Fred,
I and 140 others used to live at the Chateau Hotel in Lakeview and we were displaced by June 2013 by a BJB Property building gutting/rehab plan.
I will be speaking on the SRO/Affordable housing issues at the Sunday 5/4 ONE Northside Convention.
About 1000 activists for various issues, including SRO’s/Affordable housing, will be confronting state and local officials, including many alderman.
An SRO Preservation ordinance, now called the “Chicago for All” ordinance, will be introduced into city council this month.
Although about 2500 poor (elderly, disabled. veterans, and working poor) people have been displaced on the northside of Chicago alone sine 2011, about 6000 poor people still live in SRO’s and they should not loose their chosen homes.
City building/health/and fire codes need to be enforced and fines not only charged landlords but also collected rather than let violations compound to the point where a SRO sale to a developer becomes likely or desirable. Developers like BJB and FLATS Chicago increase rents by about 60% after they gut rehab the SRO’s making them permanently off the affordable housing stock list.
Residents are forced to relocate to the south and west sides of Chicago, RE-segregating the city, contrary to established public policy and separating poor people from the vital services and health care providers they relay on.
Which population groups are increasing in size in the city, state, and nation? The elderly, the disabled, veterans, and the working poor. The groups that can only afford SRO rooms. ALL of whom need homes that they can afford to live in.
Where and in what conditions should they live in?
– Robert Rohdenburg
Fred Klonsky 
Part of the Rahm plan to take away housing and education from the lower socio economic groups? What a guy.
Let’s look at this comment. Nobody plans to do such a dastardly thing…”take away housing and education from the lower socio-economic groups.” These outcomes are the results of plans to make money at whatever/whomever’s expense. Sorry to say too many people can’t make that thought progression. They get derailed at the thought that nobody would take away housing and education form others. Almost always we fail to spell out for people that almost of the negative human experiences/suffering we see are the direct result of money grubbing. Our failure to do so only helps to grow the problems we have!
I do think that people should ask these basic questions:
1) What persons ,companies/,industries benefit the most when: the form of lowest rent housing , Single-Room Occupancy hotels ,are systematically targeted and removed in quantity from the rental housing stock and converted into higher rent housing, mainly by current owners of market-rate housing, such as BJB Properties and FLATS Chicago?
ANSWER: Current market-rate rental property owners, Developers who want to build market-rate housing, bankers who finance such development, and the elected officials they contribute to. Residential real estate agents and apartment finding companies also benefit.
2) What persons, companies, or industries benefit the most when the Chicago Housing Authority A)Destroys massive amounts of high-rise public housing but fails to even replace the destroyed housing with low-rise buildings in equal or sufficient quantities for replacement, B) Fails to rehab existing public housing vacant units to house low-income people on the CHA waiting list, and , 3) Fails to provide vouchers to those low-income housing people who were either displaced by the CHA itself or newer to the CHA wait list?
ANSWER: Current market-rate rental property owners, Developers who want to build market-rate housing, bankers who finance such development, and the elected officials they contribute to. Residential real estate agents and apartment finding companies also benefit. Also those banks specifically holding the CHA’s $440 Million unspent reserve money which came from U.S. taxpayers via the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Also, since the Mayor appoints the CHA CEO and board members, he can give jobs to and enhance the resumes of his friends and help finance his Super PAC Chicago Forward with money from his benefactors. With his Super PAC the mayor can manipulate other elected officials including our elected alderman by who he and his Super PAC chooses to support or oppose, thus the Mayor can manipulate public policy even more than usual, even if the CHA board , or the Board of Education ,the McPier Authority or other mayor-appointed entities) were ever to be elected offices themselves.
3) What persons, companies, or industries benefit the most when the city, unlike New York with its new mandatory inclusionary zoning, does not obligate developers of new apartment buildings to include on-site affordable housing, particularly when such developers expect up-zoning, TIF funds or the use of city-owned property? The new Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO), which doesn’t go fully into effect until July 2016, only has a few triggers, such as up-zoning, use of TIF or other government funds or land and does NOT apply to all rental construction. Why did the mayor-appointed ARO Task force did not seriously consider expanding the list of triggers from the current ARO or make the ARO apply to all new rental housing?
ANSWER: Current market-rate rental property owners, Developers who want to build market-rate housing, bankers who finance such development, and the elected officials they contribute to. Residential real estate agents and apartment finding companies also benefit. The Mayor, his Chicago Forward Super PAC, and those that contribute or otherwise influence the mayor and his Super PAC on who he supports or opposes or which public/city policies he and is benefactors support or oppose also benefit.
This also includes
I hope that people now see a pattern and sees who really exercises great power in Chicago that needs to be controlled or opposed. Do you really think that these selfish profit-making people , companies, and industries have the best long-term interest of Chicagoans at heart or in their thinking, planning, acting? Particularly the interests of low-income people or the vast majority of Chicgoans who are struggling even with full-time jobs?: