As Logan Square reinvents itself, the spotlight on affordable housing has never been brighter
Two decades ago, a rectangle of residential avenues in west Logan Square, known as police Beat 1413, was once the deadliest police beat in the city.
The densely populated rows of single-family homes and apartments on tree-lined streets was the heart of the Imperial Gangsters territory and had 10 homicides in 2003. Just across Central Park Avenue were their hated rivals, the Spanish Cobras. Fast-forward to 2022, and Beat 1413, bordered by Kedzie, Central Park, Wrightwood and Armitage avenues, has become hot real estate without a homicide within its confines in the last two years. Violence has plummeted and home sales are going strong.
Gentrification may be old news in Logan Square, where the wealthy first began snatching up decrepit greystones for cheap along Logan Boulevard in the 1980s, but high home prices have finally taken root in the heavily residential western end of the neighborhood, where gang crime was once deeply entrenched.
A modest five-bedroom frame house on North Sawyer Avenue in the middle of the beat is now selling for $875,000. Less than a mile west, a fully rehabbed two-story single-family home on Belden Avenue, with a coach house and glass exterior designed by architect Carlos Concepcion, is on the market for $1.85 million.
As development continues westward in Logan Square, affordable housing options are shrinking, despite initiatives aimed at slowing and restricting demolition along The 606, the elevated trail for bicyclists and runners that has brought new construction and displacement along its path. Some observers fear that the effects of displacement may be irreversible.
Once the neighborhood of choice for thousands of immigrants, Logan Square has seen its small shops, taquerias, taverns and Polish bakeries replaced by chic salons and boutiques, pubs and sidewalk cafes.
Pockets of ethnic culture, business and identity remain along Fullerton and Armitage avenues, but redevelopment has remade other stretches into a more upscale community for increasingly white and Asian professionals, giving Logan Square its biggest boom since the years after World War I.
The big multigenerational families that lived in two- and three-flats and illegally converted homes from Palmer Square to Central Park have been increasingly replaced by fashionable hipster couples with pets instead of children.
“The culture feels different now,” said Dave Soto, a 22-year-old who has lived his entire life in and around Logan Square. “It’s like the Latinx identity is being erased pretty aggressively.”
He points to small changes like his longtime neighbors moving away, forced out by high rents and property taxes, the closing of popular businesses, and beloved neighborhood murals by Latino artists being whitewashed without explanation.
“When you’ve been living here for 20 years, it’s subtle, but it’s also devastating,” said Soto, social media organizer for Palenque LSNA, formerly the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, which formed in 1963.
But advocates and elected officials say they believe they have a secret weapon: Small-time Latino two- and three-flat owners who can be persuaded to hold on to their properties and keep them affordable for working-class families, rather than cashing in on the real estate boom or being priced out of their own neighborhood.
A coalition of advocates is even asking some of these “mom and pop” landlords fearful of losing their property to skyrocketing taxes to sell their property to a community land trust, preserving affordable housing for working-class residents.
“We are in a crisis. Pretty much everyone we know or speak with is at risk of being displaced. Rent is getting prohibitively expensive,” said Christian Diaz, director of housing for LSNA. Groups like LSNA have partnered with other area housing agencies to identify these mom and pop landlords.
“In my experience, it is still possible for people to find naturally affordable housing in Logan Square, it’s just a lot more difficult and you have to have relationships with these mom and pop landlords to find these units,” he said.
As an example, Diaz offered his brother, who recently found a three-bedroom apartment “in the heart of Logan Square” for $1,100 a month. “The reason he found it is because our aunt was friends with the landlord.”
Shared cultural connections between landlords and immigrant renters, along with the renter’s willingness to live in older properties, can be more attractive than affluent newcomers demanding top amenities, Diaz said.
“So here’s the thing: If you’re a mom and pop owner who owns a two- or three-flat in a neighborhood like Logan Square, you probably don’t have the capital to update your building and modernize it,” said Diaz. “If you were to rent to a transplant, they’re going to have a higher standard for their unit. They might be more likely to call inspectors or complain or to sue, and I think landlords are very wary.
“For the mom and pops, I think they would much prefer to rent to somebody that’s culturally like them, that they have some point of reference or connection to, to avoid those kinds of problems that can come up between tenants and landlords around complaints with the building and sending inspectors in,” he said.
Logan Square resident Loren Aponte said such a landlord saved his Puerto Rican family of five from leaving the neighborhood last summer after their landlord abruptly announced the family would have to leave their apartment of 11 years because the building was being redeveloped.
“We literally had like two months to think of where we had to live,” said Aponte, 20. He said he feels lucky that his stepfather was able to find a landlord willing to rent to them at an affordable rate when so many neighbors and friends have been pushed outside the neighborhood.
“There’s more luxury housing around the area, so that kind of changes where people want to go because mainly (residents) can’t afford luxury housing, and they have to move farther away from the area,” said Aponte, who works as a nurse.
Thriving melting pot
North Milwaukee Avenue is a microcosm of Logan Square as a whole, a funky mix of old — like the fully restored 105-year-old Logan Theatre, which sits among a sprawl of businesses any upscale community would appreciate — and new, like the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Apartments, a multicolored, modern designed seven-story symbol of the community’s commitment to affordable housing.
