Look it up and Chicago Cityscape will advise
A new advisory feature on Chicago Cityscape, currently in beta testing, determines if you’re required to buy flood insurance for property in Illinois and Indiana.
Home buyers, brokers, and developers can avoid surprises by easily and quickly checking our “flood guidance” tool, based on FEMA’s flood maps.
Look up any address in Illinois or Indiana and our Address Snapshot reports will show “flood guidance” and determine if flood insurance is mandatory or optional. For lookups in Cook County, the feature will describe if you’re in the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s “inundation area” — a different kind of flood area where you might have to get another construction permit.
Flood guidance doesn’t currently work in DuPage and Will Counties of Illinois because the flood maps are being finalized. There are many other gaps in the federal flood maps, as shown in the map. Jasper county in northwestern Indiana is also missing. We will add the gaps as soon as those maps are finalized; we will add maps of adjacent states depending on the feedback we get.
As I said earlier, the feature is in beta testing. We’ve gotten some early feedback from property developers, floodplain experts, and home owners, but now we want your feedback. Send an email or reply to this post.
Look up your address, and then look up a different address, in Albany Park, that I know will show off the full power of the flood guidance feature.
Neighborhood news
- Curious City looks at the city’s rules about mitigating dust from demolitions and the apparent lack of enforcement when it’s single-family houses being demolished (WBEZ)
- Change of plans: The Paseo Boricua arts center on Division St. in Humboldt Park will be a new building instead of reused buildings. It was originally proposed in 2015 (Next City)
- Developer needs Mell’s (33rd) aldermanic approval for a zoning change to be able to convert a disused self-storage building into 27 apartments, where no housing currently exists; 4 would be affordable (Sun-Times)
- WBEZ’s Natalie Moore and Streetsblog Chicago’s Lynda Lopez talk about Chris Kennedy’s speech on “strategic gentrification plans” in Chicago to push out Black people. Moore: Gentrification is a misused word. (WTTW)
- The Community Investment Corporation announced last month that it had provided a “record” $70 million to acquire and rehab affordable housing through loans and grants to smalltime property managers/owners (CIC)