Affordable Housing for Whom?
Recently, a developer named Robert Linn of Point B Properties made two appearances in Block Club Chicago. Founded earlier this year by editors of DNAInfo, after that publication was shuttered in a union-busting effort, Block Club was launched to “build community through truly ground-level reporting of the city’s neighborhoods”. However, we at ATU are concerned that this pair of articles run contrary to that mission by taking the word of wealthy developers over the experiences of the people in the neighborhoods they report on, and are part of a larger pattern of pro-developer bias in housing coverage.
In the first article, published on November 28th, reporter Mina Bloom details Linn’s plan to purchase and convert a Humboldt Park church into condominiums, with 25% of the units offered at an “affordable” rate. Just five days later, a second article penned by Bloom discusses a neighborhood group’s successful fight against a zoning change at another Linn property in Humboldt Park. In this piece, the organized tenants’ victory is framed as a self-inflicted defeat. According to Linn, the zoning change’s rejection through popular pressure opened the door for other developers (presumably not as “generous”) to buy the property and displace the residents by gutting the building and raising rents.
It is difficult to imagine how a Point B press release announcing plans for the Humboldt Park church property would differ from the November 28 Block Club article. The glowing article quotes Point B’s Robert Linn extensively, allowing him to describe paying to get the building up to code as a favor to the church’s current owners. He touts Point B’s plan as going above and beyond the minimum units required by the Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO), a Chicago law meant to ensure that developers putting up new buildings or up-zoning existing structures contribute to the city’s affordable housing stock.
In both of the pieces, Linn’s perspective steers the story as he is given space to posture as an advocate for affordable housing, despite the simple fact that his entire involvement in both properties is predicated on a desire to maximize profits. Block Club is by no means alone in treating developers like “experts” in housing matters, rather than as ideological actors whose interests lie in growing their bottom line Media and government reliance on landlord and developer expertise for “affordable housing” issues skews the framing of the conversation so far in developers’ favor that any of them can claim to be a champion of affordability without actually offering a single unit within the reach of the poor and working classes. To understand how, we must first dissect what developers like Linn mean when they say “affordable.”
This is a public relations coup for Linn and Point B Properties, who require approval from 26th Ward Alderman Robert Maldonado to up-zone the building into a fully residential structure. If Linn can credibly state that his plan exceeds the city’s affordability standards, then why shouldn’t the community welcome it with open arms? The devil lies in the details of the ARO, and an examination of the law and the discourse surrounding it reveals who sets the terms of the conversation around affordable housing.
You may have heard a rule of thumb that rent should not exceed 30% of household income. Anyone paying more than that is, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standards, “rent burdened.” Given that, for most working class tenants, rents in Chicago and across the country are rapidly rising to levels exceeding this marker, requiring landlords to adhere to that rate would be a big win for tenants. But while the ARO uses that 30%-of-income figure, it doesn’t apply on a case-by-case basis. Instead, it sets an across-the-board definition of “affordable housing” for each community, calculated by applying that rule of thumb to 50% or 60% of Area Median Income (AMI).
In mixed-income and rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, wealthy home and condo owners skew the AMI upward, leaving the poor and working class behind. According to a recent DePaul University study, a whopping 44.7% of Chicago renters have household incomes below 50% of their community’s AMI, meaning even the cheapest units under ARO mandates would still leave nearly half the city’s renters burdened by their housing costs. But that’s just the beginning of the problems. Only 10% of the units in a newly constructed or up-zoned development are required to be “affordable” — half pegged to the 50%-of-AMI guideline, the other half to a 60%-of-AMI guideline.
Of course, developers can also decide to offer zero units that meet affordability requirements if they decide to just pay an in-lieu fee instead. Additionally, this not-quite-affordable, not-quite-required Affordability Requirements Ordinance does not apply to existing buildings whose developers aren’t seeking zoning changes. When developers like Stark Chicago buy a building like Kimball Tenants Union’s, there is no law to prevent them from evicting everyone, renovating, and raising rents in every last unit.
