Reclaiming Chicago Initiative Adds 10 homes In Roseland
By Abby Miller, Chicago Sun-Times | May 1st, 2026 (Click Here For Original Article)
Neighbors and project partners gathered Friday on East 118th Street in Roseland to celebrate the newest homes built under the community-led campaign Reclaiming Chicago.
The Hope Center Foundation and Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, partners in the campaign, held a ribbon-cutting for 10 homes in the Far South Side neighborhood. Four of the properties are under contract, and five potential buyers have been referred to lenders, according to the Hope Center.
With Phase 2 in Roseland complete, 90 homes now have been built under Reclaiming Chicago. The campaign’s mission is to build 2,000 homes across the South and West sides to help combat decades of disinvestment.
“What makes this effort distinct is its alignment. It brings together residents, faith institutions, developers, nonprofits, lenders, government and policymakers … around a shared goal to produce housing at scale with intention — and at a price point that working families can realistically attain,” Shenita Muse, executive director of the Hope Center, said. “This is how we rebuild and strengthen neighborhoods, and this is how we ensure that revitalization includes the very families who have remained committed to these communities.”
Reclaiming Chicago, led by the civic coalition United Power for Action and Justice, has raised $52 million to build homes and offer subsidies to buyers. Buyers of the Roseland homes are receiving about $50,000 in down payment assistance, according to Jessica Caffrey, executive director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority.
Many of the three-bedroom homes are on the same block where 11 properties from the first phase of development were completed in late 2024.
Part of Reclaiming Chicago’s goal is to draw new investment and build community, and it does that by focusing on areas with high vacancy rates. The effort seems to be working.
David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, said neighborhood reinvestment is already happening after the first phase of Roseland homes were completed.
“We have seen such a transformation of this particular block and the surrounding blocks,” Doig said. “Existing owners are now fixing up their properties, making investments in their own properties. We’re seeing former vacant buildings that are being rehabbed. … When people see hope, we see investment follow.”
The 10 lots in Phase 2 were provided by the land bank. Caffrey said it has acquired more than 40 lots for the Hope Center to build Reclaiming Chicago homes, which will help families build equity and generational wealth.
Keshanna Pope said homeownership felt out of reach, like it does for many other millennials and Gen Z, who can’t afford a home due to skyrocketing costs. But Pope was able to purchase one of the Roseland properties, saying Reclaiming Chicago’s strategy — which includes services and classes for potential buyers — helped her achieve that dream and feel connected to her community.
“I didn’t just gain a home because I became a part of the community,” she said.
Hope Center plans to break ground in Roseland on 20 homes next fall, followed by another 50. That will bring Reclaiming Chicago’s total development in Roseland to 91 homes, according to Muse.
Reclaiming Chicago has about 200 homes in different development stages. Besides Roseland, it’s targeting three other neighborhoods: Back of the Yards, Chicago Lawn and North Lawndale. It expanded to Chicago Lawn last year thanks to a $10 million grant from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.
“We’re moving. We have a vision,” Jeff Bartow, executive director of Southwest Organizing Project Illinois, said. “We recognize, though, in order to succeed, we need to move at pace and at scale. We need to take large sites, identify them, take them, build on them. We need to continue to do infill construction.”
New Housing Near Garfield Park In The Home Stretch
By Abby Miller, Chicago Sun-Times | May 1st, 2026 (Click Here For Original Article)
Will Johnson has lived near Garfield Park for about 40 years. So when he saw developers building new homes on his block, he was hesitant to embrace the change.
But now that the homes are materializing, Johnson — who says he’s seen the neighborhood rise and fall over the years — is feeling more optimistic. So are his neighbors.
“When people are set in their ways, it’s hard to do new stuff,” he said. “But now that it’s kicking in gear, people are like, ‘Oh, wow, [it doesn’t] look bad.’”
Johnson has noticed less crime and blight on his block as developer Luis Castro builds two- and three-flats in the 500 block of North Lawndale Avenue. He and other neighbors, in addition to Castro and local leaders, joined the Cook County Land Bank Authority Tuesday to cut the ribbon on Castro’s fourth home on the block. It’s also the 2,500th completed home acquired through the land bank.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said the land bank’s latest milestone is important. The authority was established to address some of Cook County’s most pressing issues, including vacancy, tax delinquency and disinvestment.