Opened in May, the Parsons complex is the first of at least two newly constructed developments in the neighborhood aimed at helping working-class residents stay in Logan Square. The City Council approved a bond inducement ordinance in May to fund the new 89-unit Encuentro Square affordable housing complex being built on the site of the former Magid Glove factory next to The 606.
During the 19th century and early 20th century, Logan Square became a magnet for a hodgepodge of ethnic groups including Germans, Swedes, Norwegians and Poles. A 1954 Tribune article noted that in Logan Square you could ask a Polish question and get a German answer.
The 1960s saw a massive influx of Latino residents into Logan Square, as well an uptick of Black residents, just as the white population began to plummet.
While the neighborhood remained a vibrant multicultural community of corner stores, churches, aging houses and two-flats between the 1980s and 2000s, Logan Square and its sister neighborhoods Humboldt Park and West Town formed the so-called Hispanic triangle. The area experienced more gang violence than any other area of the city in 1984.
By the late 1980s, demand began to explode as lots that had sold for $5,000 to $10,000 jumped to $60,000, according to a Tribune report. Separate condo booms followed as the neighborhood became a destination for fine dining and popular night spots. Meanwhile, Logan Square’s Latino population fell by more than 11,000 between 2010 and 2020, according to census data.
Room for affordable housing
Higher demand for housing has meant higher rents for longtime residents.
The nonprofit Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp. built the 100-unit Parsons building at 2614 N. Emmett St., naming it for a pioneering African American female labor organizer.
Half of the units will be made available for people making under 60% of the 2022 median area income, while the other half is reserved for Chicago Housing Authority voucher holders, according to a Block Club Chicago report.
In July, the City Council approved an ordinance proposed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration that will use incentives to spur housing and job development near public transit lines like the Emmett Street development, but on the South and West sides.
Advocates are heartened by projects like the apartment building, but call 100 affordable units in Logan Square a drop in the bucket compared with the neighborhood’s needs. The city as a whole has a shortfall of about 120,000 units of affordable housing. Advocates believe the community has lost hundreds or even thousands of housing units to redevelopment and expensive renovations to older homes during the last 20 years.
“Is it possible (to keep working-class people in Logan Square)? We’re not going to reverse 15 years of gentrification, but what we could do is be very intentional about keeping some of the naturally occurring housing we have,” said Assistant House Leader and State Rep. Delia Ramirez, who grew up in Humboldt Park, where similar housing issues have spread.
“If we think about what people were paying for rent 10 or 15 years ago, they were paying $650 for a two-bedroom. Now that two-bedroom now costs $2,500,” said Ramirez. “For people (who) have lived in this community for the last 20, 30 years, that’s 60 or 70% of their total income.”
During the pandemic, city, state and federal agencies offered rental relief and financial aid to property owners, but the relief has begun to dry up, leaving the small-time owners in a bind.
Last year, Ramirez introduced legislation to provide emergency financial assistance and protections to homeowners and renters at risk of evictions and foreclosures exacerbated by the pandemic. Other elected officials, including Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, have proposed laws to curb rapid redevelopment and displacement.
Ramirez said she supports incentivizing help for smaller property owners and community land trusts as a way of keeping family homes affordable for working-class and immigrant families.
Earlier this year, the Here to Stay Community Land Trust sold its first affordable home near The 606 to a young couple. It’s currently working to close on a second property in east Logan Square, according to Kristin Horne, program director.
In a community land trust, a nonprofit organization acquires a house that it hopes to keep affordable and splits the ownership between the land and the home itself. While the land is held in trust by the nonprofit, the home is sold to a qualifying income eligible homeowner at a reduced price. The homeowner can sell the home, but the price is capped and the home must be sold at an affordable price.
“Maybe they’re not cashing out at top dollar, they’re getting a reasonably fair price for housing, but we are capturing that unit before it goes to the general market and becomes a single-family home mansion,” said Ramirez, who is a candidate for the 3rd Congressional District seat and faces Republican Justin Burau in the November election.
Horne blamed decades of redlining and discriminatory lending practices that allowed the community’s white population to be upwardly mobile, while denying mortgages to a large number of minority residents. Now white people are returning to the area, displacing residents who kept it afloat through rocky times, she said.
“That is the problem affordable housing activists and people who work in that field have tried to solve for decades,” Horne said. “To me, having been in this field for 15 years, it feels just like one step forward, two steps back at every turn because the need just outpaces the growth in that area at such a scale it’s hard to wrap your arms around it and that’s a national problem.”
Displacement didn’t happen “because the Latinx population decided to be upwardly mobile and move and buy a house in the suburbs. It’s because they were displaced. That’s the reconciliation we all have to come towards,” Horne said. “At what cost does this neighborhood ‘improve’? On whose backs is it improving upon?”
Soto calls working to promote affordable housing in his backyard “empowering.” The new job has allowed him to find an affordable West Logan Square apartment with his girlfriend and a bandmate. Despite his positive start, he said he’s cautious about the prospects of staying in the community.
“I love Logan Square,” he said. “To me, my Chicago is Logan Square. That’s my home right there. I mean, I hope I’d be able to buy a home in Logan Square, but it’s getting expensive.”
Diaz said there’s hope as long as he and many others remain vigilant in the fight to save the last vestiges of affordable housing in Logan Square.
“Don’t count us out,” Diaz said. “We’re still here. We have viable strategies and I feel confident that Logan Square will not go the way of Lincoln Park or Wicker Park.”
Twitter @Midnoircowboy
