Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago Inc. is setting up a revitalization program in the troubled Roseland area, a South Side
neighborhood that became synonymous with the rapid racial turnover that struck parts of Chicago in the 1960s and 70s.
The program will provide homeowners with assistance in obtaining conventional rehabilitation loans and make available a revolving pool of low- interest rehab money for those unable to meet conventional financing guidelines.
Roseland becomes the eighth neighborhood in which NHS has set up shop. The Roseland program was initiated at the request of the Borg-Warner Corporation, whose Borg-Warner Foundation provided a $450,000 grant to get the program off the ground. That money was matched by the city`s Department of Housing.
”We`ve looked at Roseland over several years as a neighborhood where our programs can bring about revitalization,” said Casey Hoffman, resource development coordinator at NHS. ”There have been people in the community since 1980 who have wanted us to come in and with Borg-Warner and the city wanting to fund it, we said yes.”
Other efforts have been made in the last six years to revitalize Roseland, but with little success. A 1980 HUD demonstration project provided for the rehabilitation of 100 abandoned houses in the neighborhood and Continental Illinois National Bank made $1 million available for rehab that same year.
Still, a 1983 study showed Roseland had the highest number of defaults and foreclosures on federally insured mortgages of any neighborhood in the city. In 1983, more than 815 FHA mortgages were in default or foreclosure in the area. More than 900 foreclosures were recorded in the 1970s.
”The vitality in city neighborhoods like Roseland is too important to give up on,” said Ellen Benjamim, director of the Borg-Warner Foundation.
”You could just see the vitality in the neighborhood kids who came down the street for the simple ribbon cutting ceremony (that launched the NHS program earlier this month).”
”But a lot of things need to come together to see redevelopment succeed,” she said. ”They`ve got a lot of resources there, like Chicago State University, and still have very good housing stock. We felt with sufficient attention now it can keep future deterioration from happening.”
While its proximity to industry provided the area with a substantial number of black residents prior to World War II, Roseland`s proportion of black residents climbed from 22 percent in 1960 to 55 percent in 1970 and more than 97 percent by 1980.
The total population continued to grow, to 64,400 in 1980 from 62,500 10 years earlier, but the community lost more than 800 housing units between the 1970 and 1980 census. Businesses, too, were lost along the commercial strips of Michigan Avenue and State Street.
Yet Roseland has remained an economic mixed bag. While 15 percent of its residents lived below the poverty level in 1980, 27 percent reported a family income of more than $30,000.
And single-family home ownership, depsite the problems of default, remained a strong tradition accounting for nearly two-thirds of the neighborhood`s housing. More than 62 percent of the population lives in an owner-occupied dwelling, a percentage that has increased steadily since 1930. Those economic statistics, coupled with the NHS assessment that the housing stock has not yet suffered extreme deterioration, made Roseland a prime candidate for NHS assistance. The NHS already operates in seven transitional neighborhoods serving a total population of more than 150,000.
Neighborhoods where NHS sets up housing programs must have a population made up of 41 to 98 percent minorities. Residents of the neighborhoods targeted for revitalization must exhibit a ”strong commitment” toward improvement and must have income levels that qualify for conventional loans.
In Roseland`s case, Hoffman said, a number of community groups have expressed support for an NHS program there. Borg-Warner, a past contributor to NHS, also feels its contribution will bring in from the neighborhood business community ”equal partners even if they are not spending equal dollars,”
Benjamin said.
Recruiting business leaders is a priority for NHS. The non-profit group operates by contributions from savings and loan associations, banks, insurance companies, non-financial corporations, private foundations and goverment loans.
NHS also has enlisted the aid of 20 executives of companies based in the city to head a ”larger neighborhood revitalization effort.”
The revitalization efforts will be in the neighborhoods NHS currently serves–Little Village, West Humboldt, West Englewood, Central Austin, Heart of Chicago and Marshall Square/Douglas Park–and will include Roseland when that office is opened in July. In addition, the Garfield Park neighborhood is under consideration for NHS assistance.
At the same time as the Roseland project is getting underway, NHS has been awarded $200,000 in seed money from the Illinois Housing Development Authority. The money will be used to fund initial projects on hard-hit blocks that will in turn provide a basis for other investments in the neighborhoods, according to IHDA director James Kiley.
”Government bureaucracies, whether it be the city or the state, have problems being able to deliver affordable housing in the neighborhoods, because they are set up to do major projects, they are not set up to do the five or six unit developments,” Kiley said.
”With no federal rent subsidies avaiable for new construction, we will have to depend on this type of partnership more and more to improve the existing stock and to help us meet the growing demand for affordable housing,” he said.
Since the group`s inception in 1975, NHS has brought $215 million in reinvestment to Chicago neighborhoods representing 48,000 housing units and 23,000 residents. Nationally the group has invested close to $4 billion in more than 200 depressed areas.
Four other NHS programs offer residents in the targeted neighborhoods needed assistance:
The NHS Revolving Loan Fund enables families who would not normally qualify obtain conventional financing.
The Energy Savers Fund, which operates throughout the city, underwrites energy improvements.
The NHS Redevelopment Corporation constructs new housing and redevelops single and multifamily buildings.
Finally, the Mutual Housing Association provides tenants of low-income housing a hand in management and a chance for limited ownership.