“When we unlock land, we unlock the possibility for homeowners, for developers, for families and for entire neighborhoods,” she said.
The two-flat replaces a vacant lot and features a garden-level two-bedroom unit and a three-bedroom duplex on the first and second floors, according to the land bank. It’s the first new two-flat on the block and is unsold, though sales for nearby three-flats have been “on fire right now,” Castro said.
“I think we’re back at a point where we need the multiunits in order to establish these first homeownerships so that they’re not jumping into such a sticker shock with the mortgage payments,” Castro, who owns USA Roofing Supply, said. “It’s a perfect buy for a first-time homebuyer.”
Castro has been building homes since 2008. He said buying from the land bank has helped increase the number of homes he builds annually and reduce costs, which helps amid recent spikes in the cost of construction materials and labor. The land bank acquires tax delinquent and abandoned properties and wipes their slates of taxes and liens before selling them to developers — often at a cheaper price.
Nearly all of Castro’s homes are built on land from the authority, he said. He said he thinks the process spurs more development in the private market.
“What we’re doing is we’re creating the urgency of seeing a block being built,” Castro said.
He has two more buildings under construction, for a total of six properties on North Lawndale Avenue. Only one is a two-flat, while the other properties are three-flats. Once complete, Castro will have added a total of 17 units. Eleven units are finished. Past units have sold for $719,000 to $749,000, with the land bank providing $20,000 in financial assistance to three of the buyers.
The land bank said the six buildings are expected to create up to $3.5 million in community wealth on the block. It calculates community wealth by subtracting the value of vacant land from the purchase price of the new home.
Since its founding in 2013, the land bank has created $300 million in community wealth. But it hasn’t been without troubles, including a 2020 audit that found land bank officials hadn’t documented what they’ve done to avoid conflicts of interest on land deals involving the county agency. In 2023, a former asset manager for the land bank was sentenced to a year in prison for using straw buyers to buy and resell properties from the land bank on his behalf.
The land bank’s executive director, Jessica Caffrey, said Castro is the perfect example of the authority working as it’s supposed to: helping developers scale up their business to create new community investment.
Caffrey said the land bank is strengthening its operations, including collaboration with the city of Chicago to acquire more lots and continue its mission. To date, the land bank has generated more than $1.8 billion in economic impact.
Johnson’s wish is that more new homes translates to more resources for the community.
“Hopefully, it makes the community better,” he said. “Now we just got to hope that whoever’s got their foot on the gas, keeps it on the gas.”
South Side flower shop owner named CNN’s Hero of the Year
By Mohammad Samra, Chicago Sun-Times | December 8th, 2025 (Click Here For Original Article)
Quilen Blackwell, owner of a Chicago nonprofit that employs at-risk youth to turn vacant lots into flower farms, has won CNN’s Hero of the Year Award. Blackwell is CEO of Chicago Eco House, which grows flowers on South and West side lots, and Southside Blooms, an Englewood flower shop at 6250 S. Morgan St. His organization has been employing at-risk youth, ages 16 to 24, since 2014 at gardens in Englewood, Woodlawn, Washington Park and West Garfield Park.
The award comes with a $100,000 prize that Blackwell said he will use to convert
more empty lots into flower farms. “This is a big win for the ‘hood — and a big win for Chicago,” Blackwell, 41, told the Chicago Sun-Times Monday. Blackwell said business in booming, and he needs to grow more flowers to meet demand he expects in 2026. He said he wants to buy more vacant lots from the Cook County Land Bank to expand flower operations. This year, his group converted three lots on the West Side, he said.
Blackwell created Chicago Eco House to help curb violence in the city. The flower shop Southside Blooms opened in 2020 at the nonprofit’s headquarters at 6439 S. Peoria St. The shop moved the following year to its location on Morgan Street. Blackwell has been profiled several times in the Sun-Times.
In 2021, Blackwell told the paper that providing work to youth is one way to curb violence. “It’s a national problem that we’re talking about, and we feel like we have … at least an economic solution that can help take a big chunk out of that problem,” he told the Sun-Times then.
His organization provides 10-week trainings for some people in the Cook County Juvenile Probation program, he said then. Some of those trainees are hired at $15 an hour as floral assistants, greeting card assistants or farm assistants, he said.
