They’re tearing down some of the dilapidated old buildings in the working-class area out west of the Kennedy Expressway, on the near-northwest side, and putting up a bunch of spanking new town houses.
For the moment, the conflict is personified in two well-acquainted adversaries: Louis Prus, owner of Easy Life Real Estate and Management Company, and the Northwest Community Organization. Prus has sold and bought real estate in Wicker Park for years–almost as long as NCO’s activists (disciples of the late Saul Alinsky) have worked the same turf, organizing poor and lower-middle-class residents.
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This is not the first time NCO has vilified Prus. In 1981, NCO accused Prus of “promoting displacement by pushing up housing prices and rents,” leading one local resident, a fellow named Luis Gutierrez, to proclaim: “Louis Prus is the worst violator of our rights, but he is not acting alone. We need protection from all the realtors who, like Prus, will stop at nothing to push current residents out to make way for ‘urban pioneers.’ Pioneers used to kill Indians and now Latinos, Blacks, and senior citizens are their victims.” Gutierrez has gone on to what some may consider bigger and better things (he’s now the area’s alderman), but the issue has not dissipated. Over the last few weeks, NCO and a couple of other groups in the area have organized the Westtown Campaign for Affordable Housing (West Town is the larger community area encompassing Wicker Park), once again accusing Prus of pressuring low-income property owners to sell low so the same property can be rehabbed and resold to gentrifiers at much higher prices.
Prus’s response is a mixture of bemusement, sympathy, and, in the case of the profit-ceiling demand, incredulity. Questions of morality aside, it is one of capitalism’s everlasting precepts that the seller be free to sell as high as the market will bear, and keep the profits. Or, as one broker put it, “This is America. If someone’s dumb enough to pay my asking price, that’s his right!”
A quick drive through Wicker Park shows a community scarred by abandoned buildings and debris. Clumps of young men loiter on busy street corners during business hours. The local newspapers tell stories of gang fights and dope deals.
“It’s a special market. I don’t have to sell a whole complex of buildings. I only have to sell one or two. I figure there are people who grew up in the ‘burbs, and now Mom and Dad give them a couple of hundred thousand to buy a home.”
If the market remains unfettered, Moreno says, people in her predicament will have no choice but to move. It’s a bitter irony, too, because the presence of gentry, which generally results in better city services, fewer gangs, and more commercial development, will probably make Wicker Park a nicer place to live. It also increases land costs and property taxes, forcing landlords to raise rents or forgo basic repairs. Either way, decent low-income housing is lost.
