News

By Erin Ivory, WGN-TV  |  August 28th, 2019   (Click here for Original Article)

CHICAGO — The Cook County Land Bank Authority is giving away a mortgage-free next month, with an assist from a pair of local celebrities.

One lucky Chicagoan will receive the keys to the Washington Heights home rehabbed by brothers Anton and Anthony Downing of HGTV’s “Double Down.” It was a perfect pairing for the job, taking place in the same neighborhood where they grew up.

“It means everything to us to get to make a difference in these neighborhoods across the South and West Side,” Anthony Downing said.

The three bedroom home sits on a tree-lined street, and has a newly rehabbed kitchen and hardwood flooring throughout.

It’s the third house the Cook County Land Bank Authority is giving away, and Executive Director Robert Rose says anyone can enter as long as they are over 21, can move in by October and commit to living in the home long-term.

“This giveaway changes lives. There’s no mortgage payment to worry about… the new homeowners have all the equity,” Rose said.

Anyone interested in participating has until September 15 to enter.

By Dennis Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business  |  July 8th, 2019   (Click here for the original article)

A pair of charismatic house-rehabbing twins who have a television show in the works at HGTV are teaming up with the Cook County Land Bank to makeover a house in the city and give it away.

Anton and Anthony Downing, who grew up in the West Chesterfield neighborhood and have been rehabbing homes for a decade, this spring signed a contract to create an HGTV show called “Double Down.” Production hasn’t yet begun, Anthony Downing said. They specialize in instilling stylish new looks into worn-out properties, such as this 1950s home in Pill Hill.

“We like to bring a freshness into the property,” said Anthony Downing who like his twin is also a firefighter, “but repurpose parts of it, like old doors, to keep the character that’s there.” They’ve flipped ten Chicago houses so far­­—none of them land bank properties—and in January, the “Double Down” pilot aired on HGTV’s subsidiary DIY Network. They’re the first semi-celebrities to emerge out of the South Side and south suburban rehab wave that has remade tens of thousands of Chicago-area homes in the past decade.

At a land bank lunchtime event July 9 at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, they’ll unveil plans to rehab a house on the Southwest Side for the land bank’s third annual year-end giveaway of formerly distressed, completely rehabbed home.

“The land bank has a very similar mission to us,” Anthony Downing said. “We want to see the neighborhoods improved through renovation and get people access to owning property so they can build that generational wealth.”

Bridget Gainer, the Cook County Commissioner who chairs the land bank authority, said having the Downings involved will help “get our message out to the people we want to reach,” that is, those who could take on a cosmetic rehab of a budget-priced home in their neighborhood. The Downings, she said, “started out doing it house to house, and they’ve grown into a sophisticated organization.”

While the Downings have handled their own purchases of foreclosures and legal issues, Gainer said they’ll be role models of sorts for the express lane that the land bank provides: it offers properties it has acquired and cleaned of any legal, financial and zoning red tape.  

The Downings and land bank officials won’t disclose the exact location of the house until the Hilton event, but they told Crain’s it’s on the Southwest Side and only needs cosmetic work like a rehabbed kitchen and baths, no structural or roofing work. While the Land Bank  often trades in properties that need structural and other significant work, those typically go to developers with expertise in such work.  There’s also an effort called Homebuyers Direct, whose mission is to get individuals and households to revamp homes in their neighborhoods, for their own use.

Gainer said the full cost of the Downing brothers’ project, which the land bank will pay for, has not yet been estimated. A cosmetic rehab typically runs up to about $50,000, she said. The Downings said they are not yet finished drawing up their plans.

Cook County officials launched the land bank in 2013 to help speed the process of returning casualties of the foreclosure crisis, vacant and derelict properties, to productive use and get them back on the property tax rolls. The Downings’ rehab business predates the land bank; after growing up watching their mother buy and run an investment property near their West Chesterfield home, the brothers started rehabbing properties in 2009, they said. They have recently expanded to new construction, building townhomes on property their mother owns in the Bahamas. 

The Cook County Land Bank is selling the Washington Park National Bank Building in Woodlawn, 6300 S. Cottage Grove Ave., after conducting public listening meetings to see what the community wants from the space.

Whenever possible, older buildings that showcase Chicago’s architectural legacy should be spared from the wrecking ball.

Every Prairie Style home and post-modern office build

By Odette Yousef, WBEZ Chicago  |  July 11th, 2019   (Click here for the original article)

George Porter wistfully remembers the Saturday morning smell of bacon and eggs wafting out of homes on the 6500 block of South Sangamon Street, where he grew up. Neighbors would be outside cutting their grass and sitting on their front porches.

“I … could walk down this street, and about six, seven elders would be like, ‘Son, you hungry?’” Porter said. “‘Here, here you go. Some Kool-Aid? You want pop? Take these bottles to the store and cash them in.’”

Porter, now 50 and no longer living on this block in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, said the street was clean and neighborly. But he said that changed as the original homeowners passed away and left their homes to their children.