“A lot of the youth that we work with are kids who are coming off the streets,” Blackwell said then.
In 2022, “The Ellen Show” gifted $10,000 to Southside Blooms, which was featured on the show.
Eco House had 10 acres of flower farms across the city in 2023. The group even had beehives to make beeswax for natural candles. Blackwell grew up on Madison, Wisconsin, volunteered in the U.S. Peace Corps in Thailand, then enrolled in 2011 in a school in west suburban Chicago to study ministry. He later tutored at an Englewood high school, according to his online biography.
Blackwell said he was “absolutely stunned” when he learned he won CNN’s annual award.
“We had a lot of stiff competition,” he said Monday. Blackwell said he is happy the award is focusing attention on a positive effort in the city. “There’s a lot of good things going on in the city that sometimes get drowned out,” he said. CNN said the award aims to honor “everyday people who are making extraordinary contributions to help improve the lives of others.”
Reclaiming Chicago Project Breaks Ground On New Homes
By Lourdes Duarte, WGN Chicago | August 1st, 2025 (Click Here For Original Article and To See the Video Broadcast)
CHICAGO — A step was taken Friday to address the lack of affordable housing in the Chicago area.
Crews broke ground on the Reclaiming Chicago project that will deliver 10 new homes in the next six months.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle touted the initiative led by the Hope Center Foundation and Cook County Land Bank Authority. In the majority of the cases, the land bank provides the vacant lots. Crews use that land to build 1,600-square foot homes worth an estimated $230,000 dollars in the Roseland neighborhood.
So far, Reclaiming Chicago has completed 59 homes. Another 71 homes make up the next phase to begin construction not just in Roseland but Back of the Yards and North Lawndale..
Ground Broken On More South Side Lots To Be Turned Into Homes For Reclaiming Chicago Initiative
By Violet Miller, Chicago Sun-Times | August 1st, 2025 (Click Here For Original Article)
The community-led campaign has drawn $40 million in support from public and private lenders with the goal of building 2,000 homes on the South and West sides.
James Williams Jr. and his wife got married last year, and within 12 months had the keys to their first home — something he never imagined was possible.
“My mother and father never owned a home, so I had no reference,” Williams said. “It was something I could never dream of.”
The effort was part of the community-led Reclaiming Chicago campaign, which has drawn $40 million from the city of Chicago, the state and private lenders with the goal of building 2,000 homes on the South and West sides. It’s led by the civic coalition United Power for Action and Justice.
More than 80 homes were finished last year as part of the first phase, and 11 have been finished since December.
The organizations involved broke ground Friday on 10 more lots in Roseland. That’s ahead of another 50 in a six-block radius that will be split between the spring and fall of next year. Several of the Cook County Land Bank lots were on the same block where homes were finished late last year.
The group has focused on areas with empty lots, which tend to be areas where there hasn’t been much new housing built in decades, according to Shenita Muse, executive director of the Hope Center Foundation, a coalition member.
“It is putting a belief system into them that homeownership, generational wealth and equity building are attainable to them,” Muse told the Sun-Times.
The homes cost around $230,000, though they come with a $50,000 down payment assistance grant, according to Muse. The group’s waiting list sits at 400 people, who are going through financial education that helps prep to be first-time homeowners.
Two issues still face the group: securing more funding and maintaining taxes for the new homeowners and those in homes around them.
Escrow accounts were set up for the new homeowners’ first-year tax bills, and Muse said she’s hopeful an ongoing dialogue with Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s office will help keep the neighborhood’s current residents from seeing drastic property tax increases.
“We are not developers; we are community builders,” Muse said. “At the end of the day that’s what we’re looking for.”
The effort goes beyond just the homes. Williams was connected to the Hope Center Foundation through his church — specifically former state senator and current pastor James Meeks, one of the Hope Center’s founders — but had lived in the area prior.
Williams has been trying to get the city to help repair the neighborhood’s alleys after getting it to remove some graffiti. He said he hopes to see the program fill the rest of the empty lots on his block.
“You can see the neighborhood has been down for a long time,” he said. “But if they keep adding, it brings it up. I just pray and hope they don’t forget about this neighborhood. I know they started it. They need to complete it.”
