Before I launch on my solution, I would like to hear from the list. What
is the new solution? Most of all the plans tried so far have failed.
I don't know what you can do about the "high risk" renters, quite
frankly. No private landlord in his right mind would rent to them, but
at the same time public housing has had a pretty bad track record and
we can't just let them live under the freeway overpasses. Perhaps if
we built something analogous to the "instant motels," those three-story
walkups that are popping up in the suburbs, and leased them to
management companies we might be able to use them as transitional
housing so that the "high risk" renters would modify their behavior/clean up their credit and become less risky.
The same sort of buildings could be used as SRO housing
intended for low-income workers. In both cases you would probably
have to change the zoning ordinances, because I'm almost certain
that using (say) a Holiday Inn Express-type building for a residential
hotel violates at least a dozen such. I'd be glad to be educated on
this point. For a truly blue-sky suggestion, why not do this with the
former Sears building at Chicago and Lake? A retail plaza with
restaurants on the ground floor to serve the tenants, perhaps a
school in the structure as well. We could have an arcology, though
I'm certain it would not be cheap.
For family housing, we might want to build (or have built)
duplexes, triplexes and/or fourplexes to replace those torn down
by MCDA. Put up manufactured homes in vacant lots. The city
needs to do something different, because what it's doing now
isn't working and worse yet is aggravating the problem.
Of course, none of this addresses the biggest problem with
affordable/low-income housing. Nobody seems to want it in their
back yard. We'd be nuts to shell out more money to get less
housing built in Kenwood (for example), to say nothing of the
impact on existing homes' market value and property tax revenues.
At the same time, if you build it in neighborhoods like mine,
people scream about creating ghettos of the poor. As I said
before in this piece, I want to be educated on this subject.
Kevin Trainor
6-10, East Phillips
I used to be involved, but now I'm just disgusted.
