The old high rise in Uptown was vacant and falling apart when Herbert Heyman and Howard Landau offered the Lakefront SRO Corporation a grant of $250,000 to buy and renovate it. Come fall, Lakefront will open the Malden Arms Apartments at 4727 N. Malden, and its 86 units will be open to the poor.
But Heyman and Landau are not fools. And they’re not investing for an economic return. They’re making a social investment. Still, they don’t want to take the risk of seeing their grants or loans squandered, which would make them look like chumps. “We understand that this is not like building a shopping mall in Schaumburg,” says Heyman. “You have to remember that there are risks in any investment. Frankly, at our stage in life we would rather accept this risk. We don’t want to back losing propositions. But Howard and I would be less unhappy losing our money here than in Schaumburg.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
But the more JCUA leaders thought about it, the better they liked the idea. So many low-income-housing initiatives die early for lack of start-up funds. “You need money to get an idea off the ground,” says Landau. “You have to pay the so-called predevelopment costs. You have to pay your architects and lawyers, et cetera.”
Another successful grant was made to the Ahkenaton Community Development Corporation, a not-for-profit development group affiliated with the community organization Centers for New Horizons. Both operate in Grand Boulevard, a poor, mostly black south-side community. Heyman and Landau gave Ahkenaton a $250,000 grant to establish a revolving-loan fund. With the money, Ahkenaton can buy and rehab single-family homes and two-flats, which can then be used to obtain second mortgages to buy more property.