Humboldt Park’s 1st Factory-Built Homes Are Complete, And More Are Coming
By Ariel Parrella-Aureli, Block Club Chicago | July 7th, 2025 (Click Here For Original Article)
Modular house company Inherent Homes is also building six single-family homes and one two-flat building on vacant Humboldt Park land in partnership with the city.
HUMBOLDT PARK — Two plots of vacant land in Humboldt Park have been transformed into houses, the first set of completed factory-built homes for the neighborhood under a pilot program.
The homes at 822-824 N. Homan Ave. were built by Inherent Homes, a modular home company with a factory in North Lawndale that’s one of the few developers building affordable homes and offering home ownership pathways in the city. The Humboldt Park houses are part of a $12 million Cook County pilot program that’s bringing 12 homes to the neighborhood this year.
The initiative, a partnership between Inherent, the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development and the Cook County Land Bank Authority, will ultimately create 120 homes in Cook County over the next few years. People who earn up to 120 percent of the county’s median income are eligible for the program, according to the program website.
Sarah and Melissa, who didn’t want to share their last names for privacy reasons, are two of the first soon-to-be homeowners for one of the West Humboldt Park homes that’s nearly complete.
“We came across one of these units and it seemed almost too good to be true, and then we saw it in person, and then it got really, really real really quickly,” Melissa told Block Club at the ribbon-cutting event for the Humboldt Park homes last week.
The couple live in Uptown and were looking for an affordable home closer to Melissa’s job, as she works as a welder in Garfield Park. Having a home near her work and getting financial assistance to buy one still feels “unreal,” they said.
“All the collaboration between the different agencies is amazing, but it’s also anxiety-inducing. But it seems like it’s gonna happen, so we’re really excited,” Sarah said.
Each three-bedroom home sells for about $350,000 and includes $20,000 in down payment assistance through the Land Bank Authority, making it affordable as the area fights gentrification. Nearby houses for sale are going for $525,000-$800,000.
The homes have modern smart appliances, two bathrooms, two living rooms and amenities like in-unit washer and dryer, parking and a yard — because everyone deserves a new, upscale home, no matter their income, said Inherent founder Tim Swanson.
“If we take all our civic land and make it available for just our everyday Chicagoan, we can move the needle,” Swanson said. “If we replace vacant lands with housing, we have families that are going to schools, we have a tax basis that supports more things … a lot of this has been leveraging our banking partners, nonprofits like the Chicago Community Trust and government officials.”
Cook County officials at last week’s ribbon-cutting event called the homes victories for Humboldt Park.
It takes eight weeks for the homes to be built inside the factory, cutting build time in half — if not more — compared to market-rate housing, Swanson said. Another home on a vacant lot in the area is being built conventionally, and it only has its foundation completed, though it’s been under construction since last year, he said.
Inherent is also working to construct a two-flat building and a bungalow that will be built on vacant land as part of the program to increase accessible price points for homeowners, Swanson said.
Swanson sees his company as not only offering attainable home ownership but also giving West Siders needed jobs in the trades, ones they enjoy and that positively impact their community, he said.
“Where our factory is in North Lawndale, we’re like eight blocks away from where the Sears factory was 100 years ago, where they were building the Sears catalog, so there’s something dope about the West Side [building] — remember, we used to do this? Let’s do it again,” he said.
Swanson and his team are working with more families from the neighborhood interested in buying one of the Inherent homes.
The Cook County Modular Home Program builds on Inherent’s success in bringing 10 homes to Humboldt Park under the city’s Building Neighborhoods and Affordable Homes Program for new homeowners, some of which are still being built and sold.
Inherent is building six single-family homes and one two-flat on vacant Humboldt Park land and is working with Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) to bring more homes to vacant lots in Humboldt Park, Swanson and the alderperson said.
Separately, Fuentes has partnered with a small development company that will develop four city-owned vacant lots into affordable housing, and two lots will go to Here To Stay Community Land Trust, another home ownership program aimed at helping low-income Chicagoans stay on the Northwest Side.
KMW Communities, another affordable development firm focusing on bringing housing to the South and West sides, is also building concept homes on vacant West Humboldt Park land selling for $400,000-$700,000, company officials previously told Block Club.