“The dream lives on in Lawndale,” chanted the crowd, which included the obligatory coterie of local pols and pastors, at the opening of a new “affordable” apartment complex on donated urban rental land where Martin Luther King stayed in Chicago in the 1960s.
You can read the details at the New Communities Program Web site in an article entitled North Lawndale’s Living MLK Legacy.
If you pay attention, you’ll also note that the 45 apartment units and 4,500 square feet of ground-level retail space in the project were completed at a cost of $17.7 million.
As a passionate supporter of fair and open access to quality housing, I’m disgusted every time I read about another $400K-per-unit (round numbers) “affordable” housing project. The process that results in so-called affordable housing seems to have devolved into unconstrained economic madness. Are we really serving the poor when we use resources this way? How many distressed properties could private developers have bought and made livable for that $17.7M in a community where the median sale price of a home last month was $17K?
Joseph,
“unrestrained economic madness”? Come on. They at least keep it under $500,000 per inferior unit.
Ultimately the people who most benefit from “affordable housing” are the developers, investors, construction companies and workers, and politicians who get big fat donations from connected real estate related interests.
Ultimately buying and renovating larger apartment buildings would make more economic sense that these types of developments. Then again the tenants are only a secondary consideration in these type of developments.
Irishpirate,
I don’t agree that the tenants are a secondary consideration.
No way are they anywhere near that high a priority.
Did Wilson Yard finally come in under $500K a unit?
I don’t know exactly where Wilson Yard came in per unit. The numbers there were treated like Manhattan Project in 1944.
The general consensus among people who tried to figure it out was 400-450 grand per unit. Vinyl floors, formica type countertops in the kitchens, carpeting etc. Not a first class finish to be found from what I was told by someone who toured one of the buildings.
Some for profit developer built an 8 unit condo building a few blocks south of Wilson Yard on Kenmore and the units were nearly twice as large. The prices were around $450,000 per unit with better finishes and the building was built around the same time as Wilson Yard. Also real garages and no split faced block.
Of course apparently the “affordable housing” biz is fraught with danger.
http://www.uptownupdate.com/2011/06/anyone-want-to-buy-wilson-yard-cheap.html
I do know that Wilson Yard was financed at the height of the building credit crunch and I think the lender/investors got a very nice rate of return on their investment.
You could literally take the money that’s spent on affordable housing in this city and probably create 3-4 times as many rental units just by renovating abandoned properties. Of course as you suggested only potential tenants might benefit from that.
When you pick apart and run the numbers like that. I just get disgusted. 400k per unit. Come on. The people involved in working on this deal should all be fired immediately.
You guys are forgetting that “affordable housing”, if subsidized, often has hidden requirements for materials and quality (and oversight) that an open market development wouldn’t have – that adds to the cost dramatically – finishes are comparatively cheap in the scheme of things, it’s thinks like plumbing standards, concrete strength, details, etc, which add to the tag of affordable housing.
I agree that much more could have been done rehabilitating existing homes with that money. Those prices are criminal. Not sure who’s paying that kind of price to live in North Lawndale, when you can buy an entire graystone for a very tiny sliver of that 400k.