A community group in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood is advocating for significant changes to a proposed housing ordinance designed to protect low-income renters.
The Neighborhood Network Alliance is calling for revisions to the South Shore Housing Preservation Ordinance to reduce the amount of land reserved for low-income housing and instead shift the focus to middle-income homeowners, whom the nonprofit argues are at risk of displacement, Block Club reported.
The proposed ordinance, introduced in late last year, would reserve 166 city-owned vacant lots for affordable rental housing, with 75 percent of those homes designated for households earning 30 percent or less of the area’s median income.
It also proposes banning move-in fees, capping rental application fees and security deposits, and creating an Office of the Tenant Advocate to support renters in legal disputes. It would also set aside millions of dollars for homeowner repair grants and down payment assistance.
The nonprofit argues that it focuses too heavily on low-income renters and has proposed reserving no more than 20 percent of city-owned residential land for low-income apartments, leaving the rest for middle-income homeowners.
It also called for exempting local landlords from certain renter protections and redirecting funds from the proposed tenant advocate office to existing nonprofits like the Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago.
“The proposal as written is very low-income heavy,” said Val Free, executive director of Neighborhood Network Alliance.
Anthony Simpkins, president of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, said he agrees.
“We need to ensure that there’s also protections and economic assistance for those people in the middle,” Simpkins said.
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Scaling back renter protections would be detrimental to South Shore’s large renter population, said Alderman Yancy, who stands by the original intent of the ordinance.
“To remove protections for renters is a mistake,” he said, adding that the ordinance seeks to provide financial resources for both renters and homeowners.
— Andrew Terrell