Meet Bonita Harrison, a South Sider bent on making affordable housing a reality
By Darcel Rockett, Chicago Tribune | January 3rd, 2022 (Click Here for Original Article)
North Kenwood resident Bonita Harrison’s goal has always been to own 200 units of property. As a residential developer, her mission was to create noticeable change to a South Side neighborhood when it comes to affordable housing for and by people of color.
She was well on her way with her firm Sunshine Management, which had 68 units before the pandemic. Now, she only has 15 left, a mix of two-flats and four-flats and single-family homes.
“When you’re a smaller business it’s hard for someone to have that capital to go through the tough times,” Harrison said. “I had to sell because I was constantly being crunched taking money from myself, my family, my daughter, trying to make decisions: ‘I’m not paying my own mortgage, but I’m paying the mortgage for all these other buildings.’”
In the real estate field since 2006, Harrison, 40, is just one of a number of property owners trying to hold on to what they worked for. After much conversation about tenant and landlord relations during the pandemic and hundreds of millions of dollars of rental assistance going to thousands of the former for the latter, Michael Glasser, president of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance, wants people to know losses like Harrison’s can influence the housing market in an area, and lead to disinvestment. A recent study by the Alliance, which represents Chicago’s small to medium-sized landlords, showed continued hardship for housing providers in the south and west sides and suburbs.
“It’s the small housing provider who’s really been up to an enormous challenge because they might only have four units in a building or two units or 10 units,” he said. “With a couple people not paying … it absolutely can destabilize housing.”
“Our gas prices will be the big issue this year. Our insurance prices are going up because of all the calamities around the world. And we all know what’s going on with property taxes. Those bills are going to cost a lot of money. And that’s going to be destabilizing for a lot of owners in low-income neighborhoods.”
Tanya Woods, executive director of the legal aid organization Westside Justice Center, worries that owners selling because of COVID-19 challenges could open the door to nonlocal investors, with local wealth leaving communities, leading the way to gentrification.
“When we talk about affordable rental, the vast majority is located in these lower-cost neighborhoods, and owned by folks like Bonita and other small owners who are for profit,” said Stacie Young, president/CEO of Community Investment Corporation, which lends money for the acquisition and rehab of affordable multifamily housing in low- and moderate-income communities throughout Chicagoland. “Our borrowers, half are led by people of color. The typical story of a borrower that we finance would be a janitor who saves his pennies to buy the six-flat down the block. They probably are employing local folks to maintain their building; going to local vendors to get their stuff. This is a disruption.”
Young said that’s why more attention and support is being paid to small housing providers nationwide. She, too, is concerned about big firms and/or outside investors coming in and buying property away from local developers who are familiar with the area. According to Young, CIC has worked with partners for years on creating and advocating for a proposal that would provide property tax relief to owners that invest in their buildings and hold a certain proportion of units as affordable. That proposal became state legislation this summer.
“This kind of property tax incentive is one of the rare types of government-related policies/resources that the small, for-profit rental owners can access without invoking an overabundance of costly government regulations,” Young said. “These guys (small rental owners) are anchoring our neighborhoods and our blocks. We have heard a lot about out-of-town money. They don’t know that there’s a difference between Auburn Gresham and a property on Lake Shore Drive. They’re like, ‘I can buy this building for such a low price. And they don’t know their neighborhood, the way small owners do.”
Harrison said the majority of the buyers of her properties were out of the community. She said six months after the sale of a former Greater Grand Crossing property, tenants were still contacting her trying to figure out where to send their rent checks because the new owners never contacted them.
Harrison, a former financial analyst, moved into real estate full-time after buying and selling her first home before the Great Recession. The sale was a “blessing,” according to Harrison, who made more money from her first home than her work salary, owning it for less than a year. Harrison flipped homes in Greater Grand Crossing, Chatham, Pullman, Roseland, Morgan Park, Bronzeville, Englewood, and Auburn Gresham. She acquired a lot of the properties through the Cook County Land Bank Authority.
The Land Bank is an independent agency of Cook County, founded by the Cook County Board of Commissioners. The agency acquires properties that sit vacant, abandoned and tax-delinquent for years and sells them at below-market rates to qualified community-based developers who then rehab the homes and sell them. Properties are awarded to developers through evaluation, in which a developer’s plan, prior work, and references are considered. You don’t have to be a licensed or certified professional to rehab a property. The agency is currently holding a holiday buying program through mid-January to help local developers acquire vacant properties in their neighborhoods; and giving away 10 parcels to the first 10 applicants approved. The majority of the properties available in Chicago are in Englewood, North Lawndale, Roseland and West Pullman, according to the organization.
Harrison taught the business to her daughter, Kenya, 25, a realtor, who is buying her first six-unit on the South Side.
