Ramirez-Rosa credited the pedestrian upgrades to local community organization Palenque LSNA's Avondale-Logandale Parent Mentors "who, concerned for the safety of their children, first advocated for pedestrian safety improvements at this intersection and along this stretch of Wellington."
Read MoreLISC Chicago announced the winners of the 29th annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards (CNDA) on June 22 in Chicago, where top community development projects, architectural achievements and individuals from across the city were honored. The ceremony started with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s keynote speech, followed by the awards ceremony where winners accepted their awards alongside a network of supporters. This year’s theme, “Communities Lead, Communities Succeed” reflects power that comes when communities across Chicago set their own neighborhood vision and lead on practices and investment to advance their shared goals.
Read MoreGentrification has been impacting the city of Chicago for decades. @mel.chalk spoke to Logan Square residents and officials about the effects of gentrification on the Latino population and the local plans to combat it.
As Mayor Brandon Johnson closes out his first week in office, Chicagoans are closely watching this new era unfold. In the city’s Latino communities, public safety, the cost of living, job opportunities, schools and environmental justice are at the top of the long list of issues people are hoping to see the new mayor address. Organizations in those communities say they’re as ready to work with Johnson as they are ready to hold him to his word.
Read MoreThe dollars will allow the land trust to buy and fix up more properties, furthering the nonprofit’s mission of slowing gentrification-fueled displacement in the Logan Square area.
Read MoreLogan Square is one of many communities in which residents are facing a significant increase in their property taxes.
The area used to be predominantly Latino, but over the years that number has decreased to about 36%.
Some longtime Latino residents say they don’t know how long they will be able to keep paying property tax hikes, maintain a home and survive.
“Now we have to choose between putting our kids through college and paying for the home, fixing our home or paying our taxes,” said Norma Rios-Sierra, a Logan Square resident who also grew up in the area.
Read MoreThe Cook County Treasurer’s Office is facing a class action lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Black and Latino homeowners in the way it acquires and disposes of properties whose owners are delinquent on taxes.
Michael Bell and Michelle Kidd are the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Dec. 15 in federal court in Chicago. They are joined in the action by the Southwest Organizing Project and Palenque LSNA, formerly the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, both nonprofit organizations.
Read MoreLocal experiments show there are innovative ways to create housing stability in Chicago, but we need more allies in our struggle for housing justice, so this is an invitation to stand in solidarity with us. Violence, crime and population loss are the byproducts of harmful investment and speculative disinvestment and they hurt us all, not just targeted and vulnerable populations.
Read MoreWith multi-unit dwellings giving way to single-unit homes, Logan Square leaders pushed for measures to keep the neighborhood’s Latino population in place.
Right next to the California stop on Chicago’s Blue Line, one-bedroom apartments in a new luxury building start north of $2,000 a month. Recently built single-family homes on adjacent streets frequently go for $1 million or more. Coffee shops and craft breweries have become neighborhood staples.
Read More“We know these property tax increases are due to demolitions, to new construction and to speculation in the housing market, which for some reason increases the value of land when White people deem a neighborhood is desirable,” Diaz said.
Read MoreFor the 10th straight year, the Logan Square Ecumenical Alliance gathered Chicagoans Saturday morning to demonstrate against vacant buildings and a lack of affordable housing in the Lathrop Homes development on the North Side.
Read MoreDia de los Muertos altars, or ofrendas, are created in memory of those who have died, and invite the spirit of the deceased to visit, with bright decorations, flowers, food and drink. Rios-Sierra said she was inspired to create a community altar to cyclists because of the surge in people on foot or bicycle killed by drivers since the pandemic. 'This year I was inspired by the work Palenque did with [the equitable transit-oriented development think tank] Elevate Chicago that had a lot to do with equitable development and walkability of our neighborhoods,' she said. 'I did a little research and realized there’s a whole database on bicyclist and pedestrian deaths. I thought that was so sad. There were a lot more deaths during the pandemic. The number of people killed on the streets was higher. I thought it was time to create a space to honor those people who had been lost.'
Read MoreAdvocates and elected officials say they believe they have a secret weapon: Small-time Latino two- and three-flat owners who can be persuaded to hold on to their properties and keep them affordable for working-class families, rather than cashing in on the real estate boom or being priced out of their own neighborhood.
A coalition of advocates is even asking some of these “mom and pop” landlords fearful of losing their property to skyrocketing taxes to sell their property to a community land trust, preserving affordable housing for working-class residents.
Read MoreAVONDALE — As the city-led redevelopment of Avondale’s Belmont Triangle gains momentum, the local alderperson said he backs community demands to bring more affordable housing to the site to fight gentrification-fueled displacement.
