Inclusionary Housing Task Force Issues Report

When the Inclusionary Housing Task Force first began their work in December 2019, no one could have guessed how profoundly the city and the world were about to change. The Task Force had just barely gotten started when the pandemic hit.

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Beware the Sigcho-Lopez DFA Ordinance

Inclusionary zoning has gotten a lot of attention in Chicago over this past year! A related article in this Newsletter looks at the recently released Inclusionary Housing Task Force Staff Report, issued by the City’s Department of Housing in September. The Staff Report contains a range of recommendations, some of which our industry will likely support, and others that range from intriguing to downright scary.

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NBOA Renter Survey

The results are in! And the answer is?

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New Construction on Pratt?

Residences at 1233 W Pratt Rendering

Developer is Encouraged by Productive Discussions with 49th Ward Office.

For years, the middle of the 1200 block of West Pratt Avenue sat vacant and unused. Formally a Synagogue, the site has been vacant since the early 2000s when a plan to redevelop it with a mix of apartments and a new Synagogue fell apart. In the years since, we have experienced a major recession featuring a ruinous housing market crash in Rogers Park, and now a global pandemic.

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Katrina Bilella – A Small Property Owner’s Nightmare Come True

Katrina Bilella never wanted to be the poster child for small property owners struggling with deadbeat tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic. But that is exactly what she became in the wake of the eviction moratorium, first enacted by Governor Pritzker in March, with no end in sight.

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Essex Realty Donates to CPS for 30th Anniversary

Over the past three decades, RPBG Director Doug Imber has grown Essex Realty Group, Inc. from a fledgling brokerage business into one of the region’s premier mid-market investment sales companies. Then as now, Essex Realty has always had a strong focus on apartment product, particularly the small to medium sized buildings that can be found in nearly every Chicago neighborhood and that provide so much of the rental housing where many Chicagoans live.

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As I See It: Extending “Easy Money” Ordinance to Cook County a Bad Idea

By:

Mike Glasser, RPBG President
Fall, 2020

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Ups and Downs - Fall 2020

By:

Steve Cain
Fall, 2020

I think we can all agree—it’s been a rough year for everyone. But for Chicago, it has been even worse. By most measures, the city had been under-performing its peer—group of other, large American cities for at least a decade — losing population, adding fewer jobs and always in the public eye for all the wrong reasons, including entrenched political corruption and a sky high murder rate.

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Verella’s Round-Up: Chicago COVID-19 Eviction Ordinance

Verella Osborne, President, Legal Document Management, Inc.

Fall, 2020

Well, I’ve thought long and hard to find any good news for Illinois housing providers and the situation just gets bleaker. Most of you have been advised, ad nauseum, of the Illinois moratorium on filing and enforcing residential evictions now extended through the end of the year, with additional extensions likely.

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Around Rogers Park: RPBG Donates to Dead on Damen after Vandals Destroy Display

Over the past decade, Dead on Damen has become a Rogers Park Halloween tradition, growing in size and popularity with each passing year. Its annual displays of Halloween ghouls and ghosts on the east side of the 7500-block of North Damen have delighted locals and visitors alike, and have become an integral part of the Halloween season in the neighborhood.

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