“People when they look at our community, they’re like, there’s no value there. But there is,” Harrison said. “There’s a lot of people who want to be here. Like myself, I was born here. I was raised here. I raised my family here. I want to be in my community; I want to work here. It matters to me. I want to see the change here.”
Harrison said that one of the challenges she and other developers face are scarce and costly materials, which cause project budgets to rise. Many developers of color are using hard money loans to fund their entrepreneurship. This form of asset-based financing is a quick way to secure financing, but typically are higher interest and entails shorter repayment periods.
“How do you move through a project, if you have hard money to pay and also make a profit? It’s been very difficult. A lot of us that have these short term loans, we don’t have a choice but to move the project along. If we don’t, then it’s very detrimental.”
Harrison said she received a PPP loan and three of of her 68 renters have received federal rental assistance funds. She’s hoping more incentives are provided to current community residents to thwart gentrification. She knows the city has a number of programs for developers like herself, but admits that paperwork can be a barrier. According to Land Bank chairwoman and Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, the organization is continuing to lower the barrier to entry for developers. Per CCLBA’s executive director Eleanor Gorski, the organization saw some of their highest numbers of applications this summer.
“We have over 600 small, vast majority Black and Latino developers from the neighborhood who know how and what to develop there,” Gainer said. “I don’t know if you saw the recent story about Zillow where they tried to buy all these houses and flip them at scale … They didn’t have any sense of the local market, like what kind of house did people want to buy, what were they willing to pay?”
Is there a case where an outside investor makes sense? Per Young, the national nonprofit Preservation of Affordable Housing is a great example.
“About 12 years ago, they were the out-of-town investors,” she said. “They hadn’t done work in Chicago before, but what they brought with them was this expertise to do large-scale developments in a neighborhood. POAH came here from Boston with this capacity, and because they work so hard on the ground … it really added value to that neighborhood and also the rest of the city.”
Bill Eager, senior vice president of Midwest real estate development for Preservation of Affordable Housing, said what made the difference for POAH was spending a fair amount of time making connections within the community, with individuals and local organizations. He said a lot of the early work was in Woodlawn — working with block clubs and tenant associations. Eager said POAH hired a director of community engagement full-time to help the organization build the network they needed to become part of the community that they wanted to be in.
“When we buy a property, we are not at all looking for short-term ownership. We’ll want to do a deal and be in it for 20 to 30 or more years,” Eager said. “I don’t think it’s outside versus inside with investors. I think the bigger question is are the people who are looking at the properties interested in being long-term stewards, putting the resources in financial and otherwise, to keep the properties healthy, or are they just looking to flip them in a few years. The question is: what are their plans once they’re here?”
When the pandemic is over, Bonita Harrison is going to try to attain the goals that she originally set, which is 200 units. And she’s all about cooperating with other developers to concentrate efforts to redo homes a block at a time.
“We can do better together; I can find other developers,” she said. “Let’s focus and that way we can bring equity to the community and it could be us within the community doing it. It helps versus me doing one here, someone else doing one in Pullman, someone else in Roseland, the effect is not as great.”
THESE BLACK DEVELOPERS ARE BUYING BACK THE BLOCK
By Sean Jones, Bonita Harrison, DaJuan Robinson, Keith Lindsey, & Derrick Walker, Crain’s Chicago Business | June 18th, 2021 (Click Here for Original Article)
The movement to “buy back the block” is a call to action to put Black communities into Black ownership. It’s about keeping the resources generated in Black communities within those communities, benefiting the people who live and work there rather than watching dollars drain to outside owners who have little interest in the community beyond making a return on their investments.
In West Woodlawn, where too many houses sit vacant and abandoned, we’re answering that call to action in a literal way—by purchasing and redeveloping 12 vacant lots on the 6300 block of South Langley Avenue.
We’re five Black community developers who have worked independently for years, cumulatively rehabbing hundreds of vacant housing units into modern homes across Chicago’s South and West sides in communities like Chatham, Roseland, East Garfield Park and Englewood.
We acquired many of these properties through the Cook County Land Bank Authority, which exists to address the blight created by the economic housing crisis of 2008. By being intentional about empowering developers who know their communities, the Land Bank is a true partner to “little guys” like us and a true partner to Black neighborhoods where tax-delinquent properties and vacant land are often left to decay for years.
Developers can be competitive, but together, the five of us always felt like a community because we supported each other and shared a vision: uplifting and investing in the communities where we live and grew up.
One day we put together our numbers and realized that our work had created more than $100 million in Black wealth and is generating $1.5 million in annual tax revenue.
That’s when we realized: We could either stay in our own lanes, doing pretty well independently, or we could pool our skills and resources and pour them into a community that needed them, maximizing our impact on individual lives and an entire community. So we bought a block.