Social justice organization Palenque LSNA — formerly the Logan Square Neighborhood Association — hosted a rally Monday, initially meant to push Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th) to back an all-affordable housing model for the Belmont Triangle project. The alderperson previously agreed to support a plan with 20 percent of the housing being affordable, organizers said.
But Reboyras joined the demonstration to endorse the group’s demands and said he would fight for a much larger share of low-cost units to keep longtime residents in the neighborhood.
Read MoreLOGAN SQUARE — Grisel and Jonathan Lapham wanted to buy their first home in Logan Square, but the gentrifying neighborhood with skyrocketing housing prices felt out of reach, they said.
Now, thanks to a new community land trust formed by a coalition of community groups and backed by city officials, the Laphams are Logan Square homeowners. The couple recently bought a three-bedroom ranch near The 606’s Bloomingdale Trail and Central Park Avenue.
“We never would’ve imagined it would be possible to purchase a home in this neighborhood, let alone a single-family home,” Jonathan Lapham said. “We were always very superstitious, we never felt like it was going to happen, but the day we felt it would … it was honestly like a miracle.”
Read MoreOn March 17, Beltran’s landlord served her a notice, saying she had five days to come up with five months’ rent or face the immediate termination of her lease. Such five-day notices are one of the first steps in the eviction process, after which landlords can proceed with an eviction suit.
Beltran is active in Palenque LSNA, a community organization serving Logan Square that provided Injustice Watch with copies of the landlord’s and sheriff’s notices that she received. Beltran and Palenque LSNA said that, because of broken mailboxes in the apartment, she did not receive notice of her court dates or have an opportunity to defend herself. After Beltran moved out to avoid eviction by the sheriff, Palenque LSNA launched a fundraiser to help her secure a new apartment.
From January 2009 to December 2019, nearly 23,000 households were taken to eviction court annually in Chicago, according to an eviction tracker created by the Chicago nonprofit Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH). On average, 60% of those cases ended in eviction orders.
Read MoreA sweeping housing effort officials say will help fight segregation, boost affordable housing on the South and West sides and slow displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods was approved by City Council Wednesday.
The “Connected Communities” ordinance includes provisions aimed at creating more affordable housing near mass transit, getting affordable developments in front of City Council faster, limiting where multi-unit buildings can replace single-family homes and more.
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Traolach O’Sullivan, a housing organizer with Logan Square-based organization Palenque LSNA, said Logan Square has benefitted from the development pilot program, and this ordinance ensures other communities in need, particularly those on the South and West Sides, get that same opportunity.
Read MoreCommunity leaders are urging the city to give neighbors more time to weigh in on plans to redevelop Avondale’s Belmont Triangle and ensure what’s built at the site doesn’t accelerate rapid gentrification in the area.
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City officials said they will invite developers to submit proposals for the 4-acre site this summer using community input, but neighborhood leaders said residents have had little opportunity to give feedback. Many who were surveyed did not know about the redevelopment or recent community meetings providing more information, organizers said.
“This community needs time to absorb and understand the Belmont Triangle [project] as this will have a direct impact on the neighborhood,” Palenque LSNA housing organizer Juanairis Castaneda said at a news conference in front of the lot last week.
Read More“Logan Square has been suffering for a long time through the impacts of displacement. And that displacement has only been exacerbated by the health crisis we’ve been living through with COVID-19,” Diaz said. “And despite the economic downturn of COVID-19, rents have only gone up and more competition for housing is happening in our neighborhood.”
Diaz said for Latinx families, which tend to be larger and need more bedrooms, the search for affordable rentals is especially tough.
“It’s really difficult for families, particularly families who have kids in schools, when their rents are raised overnight by $500-$600. And when they look for new apartments to move into, it’s impossible to find anything below $1,500, $1,600, and those units that we do find are often one bedrooms or studios that can’t fit the average Latinx family,” Diaz said. “So what’s really special about the Lucy Gonzales Parsons Apartments … is that these are family-sized units. So not only are they affordable, but they can actually fit the average Latinx family and this is a monument to racial equity into a new direction that our community is taking. So we’re very proud of the accomplishment.”
Read MoreLOGAN SQUARE — Longtime community organization Logan Square Neighborhood Association has a new name the group’s leaders hope reflects their commitment to “liberation for all.”
After 60 years of being known as Logan Square Neighborhood Association, the organization is now Palenque LSNA. The name change took effect in April.
Palenques — sometimes called quilombos or maroon communities — are settlements formed throughout the Americas by Africans and their descendants who escaped slavery, perhaps as far back as the early 1500s. Those formerly enslaved people often mixed with Indigenous people to establish their own communities, survive on their own and fight off attacks from European colonists.
The organization’s leaders said they chose the word “palenque” because the settlements have a deep history of bringing Latinx and Black people together.
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