Before the landlord’s notice came, Rosemary Winblad and her two daughters lived comfortably and affordably in a well-managed federally subsidized apartment building at 833 W. Buena in Uptown.
“I got this notice that says I’m a no-good tenant,” says Katherine Castillo, an immigrant from Belize, a country in Central America. “I was confused, so I [went] to the managers. They say I was late on rent once. I [have] lived here for one and a half years, and I was late once, so I’m a no-good tenant? That doesn’t make sense.”
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But the fundamental issue–which the judge probably will not decide–strikes at a long-standing and bitter conflict in Uptown: the right of landlords, in our free enterprise system, to make as much money from their property as the market will bear versus the need of poor people for housing.
“This country doesn’t know how to build housing for the poor but it knows how to destroy housing for the poor,” says Thom Clark, a longtime Uptown home owner, and advocate of affordable housing. “I believe we can have an economic mix of people in Uptown. Housing for the poor doesn’t have to be decrepit. Unfortunately, it takes a constant commitment from the government that we haven’t seen.”
Of course, revival needs some help, usually in the form of some big-boom project. For Lincoln Park, it was the construction of hundreds of federally subsidized buildings, including Carl Sandburg Village. Some realtors hoped that Pensacola Place, a 264-unit rental development just east of the intersection of Montrose and Broadway, would do the trick for Uptown. Alas, Pensacola was built, but the regentrification of Uptown never happened.
The building was constructed, however, in 1967 with low- and moderate-income residents in mind. It was built with money borrowed from HUD at below-market interest rates. As a result, rents were lower at 833 Buena than at other high rises in the area. And HUD regulations stipulate that residents make less than the Chicago area’s median income for an equivalent family.
“Fields stressed that the rent increases, which average about 20 percent, were only twice as high as the average rent increase that HUD generally allows each year and wouldn’t create economic hardships,” reads a recent article in the Chicago Tribune. “‘These aren’t poor people here,’ [Fields] said. ‘I’m not going to sit here and get into an argument with anybody over 10 to 13 percent rent increases. My accountant handles it, and these are the numbers he gives me.’”