Through the Land Bank, we purchased 12 abandoned lots where we’ll soon build new, state-of-the-art homes in a community that desperately needs quality and affordable housing.
These transactions would not have been possible without the Land Bank, which removes enormous barriers from the process of acquiring vacant homes and clearing title without using any taxpayer money. Without the Land Bank, these homes would have either remained abandoned or been purchased by a large developer who had the resources to sit on them for years until gentrification guaranteed a hefty return.
Not us. Our architect is already working on design concepts. We will, as always, hire from within the community, helping to ensure that the reach of our project ripples to as many Chicagoans as we can reach.
Architects, accountants, attorneys, carpenters, landscapers, HVAC professionals, plumbers, electricians, security staff—an all-Black team reflective of this community will transform this block from top to bottom, creating over 150 jobs before we’re done next year.
This is where we will have some of the greatest impact: employing formerly incarcerated citizens, who often struggle to move forward without much help once they’re outside; older citizens, who may have a hard time finding work; and those who haven’t had many opportunities but who, once given a chance, find tremendous pride and do an outstanding job in building up the neighborhood.
For us, our work isn’t just about this block. We know that a large-scale project like this has the power to attract more investment to West Woodlawn, which has boarded up and vacant homes on nearly every block. A nearby commercial corridor on 67th Street is also ripe for redevelopment for Black-owned businesses.
And we know it will happen; development breeds development, and development breeds stability. Each new owner is an anchor that holds our neighborhood in a safe harbor ahead of the next economic crisis.
Until then, we’ll build up our neighborhoods one block at a time. And when the nearby homeowners need a little help, perhaps with cutting the grass or shoveling the snow, we’ll have our crews do that, too. Because that’s what neighbors do. That’s what it means to be part of a community.
A Bronzeville Family Is Creating A Community Garden To Share Their Love Of Their New Neighborhood
By Sara Badilini, Block Club Chicago | November 8th, 2021 (Click Here for Original Article)
BRONZEVILLE — Sythera Pride-Paulus and her family moved to Bronzeville in 2018 — but “it feels like we’d lived here forever,” she said.
The family — Sythera and her husband, J.P. Paulus; and their daughters, Mia and Faith Paulus — felt so welcomed in the neighborhood they immediately decided to buy a vacant lot adjacent to their home and transform it into a community garden. It took longer than expected due to some pandemic delays, but the major part of the work finished up in October, J.P. Paulus said.
Along the way, they’ve gotten inspiration and help from their neighbors.
The Paulus family bought the lot through the Cook County Land Bank Authority, an agency born in 2013 in response to the large amount of vacant lots around the city following the housing crisis. The land bank makes it easier for people to buy the properties by “clearing the tax, clearing the title,” said county Commissioner Bridget Gainer.
The land bank now has more than 550 small developers — most of them Black or Latino — who bought properties to create community gardens, residential units and other projects, Gainer said.
“Most of all, we realized that there was a huge number of people that were interested in redeveloping communities,” she said.
The Pride-Paulus family is among them.
“We moved to the neighborhood and immediately walked to [the land bank] to put down the application with the design for the garden extension,” Pride-Paulus said.
Their community garden, which will open in the spring at 440 E. 46th St., is an extension of a larger community garden that was built in 2011 across the street. That bigger garden was also built in a vacant lot; besides being a space for growing tomatoes, cucumbers and cabbage, it has hosted several community events.
Arnold McBlackwell and his brother, Emile McBlackwell, take care of the larger garden full time, but they are supported by a block club of around 20 people. They have concerts, barbecues, movie nights, yoga classes and Juneteenth celebrations.
Everyone in the community can come and pick whatever they want, and “the only rule is to always leave something to someone else,” said Arnold McBlackwell.
The garden also gives neighborhood children a chance to learn how to grow plants, he said.
“My granddaughter always says that watching the plants grow gives you the confidence in your own growth,” Arnold McBlackwell said.
It was that garden’s work that inspired the Pride-Paulus family.
“The community garden was our true inspiration,” J.P. Paulus said. “We wanted to share healthy fruit and vegetables with our neighbors and share a sense of community with everyone.”
The neighbors from the bigger garden are helping the Pride-Paulus family learn lawn maintenance and gardening.
“None of us has any previous knowledge about gardening,” Pride-Paulus said. “But everyone is helping and supporting us.”
In the spring, the family will start planting. They’ve received several requests from their neighbors: cilantro, cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots. And strawberries — for their daughters, Paulus said.
The local Girls Scouts already reached out, and they’ll help during the planting process, Pride-Paulus said.
“A garden is a sign of new life, and it gives people new ideas,” Gainer said. People can see that it’s an option, “and they also see that it’s not it doesn’t require the city, or a foundation, or somebody from the outside. It’s only done with the people in the neighborhood.”
