.

Ald. Anthony Napolitano argued the area is overburdened with residential density and denied his opposition has anything to do with planned affordable units.

The development will include apartments, culturally sensitive social services and a rooftop for Native American cultural practices.

When finished, the development will include three residential buildings centered around a public park. The first building, called the Seng, is a 34-unit affordable condo building that should be finished by December 2022.

When finished, the Chicago Housing Authority will have built an affordable family building and renovated its Edith Spurlock Sampson Apartments and Annex for older people.

The city has received more than 300 applications from property owners who want to turn basements, attics and coach houses into additional dwelling units in five pilot zones.