Blog
Lessons from The 606
More than a year after the Bloomingdale Trail, also known as The 606, opened on the northwest side of Chicago, its impact on the surrounding communities is becoming apparent. Our new report analyzes how house prices in the areas adjacent to the 2.7-mile trail have changed. We find that in...
Urban Trails as Urban Planning
The Bloomingdale Trail, or The 606, opened just over a year ago, replacing an old railroad track on the northwest side of Chicago with an elevated garden/walking, jogging, rollerblading/community gathering spot. While some neighbors worried about rising home values pushing out longtime residents, others were excited for their neighborhood. Whatever side...
Using Data to Drive Community Change
How a unique partnership between organizers and data analysts helped a community group on Chicago’s southwest side develop strategies to stabilize the neighborhood’s housing market.In August, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan took a walking tour of the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. She was there to review the progress in a neighborhood that had been hard...
The Uneven Housing Recovery Is More Uneven for Some
For 4 million households, the housing crisis still has a stranglehold on their lives. As prices started to plummet in 2007, many saw their home’s value sink below what they’d paid for it. Negative equity, or an “underwater” home, is what results when a house is worth less than what the homeowner owes on the mortgage....
Can your neighborhood make you sick?
The connection between neighborhood and health Where you live may have a bigger impact on how long you live than your genetics, says the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They mapped life expectancy along major highway exits and transit stops in large metro areas and found that babies born just miles apart have large...
For Rental Housing, It’s the Best and Worst of Times
More Americans of all ages and incomes are renting today than at any time since the 1960s. The more than 845,000 renters in Chicago and suburban Cook County face a white-hot rental market that makes developers happy, but leaves renters of modest means scrambling. Demand is up, vacancies are tight, and...
Is Mixed-Income Public Housing the Answer?
A conversation with Robert Chaskin and Mark JosephIn their recent book, “Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation,” Robert Chaskin and Mark Joseph detail the demolition of Chicago’s high-rise public housing and the growth of mixed-income developments under Chicago’s Plan for Transformation. The plan is the country’s largest attempt...
Renters by Choice
More and more Americans are opting out of homeownership.Renting is on the rise. As American homeownership rates have fallen in recent years, rental demand has leapt. Between the second quarters of 2014 and 2015, for example, the number of owner-occupied households dropped by 400,000, according to The Wall Street Journal, hitting a 48-year low; in the same period, the...
Helping Logan Square Residents Cope with Neighborhood Change
Projects like the 606 Trail in Chicago need safeguards that ensure diverse communities. New amenities in an older neighborhood can be a blessing and a curse. Just ask the West Chelsea residents who live near the New York City’s High Line Park, or residents of the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago who live near...
Using Housing Data to Pinpoint a Neighborhood’s Health
The housing crash may have been national, but the recovery is still local. Our updated Housing Price Index, released today, underscores how national data can mask the hyperlocal story of continued struggle—especially in the area of building economically healthy neighborhoods--and how local data can support more targeted development strategies. By most indications, housing prices are cooling off...
