Round Lake Beach, IL
In the face of an aging housing stock and a host of cultural and practical barriers, the Lake County Affordable Housing Commission (AHC) has turned its eye toward the daunting task of creating a realistic and sustainable plan to...
Vacant Properties
Vacant and foreclosed properties exact potentially destabilizing costs on entire neighborhoods and communities by lowering property values, raising crime rates, and straining municipal resources.
High concentrations of vacant and foreclosed properties are clearly a problem in the Chicago region. Completed foreclosure auctions, which result in the lender gaining ownership of a property, increased in the region by 227 percent between 2006 and 2009. Demand for these homes, despite state and federal interventions designed to encourage home purchases, remains low.
New models must be developed to allow families to stay in their homes, perhaps as renters, so that communities remain stable, valuable housing stock is preserved, and municipalities and servicers do not have the added liability of maintaining and securing vacant property. Municipalities need more tools for purchasing, maintaining, and returning the recent influx of vacant and foreclosed properties to productive use.
This page details the efforts of the Regional Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (RHOPI) vacant and foreclosed properties task force to lead municipalities on maximizing the impact of limited vacant property resources; promote cross-jurisdictional collaboration, land banking, and regional strategy; and position the region for success in obtaining federal, state, and local resources to stabilize neighborhoods and mitigate the effects of vacant properties on communities.
New foreclosure filings on condominiums are a rising share of foreclosure activity in the Chicago region, new data from Woodstock Institute show. New filings on condominiums in the...
Ald. Pat Dowell (D-3) has proposed an amendment to the City of Chicago’s vacant property ordinance that would expand the City’s ability to ensure that property owners are maintaining and securing their vacant properties—and make it easier for the City to get...
U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan announced an unprecedented agreement with the nation's top mortgage lenders to offer selected state and local governments and nonprofit organizations a "first look" or right of first refusal to purchase foreclosed homes before making these properties available to private investors.
The National First...
A housing counseling agency that’s so swamped with demand for foreclosure prevention counseling that its executive director personally handles clients. Stalled real estate markets where buyers are waiting for prices to drop even further, and buyers who do want to buy now are struggling to obtain financing. Scam artists who take off with troubled homeowners’ last...
"When Investors Buy Up the Neighborhood: Preventing Investor Ownership from Causing Neighborhood Decline" from PolicyLink examines the issue of investor purchasing of...
Chicago will receive a $98 million federal grant to recycle foreclosed homes. The amount, second only to Los Angeles among U.S. cities, reflects and validates the efforts the city and its partners have made in addressing the foreclosure crisis.
Only 60 of 482 applicants won grants in the...
Ellen Sahli of the City of Chicago Department of Community Development discusses options for municipalities dealing with vacant property problems. With Dan Klaff of BPI, Carrol Roark of DuPage County Community Development, and Rich Monocchio...
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The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University has released a working paper, The Multifamily Housing Market and Value-at-Risk Implications for Multifamily Lending. This new research reveals significant price...
The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning put together a great slideshow demonstrating how, when used effectively, Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds can turn around communities. While Regional HOPI has...