Comments of the day: A kinder, gentler chat about Pilsen
Posted 4/21/2008 by Joseph Askins
"Someone is going to redevelop all the vacant land and the abandoned loft buildings as well as replace or renovate the sub standard houses many of which will become unhabitable once the current resident vacates. There just aren't that many people looking for 2 closets with a smallish living room and kitchen appliance room with space heat and termites, cracked windows, and a rotted mold covered bathing room with a toilet about to fall thru the floor. Unless illegal immigration picks back up you can kiss tenantz who put up which such sub standard living quarters goodbye."
"Pilsen was long plagued by absentee landlords who kept their properties in substandard condition, without interference from city building inspectors. There was always a demand for that kind of housing at the right price. Has something changed in Pilsen to remove or police the absentee owners and diminish the demand for low-quality but affordable housing?"
"Yeah Joe, something has changed. UIC has moved all the way to the 16th Street viaduct, students are being priced out of Taylor Street, young professionals don't want to pay an arm and a leg to live in Lincoln Park or Wicker Park, and the location is within a stone's throw of downtown."
"Young professionals who can afford to still want to live in Lincoln Park and Wicker Park. They still do."
"The prime geographic locations in the central city are not the appropriate place for low income housing. If the central city is to prosper economically, the best locations have to be used to provide housing that will attract people with above average income and even ones who are rich, so that they will live in the city instead of the suburs, in order to provide the city with sufficient tax revenue to properly fund its needs, such as, for example, paying for the expansion of parks. That requires tax revenue. If such prime areas are used for run-down, low income housing, Chicago will become an impoverished slum like Detroit. Other, less desirable locations are more appropriate for affordable housing."
- Viktor, Joe Zekas, UICstudent, Zekas again, and CaptainVideo, in an animosity-free edition of the continuing back-and-forth over Pilsen. Click those links to read the full conversation. Just make sure to take your blood-pressure medicine first.
(Photos from YoChicago's Pilsen set on Flickr.)
Comments
4/21/08
Local Realtor said:
Just what ARE the "best" areas for low-income housing? Wouldn't that include neighborhoods that are easily accessible to wherever the jobs are (central city or elsewhere) via public transportation? If we keep "improving" close-in areas (not bad in and of itself) to the point where the people most in need of accessible locations can no longer afford them, aren't we setting ourselves up for more of the same (welfare dependency/unemployment) that has plagued us for the last several decades?
UptownR said:
Here's a brief answer for you. No.
I'm all for mixed income develpment, but when affordable housing excedes about 10% of all housing units, the neighborhood suffers. And affordable housing should be small in scale and should not vary in appearance significantly from the other housing in the neighborhood.
Joe Zekas said:
UptownR,
Check out our video interview with architect Pat FitzGerald on "the CHA's daring experiment" of mixing its new project 1/3 low income, 1/3 affordable and 1/3 market rate.
The 10% number may not be as fixed a line as you suggest it is.
And, there are people living in 100% affordable neighborhoods throughout the country who would disagree vehemently with you.
Sam said:
Pat FitzGerald, hah, what a blowhard chump to bring up. Does he have photos of you? What has old Fitzy done to warrant any expertise? All his recent projects & partners have either flopped, sold like dogs, gone under, or left the country to to swim with the fishes, thanks to the eastern european mob.
Pat's design is like that of a cub scout who decides to build a pinewood derby car, but after toyong with the car for 5 weeks, decides that the best he can do is to pull the kit out, put the wheels on it, and run it like a block.
4/22/08
Joe Zekas said:
Sam -
You're what they call an "operational definition" of blowhard.
FitzGerald will survive your rant and continue to be hired by many of the city's best developers. He has hundreds of projects to speak for him. What do you have?
UptownR said:
There are many areas with 100% affordable housing units, yes. These areas are called ghettos, and it should go without debate that they are not healthy communities.
10% is a number that has been thrown around by New Urbanist guru Andres Duany in his writings. 33% may be more politically feasible in a city like Chicago which has a strong contingent of affordable housing activists, but I really think it's too high. It should be closer to 10%, and should be uniformly distributed throughout the metro area. Once again, I realize this isn't politically feasible.
UptownR said:
I should clarify that I'm using the term "affordable housing" to mean "low-income rental housing". This is the double-speak used by "affordable housing" activists, so we should be clear about what they are actually talking about. Believe me, they are not looking to build middle-class housing in Chicago.
Joe Zekas said:
Uptownr,
Your typical "new urbanist guru" inhabits a highly dysfunctional "community" known as academia.
I repeat my earlier point - there are low-income / affordable communities all across this great green restless land that thrive despite their economic circumstances.
It takes a special kind of person to stigmatize every low-income community as a ghetto.
irishpirate said:
Well you two kids need to "define" how you are getting to the term "affordable".
Perhaps subsidized would be a better term.
Also there are largely subsidized communities that thrive where there is proactive and hardass management. Hell back when the buffalo roamed the prairies the CHA was even a well run organization. It provided decent housing and had this little thing called 'standards' that they held their tenants too.
It seems to be if you got your definitions correct you might agree on more than you think. Or perhaps not.
Joe Zekas said:
irishpirate,
I can't find it in me to agree with anyone who cites a "New Urbanist guru" as authority for the upper limit of poor people a healthy community can accommodate. Can you? The statement is repulsive.
Alison Davis - he of Barack's old law firm fame - ran some 100% low-income projects in Old Town, sandwiched between the disastrous Cabrini Green and Sedgwick Gardens projects. Those projects were extremely sought-after places to live because Davis managed them in a very hands-on fashion.
Atrium Village, on Division, is another example of a project with a large low-income population that worked very well. Two citations - many, many more are possible in Chicago alone.
IHDA - the Illinois Housing Development Authority - set a 20% threshold on many of the projects it helped finance. Those were projects that attracted an upper-income clientele to live alongside the lower-income population. These worked when they were well managed, as most were. Only a New Urbanist fool could contend that 1here's some magic to 10%. And only a worse fool could contend that someone's income level determines their behavior.
And then, head out across the country for 10s of thousands of additional examples of thriving low-income communities.
4/23/08
Sam said:
Just to clarify, there are 2 different Sams here (I used to post much more frequently)
Although I'm not particularly a fan of Pat Fitzgerald's work, the above post was definitely not mine (Jeff, is that really you?, sounds like it…)