“Then, they can’t keep it up [and] end up losing it because of taxes,” he said.

This year, 13 homes on this block alone will be among those listed in Cook County’s biennial tax scavenger sale, which begins Thursday. That means they fell at least three years behind on taxes. The county will offer outside investors the opportunity to purchase their debt, potentially for less than what’s owed. In so doing, the investors become debt collectors and may charge homeowners interest that exceeds 48% over time. If homeowners don’t pay what they owe to the investor and the county, a process known as “redeeming” their taxes, they could, ultimately, lose the property itself.

Historically, the scavenger sale has yielded relatively little money for the county. In 2017, Cook County sought to recover more than $433 million in unpaid taxes through the scavenger sale. Private investors only bought under $12 million of that — less than 3% of the total. But in the last four years, the scavenger sale has presented an entirely different opportunity: a chance for the county to scale up its neighborhood revitalization efforts after the 2008 housing crisis.

“What we’re doing is unprecedented in the history of this sale, and we continue to do this because we think that this is a way for us to be a facilitator with solving blight in the county,” said Robert Rose, executive director of the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA).

Cook County created the CCLBA in 2015 to acquire vacant and abandoned properties. Rose said initially the CCLBA worked with lenders such as Fannie Mae to obtain real estate-owned properties that had been foreclosed. But he said that pipeline has started drying up. So now, the CCLBA is turning to the scavenger sale as its primary mode of property acquisition.

Illinois statute allows the county and the CCLBA to “bid” on properties without putting any money down. Rose said they target concentrated areas with the goal of ultimately acquiring the actual properties. Once the land bank does that, the county has the power to clear the title of any liens and wipe out back taxes. That allows the CCLBA to sell properties to nonprofits and community partners free and clear, and at rock-bottom prices.

Rose said it’s an awkward method for the CCLBA to obtain properties, one filled with bureaucratic red tape. But he said it’s the only way the authority has, for example, been able to go after eight properties on the 6500 block of South Sangamon Street at once. And he says it subverts a tax collection system that has disproportionately stripped wealth from low-income communities of color, all while yielding very little to the county.

“What we’re disrupting is this very cottage industry of acquiring [tax] certificates and then going through other methods to extract money from owners, but never satisfying the tax bill, and ultimately never trying to own the property,” explained Rose.

But some observers say the CCLBA’s strategy has, so far, appeared disorganized.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas criticized how the CCLBA used the 2015 scavenger sale. The Treasurer’s Office conducts the scavenger sale. Pappas noted that the CCLBA is returning nearly two-thirds of the 7,500 tax certificates it took in that sale. For many of those, enough time has passed that the land bank could pursue ownership of the properties themselves. Instead, it has decided to give them up for now and have those properties listed in the 2019 scavenger sale again.

“To the land bank, get your act together here,” Pappas said. “Research this property before you take it; that’s what the tax buyers do. They shouldn’t have any special position here to come take whatever they want without researching it, then come back [and] dump it on the county.”

Rose acknowledged that the land bank has had a learning curve when it comes to using the scavenger sale for its purposes. He noted that the Treasurer’s Office announces which properties will be listed in the scavenger sale only one month before the sale takes place, which is not sufficient time for field inspectors to visit thousands of properties. But Rose said he will not apologize for how aggressive the land bank has been in the scavenger sale.

For starters, Rose said communities are still hurting from the widespread damage of the 2008 housing crisis. Indeed, in 2007, the scavenger sale listed just 4,266 properties. This year, the Treasurer’s Office was preparing to list more than 28,000 — a more than sixfold increase.

Just as important, said Rose, has been the damage wrought by Cook County’s extractive method of collecting unpaid taxes from low-income communities of color.

“When you think about race and when you think about equity, you’re talking about systemic issues,” said Rose. “Right now, we’re a great Band-Aid. We’re a great fix for the symptoms. But as long as there’s a scavenger sale, there’s an issue.”

By Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board  |  April 4th, 2019   (Click here for the original article)

The Cook County Land Bank is selling the Washington Park National Bank Building in Woodlawn, 6300 S. Cottage Grove Ave., after conducting public listening meetings to see what the community wants from the space.

Whenever possible, older buildings that showcase Chicago’s architectural legacy should be spared from the wrecking ball.

Every Prairie Style home and post-modern office building, every brick bungalow and greystone two-flat has value as part of the visual past and present of Chicago.

Though preserving a building that has seen better days can cost millions, it’s often worth it. Also being preserved is our city’s history.

In the case of the former Washington Park National Bank in Woodlawn on the South Side, however, the millions needed to save the building just aren’t there — and have not been for at least a quarter century.

That might explain why a maturing tree is growing out of the roof.

We think it’s time to allow a local developer, DL3 Realty, to put up something new. DL3 wants to raze the crumbling property, now vacant for 25 years, and put up a brand-new building that will include retail and office space, perhaps even another bank.

We say go for it.

