“I never even moved in. I just decided to sell it.”
– Damaris Matis, a real estate agent who bought one of University Village‘s 187 taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing units in July 2007 and sold it for a $29,500 profit one month later.
The Sun-Times today looks at the results of the city’s affordable housing program and finds that at University Village alone, 67 percent of affordable homes were sold to single people, and 50 subsidized homes were flipped to buyers who did not have to meet income guidelines, at an average profit of $63,710.
In return for receiving $75 million in TIF funds, University Village’s developers had to set aside 21 percent of their units for affordable family housing — half had to be bought by people who made no more than 100 percent of the Chicago area’s median income (currently $52,800 for a single person and $75,400 for a family of four), and half were available for buyers who made as much as 120 percent of the area’s median income. Many buyers applied for public subsidies of $10,000 to $25,000.
Despite subsidizing more than 4,300 new homes throughout the city since 1989, city officials tell the Sun-Times that they don’t keep track of how many of those homes are still affordable.