Our Top Picks for the Housing Highlights of 2016

While Habitat Chicago is making strides in seeing the neighborhoods & residents of our city thrive, it takes much more than our efforts alone to get the job done. Luckily, we’re not the only ones fighting this fight. Let’s look at some of our favorite highlights in housing news in 2016.

• Chicago Fund 77—The result of a yearlong effort by City Treasurer Kurt Summers, Fund 77 is a new initiative which will see over $100 million dollars of capital invested into the marginalized neighborhoods of the West and South sides of Chicago. The fund is intended “to create jobs, grow businesses, improve infrastructure and provide capital” to historically, especially recently, neglected parts of the city. Because a decent place to live extends beyond the walls of a home, this initiative is critical for decent housing!

• Low-Income Housing Shown to Not Weigh on Nearby Property Values – Looking at over 3,000 projects financed using the federal low-income housing tax credit over a 10-year span, real-estate tracker Trulia found no significant difference in price per square foot when comparing properties closest to the low-income units with those farther out. In fact, the Wall St Journal reports similar research has found that low-income housing projects can actually have positive effects on nearby property values, challenging the prevailing, often detrimental argument around low-income housing. 

• The Habitat III Conference—While we may be slightly biased because of the name of this conference, it was an undeniable highlight of 2016. Convened by the United Nations, Habitat III brought together 30,000 people from 167 countries to determine and adopt the New Urban Agenda, an action-oriented document designed to make urban living sustainable, inclusive, and empowering. Given that the majority of the world’s population now lives in urban communities (a trend which will continue to increase in coming decades), this work is especially critical.

• The 24th Annual National Gingerbread House Competition—It’s not all serious news that brings us joy at Habitat Chicago, though. Sometimes the stories that bring us happiness are a little on the sweeter side, which is why hearing about the Annual Gingerbread House Competition makes the list. Held every year in Asheville, North Carolina, it’s a reminder that passion for housing can take many different forms, and even gingerbread men need safe spaces to call home. Although, if we saw these delicious homes in person, maybe they wouldn’t be so safe after all!