CITY CLUB OF CHICAGO | ELEANOR GORSKI
City Club of Chicago | April 6th, 2022 (Click Here for Original Article)
After progressing in a series of leadership roles in City government, Eleanor Esser Gorski was appointed Executive Director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA) in August 2021. Gorski brings more than 25 years of planning, design and economic development experience to the CCLBA as it embarks on plans to expand its inventory to create more affordable housing and economic opportunity partnerships within Cook County. The Cook County Land Bank works to efficiently return vacant properties to productive use in underserved communities throughout the county by partnering with community developers, small business owners and prospective homebuyers. It is the largest land bank by geography in the country, with a current inventory of more than 1,700 properties.
Before leading the CCLBA, Gorski served as Director of Design and Planning for the University of Illinois at Chicago. From 2019 to 2020, Gorski led the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD) as First Deputy Commissioner and Acting Commissioner. Prior to this role, Gorski led the Bureau of Planning and Design for DPD, leading work on the City’s Industrial Corridor Modernization Initiative and the Fulton Market Innovation District Plan, creating the fastest-growing commercial sector in the city. Gorski has held many other leadership roles within the City, including director of the Landmarks Commission for five years. Projects she has managed include the five-year renovation of Wrigley Field, the planning for the Obama Presidential Center, the renovation of most of the early skyscrapers in the Loop as well as the preservation of the Carson Pirie Scott State Street store (now Target).
A hallmark of Gorski’s work is the way it centers equity and community, integrating design, planning and historic preservation. Notable projects include the creation of a community review process for the Chicago Plan Commission and numerous design guidelines for city landmark districts and neighborhoods. Her work in financial incentive legislation provided groundbreaking assistance for small businesses in communities of need through the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and helped to preserve landmarks with the Class L tax incentive.
Gorski is a licensed architect with degrees in architecture, art history and history. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Rome, where she studied the integration of new construction and old in Rome, Berlin and Amsterdam. She is also a fellow of the University of Chicago Civic Leadership Academy. Gorski sits on the Local Advisory Board of LISC Chicago, the alumni board of the University of Illinois School of Architecture and the Board of the Illinois Medical District. Most important, she is a proud mom to two teenage boys and lives in the City of Chicago.
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COOK COUNTY LAND BANK AUTHORITY RECEIVES RICHARD M. DALEY FRIEND OF THE NEIGHBORHOODS AWARD AT LISC CHICAGO’S 27th ANNUAL CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AWARDS GalleryCOOK COUNTY LAND BANK AUTHORITY RECEIVES RICHARD M. DALEY FRIEND OF THE NEIGHBORHOODS AWARD AT LISC CHICAGO’S 27th ANNUAL CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AWARDS
COOK COUNTY LAND BANK AUTHORITY RECEIVES RICHARD M. DALEY FRIEND OF THE NEIGHBORHOODS AWARD AT LISC CHICAGO’S 27th ANNUAL CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AWARDS
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CHICAGO—LISC Chicago today announced that the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA) is this year’s recipient of the Richard M. Daley Friend of the Neighborhoods Award at the 27th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards (CNDA). The awards, which were held on Thursday, June 3, via a hybrid virtual and in-person event, honored top community development projects and architectural achievements across the city. The CCLBA joins a group of community development projects recognized by LISC for their investments in the economic and social vitality of neighborhoods across Chicago.
After the 2008 housing crisis, decades of redlining and the impacts of discriminatory housing policy exacerbated the devastation and cycle of abandonment in Cook County’s predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods. Created in 2013 by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, the Land Bank reclaims, revitalizes and returns vacant and abandoned residential, industrial and commercial properties and lots back to productive, tax-paying use.
“At the Cook County Land Bank, we strive to be a friend to so many of Chicago’s great neighborhoods, like Auburn Gresham, Humboldt Park and Roseland,” said Rob Rose, Executive Director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority. “The Land Bank is devoted to accomplishing this work with the collaboration of local grassroots organizations, municipalities and community developers, and we have a shared long-term goal of building home ownership and wealth in the neighborhoods we serve.”
The CCLBA is geographically the nation’s largest land bank, working with local community developers in Chicago and throughout Cook County’s suburban neighborhoods to save and resurrect blighted properties that contribute to low property values and higher levels of crime.
In less than a decade, the Land Bank has acquired more than 2,000 properties, sold more than 1,000 and helped returned more than $14.5 million to the tax rolls. In Cook County, the Land Bank has generated more than $95 million in community wealth since its inception, disrupting decades of divestment and enabling small business owners to create sustainable change, as well as jobs that lead to greater stability, in their neighborhoods.
The full program can be viewed at www.lisc-cnda.org.
