What's in the Works

Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) was selected through a competition in the spring of 2019 to develop City-owned land at the corner of 5^th Avenue and Kedzie as an affordable housing community with neighborhood-serving retail. The competition was implemented in cities around the world and sponsored by the C40 Network of Cities that tries to help cities tackle climate change issues. We learned in March 2020 that Mayor Lightfoot’s Department of Housing would fund us to build it, hopefully breaking ground in late 2021.

The competition involved very little community input into design or team selection, aside from a small online survey and the meetings held with bidders by local organizations. We have told the City that we will not move forward without our next steps involving community input. We didn’t want to start that process until we knew the project would move forward, which we learned with the City funding announcement this spring. Our community meetings were further delayed due to Covid-19. We are proceeding with online meetings and forums and we thank you for your patience. If you would like to speak to us directly, leave a message with your feedback or have us attend a virtual or small group meeting, please contact us at (312) 235-2352 or c40chicago@poah.org.

We committed to the City that we will build about 70-80 apartments, we have to have about 9,000 square feet of retail, the buildings have to be Passive-House -certified - that cannot change or it will jeopardize our financing. However, we welcome input about types of apartments we have, how much they cost, what amenities are included, what the building and landscaping looks like, what type of retail businesses we recruit. While budgets are limited, we look forward to learning more and thank you for your time.

What's There Now

The site is currently two vacant lots. We've uploaded old Sanborn fire insurance maps which show building footprints on the block at different periods over the last 100+ years.

What's Happening Next

Before moving forward with design, we want to learn more about the neighborhood and what will make these buildings vibrant and successful. We are hosting a series of meetings that we hope you can attend and a survey we hope you can take the time to complete. If you'd like assistance filling out the survey, please contact us at c40chicago@poah.org.

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