The Chicago Community Loan Fund is managing the process to find small developers with experience renovating single-family and two-flats in 11 community areas on the South and West Sides. The “Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild Pilot” is happening in the 7th, 10th, and 11th police districts, and will hire residents from the pilot area who have barriers to employment because they are young or previously incarcerated.
The pilot area includes the entirety of West Garfield Park, North Lawndale, West Englewood, Englewood, and the vast majority of South Lawndale and East Garfield Park community areas. It also includes half of Humboldt Park, and significant portions of the Lower West Side (Little Village) and Greater Grand Crossing, and a small portion of Austin and the Near West Side.
The pilot is a collaboration among CCLF, the City of Chicago, the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA), and Arne Duncan’s Emerson Collective (for workforce training), and was announced in January.
The Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild Pilot is designed for the dual purposes of providing high quality, newly rehabbed homes to qualified owner-occupants and employing local residents with multiple barriers to employment through the process. The purpose of the RFQ is to find, educate and fund local single family and 2-flat developers who live and work in the communities targeted by the program.
Read the RFQ for information on how to respond by Monday, October 9.
Developers must be located in the pilot area, have principals that live in the area, have done significant work in the area, or have sourced “a substantial portion of” labor and materials from the area.
The respondent developer must also show that they’ve successfully developed at least two single-family and two-flat houses in the past five years.
Developers would purchase existing housing stock from the CCLBA through a bidding process against other qualified developers, rehabilitate the buildings in a way that includes 1–2 trainees, and sell the houses to the public. CCLF is offering loans to developers to purchase and rehabilitate the buildings, at a fixed interest rate of 5 percent (read the RFQ for full details on this).