South Side residents may be justified in their concerns about a wave of gentrification rising as the Obama Presidential Center nears completion in Jackson Park, a new study found.
Investors have been snatching up properties around the future presidential center, with more than a third of area homes for sale in the third quarter of 2022 being bought, the Illinois Answers Project reported. In the zip code that includes South Shore, investors bought 32 percent of the available homes, which is tied for the most in the city.
“People should be afraid, they should be concerned about firms that don’t live in this community buying up homes,” Dixon Romeo, a South Shore organizer with Not Me We, a group fighting for better housing and sustainability, told the outlet. “It’s very simple, the goal of every firm is to make profit, right? In terms of housing that means raising the rent, imposing unnecessary fees and effectively displacing people.”
Before the Obama Presidential Center was announced in 2015, investors bought 17 percent of available homes, meaning investor interest in the area has essentially doubled in light of the center.
Redfin’s study looked at single-family homes, townhouses, condominiums and apartment buildings with up to four units. But new development in the area, which the study did not cover, is also on the rise.
South Shore resident, Linda Jennings, said she gets calls almost every day from people all over the country who want to buy her condominium. The 73 year old, whose family was one of the first Black families integrated in regions north of 78th Street, has lived in the area since before South Shore High School began admitting Black students.
“All of that and more is why I am not interested in selling the property — this is home,” Jennings said. “I’ve been living in this condo for the past 18 years and the impact of the Obama Presidential Center has been on the minds of every homeowner I know.”
Jennings suggested she and many other residents she knows are on fixed incomes and worries rising property taxes will make it too expensive for the current residents to stay.
“Gentrification is gradual right now but it is intensifying every year,” she added. “I would like the city to give us some sort of community binding agreement that can help stabilize this neighborhood and allow us to stay.”
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