It’s understandable that preservation groups and many residents are nostalgic about the bank building and want to save it. It’s a reminder of the community’s glory days, when 63rd and Cottage Grove was a bustling corner of commerce in a thriving middle-class community, not a place where drug dealing openly takes place. 

There is not enough historic significance to this building to justify waiting any longer to find the $10 million to $15 million — at minimum — necessary to make it habitable.

The building is mildly architecturally interesting, but not on any federal, state or local historic registry. And the former longtime owner left a serious mess: a crumbling facade, a basement that floods for reasons that are unclear, that tree growing through the roof and $3.7 million in unpaid property taxes. A skylight over the main lobby has collapsed, letting in rain.

It’s no wonder that the Cook County Land Bank Authority, which bought the property last year, went with DL3 Realty’s proposal. A group that wanted to rehab the building could raise only $6 million.

Newly elected 20th Ward Ald. Jeanette Taylor has said she won’t allow the demolition. For the betterment of her community, she should think again.

As one resident of the neighborhood told the Sun-Times: “At the end of the day, change is good, especially if it’s for the better.”

By Joe Donlon & WGN Investigates  |  December 3rd, 2018   (Click here for the original article)

CHICAGO — Owning a home is considered part of the American dream, but for tens of thousands of people in the Chicago area it has become a nightmare.

It’s not their home that’s the problem; it’s neighbors’ abandoned houses that sit vacant and decaying for years, lowering the surrounding property values in the process. Called “Zombie Houses,” they are often left empty while they’re stuck in a legal limbo.

WGN Investigates what’s being done to bring these properties back from the dead.

In addition to falling into disrepair, such homes can provide easy access for squatters, drug dealers and other criminals. It’s become a real issue in areas of the Roseland neighborhood, where Pastor Glines House of New Life Baptist Church says residents have had enough.

“At night, they hear all kinds of noise and fighting, cursing, and dialects coming left and right so they’re having a problem with that,” Pastor House said.

Driving through the 16th ward, Alderman Toni Foulkes said the problem of abandoned housing is personal.

“When you’re a little girl people tell you, ‘get out of the ghetto,’ and I made it out, went to college,” Ald. Foulkes said. “But, I was homesick, and I came home.”

While Zombie Houses are an issue in parts of Englewood and other areas of her ward, Foulkes said transformation is underway. Businesses, private companies and house flippers are taking advantage of the low prices and rebuilding, street by street.

One organization taking part in this transformation is the Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN), which teaches carpentry and other trades to former convicts, who then use their skills to fix up the vacant homes they acquire.

“So, when you talk about stabilizing blocks like these, it’s important to both do that with those who’ve come directly from the community, but also be able to demonstrate to neighbors who came to us and said, ‘we got to do something about these properties,'” senior organizer Shamar Hempill said.

Others like the Cook County Land Bank are trying to address vacant housing in 13 communities by removing barriers like outstanding taxes and bills, making the property more desirable for developers. The land bank is working one house at a time, according to Executive Director Robert Rose, stabilizing blocks by getting families to move into rehabilitated homes.

“Once they are rehabilitated and the family moves in… That whole block is healthy. That whole neighborhood becomes healthier,” Rose said.

Yet for all the optimism, the reality remains vacant and “Zombie” homes remain an enormous problem.

By Aaron Gettinger, Hyde Park Herald  |  September 26th, 2018   (Click here for the original article)

The Cook County Land Bank is selling the Washington Park National Bank Building in Woodlawn, 6300 S. Cottage Grove Ave., after conducting public listening meetings to see what the community wants from the space.

The Land Bank, a government entity that acquires and sells financially distressed properties, usually tax delinquents at scavenger sales, is seeking requests for proposals on the 35,000-square-foot site, and will choose a buyer based on their plans for development. According to the Land Bank, the public expressed a desire for retail shops, commercial offices, and medical facilities.

The buyer will not be responsible for $3.7 million in unpaid taxes but will be accountable to the proposal they submit and subject to a redevelopment agreement with the Land Bank.

Rob Rose, the Land Bank’s executive director, said the agency is “keenly aware” of concerns about gentrification in Woodlawn. He said the community’s “loud and clear” message was that they did not want a housing development on the site.

“They see this building as a destination,” Rose said, adding that the community wants greater pedestrianization of the intersection as well as connections with the nearby Coleman Branch of the Chicago Public Library, 731 E. 63rd St., and the terminus of the CTA Green Line’s Woodlawn Branch, which is due for a redesign.

The development bids will be considered by a committee, on which a representative for the Woodlawn community will sit. Rose said that, while the Land Bank will consider proposals to take down the building, “our preference is for preservation.” The building was constructed in 1924 and clad in Indiana limestone.

The Land Bank is an independent agency of the county government, with suburban mayors, real estate professionals and bankers on its board chaired by North Side County Commissioner Bridget Gainer. Rose said the Land Bank’s generation of its own revenue allows for flexibility in the communities it serves and nimbleness.

The initial submission date for proposals is Oct. 1; Oct. 31 is the deadline, and the decision will be announced on Dec. 13.