With standards of affordability like these, it’s no wonder the DePaul study concludes that “roughly half of all renter households in Cook County and the vast majority of lower income households continue to be rent burdened.” Linn even gives the game away when discussing his Humboldt Park plans, noting that according to HUD’s definitions, “affordable and the market-rate aren’t going to be all that difference [sic] in price.” The broader implications of this statement go unexamined. Given this landscape of inadequate affordability standards, it is essential that journalists tackling housing issues take a critical stance towards developers and politicians, one which was egregiously lacking in the December 3 Block Club story.
Bloom begins the article by describing Chicago’s zoning process and posing the question, “what happens when residents get involved in the process and it backfires on them?” The tale unfolds as follows: developer announces plans to renovate a 3-flat adjacent to the 606 into a 4-unit building, and residents organize to fight the zoning change after discussions with the developer convince them that — contrary to their claims — evictions and rent hikes will follow close behind. After a community meeting where residents voice their concerns, Ald. Maldonado sides with them and rejects the zoning request. Consequently, the developer is forced to sell to new buyers who want to gut-rehab the structure without needing up-zoning. The residents, punished for their mistrust, intransigence, and vilification of the developer, now face the fate they thought they had fought to avoid.
But at no point in the story do the tenants themselves suggest that their efforts backfired. That perspective — the one that drives the entire narrative — belongs solely to Linn, the developer who saw his zoning change denied. His account of new buyers wanting to gut-rehab is unverified, as the building has not actually been sold yet. In our work, ATU members have heard countless empty promises from property owners like Linn who claim they will not raise rents or evict. The article makes minimal effort to interrogate Linn’s frankly unbelievable assertion that his plan was to invest in property renovations in one of the most rapidly gentrifying parts of the city and then lower rents.
Bloom includes a counterpoint from one of the organizers of the fight, Brian Elmore of Grassroots Illinois Action, who rightly observes that regardless of what Linn says now, he “would’ve had carte blanche to do a number of things on the property… there’s no way to know what he actually would’ve done.” But this is buried 26 paragraphs deep, a far cry from the headline’s blaring assertion that the fight “backfired.”
Developers at a recently protested pro-gentrification event, gearing up to provide ~170 words of quoted content to the Sun-Times, while protesters were given ~20.
To be clear, this problem is much bigger than just one outlet. In fact, Block Club — more so than many publications — makes an effort to cover issues that tenant activists work to bring to public attention. Unfortunately, the prioritization of developer perspectives over that of renters still pervades housing coverage at large. Sometimes it’s subtle language choices — “affordable housing advocates… complain” when trying to influence policy, but developer self-interest is presented as “warn[ing] the city that the current hot streak of development would grind to a halt” if they don’t get their way.
The skewed definition of “affordable” employed above may be the biggest factor. Through that lens, even the smallest efforts that would hardly dent Chicago’s affordable housing undersupply are enough to earn glowing press for people in positions of power. It allows developers and aldermen to put on a show haggling over what ultimately amounts to one or two units per project, while offstage the campaign contributions roll in.
By taking Linn’s claims at face value and allowing him to frame the narrative, Block Club allows the developer to disguise a threat as a benevolent warning. The connection between the two articles is intentional and clear. What Linn communicates is that if the community does not accept the crumbs of “affordability” that he is offering, they will get nothing at all. And while this is often the reality in a capitalist system where housing is a commodity and not a right, it is important to note that Linn is only so eager to demonstrate that fighting back is futile because fighting back gets results.
The conversation around affordability needs to be radically shifted. Responsible journalists need to center the voices of the people who need housing instead of laundering the exploitative actions of landlords and speculators who profit from that need. It is time those struggling to build a world with dignified, affordable housing for all set the terms of this conversation. We cannot keep settling for crumbs.
