One of Chicago’s largest developers will invoke a little-known and untested provision of city law in an attempt to win approval for a 615-unit apartment complex in Lincoln Park.

The City Council’s Finance Committee unanimously endorsed the plan from R2 Co. and the Campari Group to transform the 14-story office building at 79 W. Monroe St. into an apartment building with 117 units, including 41 units set aside for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans.

The Chicago City Council voted 44-3 to approve what supporters dubbed the Northwest Side Housing Preservation Ordinance, which expands two pilot programs that began in 2021 and makes them a permanent part of the city code.

The data underscores the gravity of America’s home-affordability crisis: Not only has buying a home become prohibitively expensive for many Americans, but so too has renting one.

Vice President Kamala Harris made her case for the presidency last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where she zeroed in on a problem plaguing many Americans: affordable housing.

To this day, Chicagoans live in a fairly segregated city. And that segregation didn’t happen by coincidence but by design. WTTW News Explains how redlining worked in Chicago.

Chicago routinely ranks among the most segregated big cities in America when measured by the dissimilarity index, a tool used to gauge how evenly distributed demographic groups are throughout a distinct geographic area.

The ordinance would expand a pilot program around the area of the 606 Trail that has successfully helped stabilize that neighborhood after it began to experience rapid gentrification.

The decision is expected to have a sweeping impact on policies for the unhoused, but local advocates are hoping the effect will be muted in Chicago and Illinois.

According to the study, Black households have a median net wealth of zero dollars compared to $210,000 for White families, and Black families have the lowest estimated rate of home ownership at 34% compared to 72% for White households.

Evanston’s program is aimed at addressing housing discrimination and segregation that took place in the northern suburb from 1919 to 1969.

ReNew Communities is on a mission to build 300 homes in North Chicago. The suburb has long struggled with low homeownership rates; the nonprofit says 33% of residents in the city own a home.

 Chicago native Sendy L. Soto became  the city’s first chief homelessness officer. Part of her new role will be to devise a five-year plan to end homelessness. 

A new study found that Black Americans are four times more likely to experience homelessness than their White counterparts. But in Illinois the situation is even worse, researchers found, with Black residents eight times more likely to become homeless at some point in their lives.

Banks, credit unions and mortgage companies will soon have to report to state regulators about how many loans they make in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods. That's the result of a state law passed in 2021 as part of the Legislative Black Caucus' social and economic reform agenda.

Author Benjamin Herold shares the story of five families, including the Adesina family in Evanston, in “Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs.”