Leaders Unite to Preserve the Chicago Region’s Affordable Rental Housing
Affordable housing, especially in the Chicago region, is increasingly difficult to acquire and is a threat to the economic future of the region. Today, area leaders in government, non-profit and the business sectors unveiled a program to reverse these dramatic losses in the affordable rental housing stock. Created in 2005, The Preservation Compact is a project of the Urban Land Institute and is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The program is the nation’s most comprehensive approach to a problem that challenges communities everywhere-turning around the significant loss of rental housing that is affordable to moderate and low wage workers. A series of initiatives to save at least 75,000 existing homes in Cook County by the year 2020 is planned.
At the center of the program is a new Preservation Fund, an umbrella for a suite of financial products. The fund will provide acquisition and bridge financing to nonprofit and for-profit developers, making it possible for them to obtain as much as a half a million dollars to support the long-term preservation of rental housing in Cook County.
Equally important are a series of partnerships between local organizations, each charged with responsibility for solving a different aspect of the affordable rental housing problem.
CNT is partnering with other organizations to work in the area of reducing operating costs in multifamily rental properties. The organizations have created Cook County Energy Savers, a one-stop energy efficiency program that will provide technical assistance and loans for energy-efficiency improvements.
More information on the Cook County Energy Savers program and CNT’s participation here. You can also read more about the strategy to preserve affordable housing in Cook County at the Urban Land Institute’s site here.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Very interesting stuff about affordable housing. The trick is going to be keep housing price down and make our cities denser and more sustainable. Montreal–much smaller than Chicago, but with a dense, healthy inner city–has seen much brownfield development, but much good agricutural land is still being converted to housing, partly because it is “cheaper.”
See more about currents hearings on the subject at my blog Recreating Eden: http://marysoderstrom.blogspot.com
Mary Soderstrom
And thanks again for collaborating with me for the readings about my new book Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places (Véhicule Press)