City Council Approves Ordinance to Assist Homeless Chicagoans

Lee Edwards | As of Thursday, November 20, 2014

L-R: Ald. Ray Suarez (31st Ward), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward) addressed the media at a press briefing held at Chicago’s City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., on Nov. 12, 2014 to announced the passing of the Single-Room Occupancy and Residential Hotel Preservation Ordinance which preserves affordable-single room occupancy (SRO) buildings and establishes the legal framework to generate revenue to support building owners.
L-R: Ald. Ray Suarez (31st Ward), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward) addressed the media at a press briefing held at Chicago’s City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., on Nov. 12, 2014 to announced the passing of the Single-Room Occupancy and Residential Hotel Preservation Ordinance which preserves affordable-single room occupancy (SRO) buildings and establishes the legal framework to generate revenue to support building owners. Photo by Lee Edwards.

City of Chicago’s City Council recently passed a Single-Room Occupancy and Residential Hotel Preservation Ordinance, that preserves affordable-single room occupancy (SRO) buildings and establishes the legal framework to generate revenue to support building owners. The SRO ordinance was sponsored by Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward) and Alderman Ameya Pawar (47th Ward) with the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and in partnership with grassroots organization, Chicago for All Coalition.

“SROs can be the difference between chronic homelessness and opportunity for residents. Maintaining this housing stock through affordability requirements and giving non-profits and advocates the time needed to make a viable bid for these properties before turning market rate is the right thing for Chicago,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “This is a chronic problem that we need to be focused on. If you come to the City of Chicago and you live in the City of Chicago you don’t live below Lower Wacker. You have a home, a place; your home isn’t on lower Wacker.”

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Photo by: Lee Edwards

D’angelo Boyland, an organizer with Chicago For All Coalition.

“I just want to praise God and thank God that we’ve been able to able to touch people’s hearts, touch their souls, to get them to help us and helping our most vulnerable people in the City of Chicago to be able to preserve the housing that they have and also possibly help them to get more housing built for them,” said Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward) who added that his ward has the second largest number of SORs in the city.

The ordinance establishes an early warning system for affordable SRO buildings that are up for sale by requiring building owners to notify the City and residents 180 days in advance. During that 180-day period, owners must provide potential buyers committed to maintaining the building as affordable, with the opportunity to make an offer and negotiate in good faith over a sale. If a deal is not reached within that 180-day window, the owner has 120 days to sell to any other buyer and that sale must close within one year. Residents displaced by a sale to a private developer will receive the higher of three months’ rent or $2,000 in relocation assistance.

As an alternative, building owners may opt-out of the 180-day period entirely by paying a preservation fee of $20,000 per unit along with $10,600 in relocation assistance to each displaced renter who has lived in the building for 32 consecutive days or more.According to the City, since 2011 at least 1,600 SRO housing units have been lost with only 77 SROs (73 licensed by the city) and residential hotels or 5,000 to 6,000 units are remaining. Residents of these housing units make up a significant population of Chicago’s citizens most at-risk to become homeless.

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for public policies that curbs homelessness, estimates that 138,575 Chicagoans were homeless in the course of the 2013-14 school year. This is 19.4% more than the 116,042 people who were homeless a year earlier. The total is based, in part, on the rising enrollment of homeless students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) – 22,144 in FY14. Eighty-eight percent of homeless students lived doubled-up, usually in overcrowded conditions in the homes of others due to hardship, according to the organization's website.

“I would like to applaud Mayor Emanuel and the City Council for passing the SRO ordinance. It is a critically important ordinance, without this ordinance more people would be thrown out on the street and become homeless,” said CCH Director, Ed Shurna. “Our work is far from complete; we have an affordable housing crisis in Chicago. We need more affordable housing for people who are working but can’t find a place to live. We know this ordinance is a small segment of the affordable housing that’s available.”

Chicago For All Coalition (CFAC) organizer, D’angelo Boyland, told the Chicago Citizen Newspaper that CFAC, an organization that addresses the rapid depletion of Single Room Occupancy (SROs) hotels in Chicago, has been working to make the ordinance a reality since 2011.

“The main theme was caring about the tenants, we all got into the positions we got into because we cared about people and cared about the way the tenants were treated in these buildings and that was really the uniting force being able to see as many people coming from aspects coming together having one common goal and that’s the preservation of the units and making sure the tenants are safe and secure,” said Boyland.

For more information about the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless visit http://www.chicagohomeless.org/. For more information about the City of Chicago’s efforts to provide SORs visit http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en.html.

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