Blog

IHS research has indicated that the city's housing affordability crisis has some unique characteristics which shed light on why residents are struggling to find affordable rental housing, buy homes, and maintain their current residences.

This blog reviews several programs in Chicago that showcase growing efforts to create a supply of affordable, for-sale housing in neighborhoods that have struggled for decades with disinvestment-related challenges.

This blog contextualizes recent research and reporting on property tax disparities in Chicago with IHS research on neighborhood house price changes and discusses how policy interventions designed to mitigate increased tax burdens have challenges of their own.

This blog updates data on house price trends in City of Chicago neighborhoods based on the neighborhood’s race and ethnic composition and focuses on how COVID-19 pandemic period price gains have impacted house prices in Chicago's communities of color.

This blog discusses highlights from IHS's May 2022 convening of a diverse group of participants including affordable-housing advocates, the aging-in-place community, housing developers, community groups, government agencies and others to discuss the implications of IHS's recent report Housing Needs and Economic Conditions of Cook County’s Older Adults.

IHS recently updated our Mapping Stories of Neighborhood Change mapping tool to include neighborhood news stories published in 2021 and 2022 mapped alongside our updated Mapping Displacement Pressure data. The mapping tool provides users with spatial, housing market, and demographic context to assess the potential implications of the activities described in each article.

This blog is a part of our series examining the impact of the COVID-19 economy on Chicago households and communities. This third installment discusses data, research, and programs to guide equitable recovery efforts as COVID-19 protections and assistance enacted during the first two years of the pandemic end.

To inform our work on Cook County’s older adult housing needs and economic challenges, IHS tapped into the local knowledge of roughly 20 Chicago-area organizations to create a resource on key older adult demographic and socioeconomic trends. Read more here about the distinct challenges facing older adult renter and owner households in Cook County, as well as key policy challenges and information needs that emerged during our stakeholder engagement process.

For a decade, IHS has provided data and technical assistance to the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) to inform the organization’s programs, initiatives, and outreach in southwest Chicago. Read more here about how IHS data has helped SWOP target and rehabilitate vacant buildings after the Great Recession, distribute aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, and conduct targeted outreach to Southwest Chicago residents.

This blog provides an overview of the current state of 2 to 4 unit housing in Chicago, new pilot programs directed at preserving multi-unit housing in Chicago, and IHS’s work in community partnerships over the years that have provided insight on the 2 to 4 unit housing market.