Cooperatives as an affordable homeownership alternative will be the subject of the Chicago Mutual Housing Network’s award ceremony and workshop series called “A Home of Our Own” taking place from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at Loyola University’s Kasbeer Hall, 25 E. Pearson St.
Three workshops will offer expert advice on the formation of affordable co-ops and limited equity condominiums, those with equity restrictions written into condo bylaws.
Specifically, the workshops will cover forming a cooperative board, and how to establish effective leadership and consensus building in the cooperative setting. It also will include a review of cooperatives and limited equity condos and how to finance cooperatives.
Chicago Mutual Housing Network, a nonprofit training and technical assistance network with six years of experience in co-op and condo consulting and in promoting homeownership alternatives for low- and moderate-income families, will steer the workshops.
Representatives from several lending institutions will participate as well, with speakers from the Washington-based National Cooperative Bank, Northern Trust, Harris, LaSalle and South Shore Banks.
The workshops come as the Chicago Mutual Housing Network is veering into a new role as developer, according to it’s director, Charles Daas.
The network is preparing to convert a courtyard building at 3653-57 W. Wabansia Ave. into an 18-unit coop to be called Nuestro Hogar, Spanish for Our Home. Daas says it is Chicago’s first Latino co-op and will provide homeownership for families earning as little as $15,000 a year.
The network is also preparing to convert a 17-unit rental building in Chatham into a 12-unit limited equity condo and a 34-unit abandoned South Shore building into an 18-unit cooperative.
Three awards acknowledging special efforts and achievements in establishing cooperatives as an affordable housing form in Chicago, will be presented during the network event on Friday.
Award recipients include Julius Yacker, an attorney advocating affordable cooperative as an ownership form for the last 45 years.
“Aside from offering rare specialized legal assistance for the cooperative form, he was involved in creating the few limited equity condos and cooperatives that do exist in Chicago,” Daas said.
Those affordable projects include London Townhouses in Pullman, Chatham Park Village in Chatham South and a co-op for seniors, as well as the Home Town Cooperative in Home Town Illinois at 87th Street and Cicero Avenue.
Currently Yacker is working on creation of a Chicago cooperative utility modeled after the New Rochdale Cooperative Utility in New York City.
“It would offer Chicagoans an alternative to Commonwealth Edison,” Daas said.
United Winthrop Towers Cooperative will receive an award, acknowledging a painstaking eight-year conversion taken on by Century Place Development. That effort turned a former gang-ridden building at 4848 North Winthrop Ave. into a 281-unit cooperative and recast its Section 8 subsidized rental inhabitants as property owners.
The Wieboldt Foundation, which is investing in the planned South Shore project, will also receive an award.
The public is welcome to attend the workshops. Interested parties should call the network to register at 773-278-9210.
