Progress Illinois

A range of housing counseling programs didn't survive the cuts Congress and the White House agreed to to keep the federal government open through the end of its current fiscal year, the Tribune's Mary Ellen Podmolik reports today. Everything from pre-purchase help to programs for seniors are taking a hit, and foreclosure prevention efforts are at risk, Podmolik writes. In all, the budget deal lopped off $88 million for housing programs. This is bad news for the community-based organizations on the front lines, grappling with the fall-out of the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession.

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Owners of dangerous vacant buildings in Chicago could face up to six months in jail for failing to properly maintain their properties, according to an ordinance that advanced out of the City Council's buildings committee yesterday and now heads to the full council.

The proposed new penalties come in the wake of the December 22 fire at a decrepit, vacant structure 1744 E. 75th Street; two Chicago firefighters perished battling that blaze and 17 more were injured. Sponsored by Ald. James Balcer (11th Ward), the bill begs the possibility of jail time should a vacant building be found in violation of the current minimum standards for securing them; if it has fire, electrical, or building code violations making them imminently dangerous; or if the building's condition causes severe injury or the death of anyone.

Vacant buildings stress many Chicago neighborhoods, resulting in blight and leaving blocks less secure. The full extent of the vacant problem isn't quite clear though it is certain the foreclosure crisis has exacerbated the issue. Owners of empty buildings are required by city code to register them with the city, in addition to securing and maintaining the building. But the Woodstock Institute's recent report about "red flag properties" found 2,558 lender-owned single family homes in Chicago that are likely empty but not registered with the city. "These homes," Woodstock wrote, "are likely not secured and maintained to the standards required by the City of Chicago and may be in an advanced state of disrepair."

That figure represents the population decrease between 2000 and 2009 in the number of black residents living in 17 Chicago community areas that hosted (or host today in a diminished capacity) traditional public housing buildings, according to a review of census data by the Chicago Reporter's Megan Cottrell. Black population loss from the areas associated with Chicago Housing Authority developments makes up a bit less than one-third of the citywide decline in African Americans over the nine-year time period. The Chicago Housing Authority has demolished many of its buildings under the Plan for Transformation, an effort to entirely remake the city's public housing system.

Cottrell's analysis reveals some startling black population declines. The number of African American residents in the Grand Boulevard community area, which once hosted the Robert Taylor Homes, dropped by 6,960 between 2000 and 2009. The demolished Madden-Wells project was once located in Douglas, directly to the north of Grand Boulevard; it lost about 6,000 black residents. The Near West Side and East Garfield Park areas, adjacent to each other a few miles west of the Loop, together lost more than 4,300 black residents. Nearly 4,000 were gone from the Near North Side, long home to the Cabrini-Green, over the same nine-year timetable.

"Whether or not [Mayor Daley] was gunning to break up solid black voting blocks that may not have supported him, a lot of those tightly knit, heavily populated communities have been dispersed. Some to other parts of the city, some to the suburbs and others scattered elsewhere," Cottrell writes. "Unless the mayor writes a tell-all memoir on his feelings on public housing, we may never know his motivations, but the numbers don't lie. The dynamics of these communities have changed. Some say for better, some say for worse, but the shift is undeniable."

Mortgage servicers active in greater Chicagoland are dragging their feet when it comes to approving the kind of loan modifications that would give distressed homeowners relief, a study (PDF) released this morning by Housing Action Illinois (HAI) reveals. Working with 10 different housing counseling agencies across the region, HAI analyzed the results of 516 loan modification applications homeowners submitted to their lenders between December 2009 and this past September. Sixteen percent of the applications were denied outright; 40 percent were still pending as of September. And though 44 percent were approved, the latter finding must be taken with a grain of salt, if not a teaspoon: the report finds that the overwhelming number of the approved loan modifications were only temporary, made through the struggling federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

Years after the housing and foreclosure crisis began, it is deeply frustrating to read another report that reveals mortgage loan servicers remain unresponsive to mortgagors, sending those seeking help through endless loops. "[W]hile HAMP program directives require that servicers must acknowledge receipt of the application within 10 business days and respond within 30 calendar days with an approval of a trial modification, a denial of a modification, or a request for more information -- this is simply not occurring," HAI's report states.

The organization makes a series of recommendations to address the low number of permanent loan modifications in the Chicago region, including requiring servicers to improve their communication systems and forcing them to respond in a timely manner to loan mod applications. The federal government, the report says, must deal more effectively with complaints related to servicer compliance with HAMP and hold servicers accountable when they fail to meet their obligations. HAI also calls for Congress to expand (PDF) the Community Reinvestment Reform Act. A better modification process and broader reforms certainly are needed -- an estimated one in three mortgage-holders in Chicagoland are presently underwater on their loans, and minority borrowers are particularly at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure.

Outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is accustomed to seeing his legislative proposals sail through City Council like a 747 hurrying out of O'Hare. He isn't used to seeing a council member introduce legislation that would limit his power over local government operations. So today's council meeting must have been an especially bad one for Daley.

According to the Tribune's initial report on the meeting, an ordinance designed to assist renters facing displacement when a developer is converting their unit from rental to condo was sent back to committee. Protests from the real estate development industry sank the bill. That's a pretty disappointing outcome for legislation that, if passed, wouldn't even immediately help renters because virtually no rentals are being converted in condos in the present real estate market, unlike during the middle part of the decade. The city's Condo Conversion Task Force, which met 10 times over a two-year period starting in 2007 and included real estate firms, came up with the recomendations that underlie the proposed bill. "We heard nothing, and then at the last minute. Again, it puts the real estate industry not in a good light, because this was all discussed prior," the Tribune reported Daley saying. 

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), meanwhile, introduced an ordinance today that would allow the council's Committee on Finance to review all city contracts worth more than $500,000. The council has not provided a check over executive-branch contracting since Daley took office in 1989.