CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Tenants of a 26-unit affordable housing apartment building in the Humboldt Park neighborhood are fighting the landlord’s decision not to renew the Section 8 contract with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Tenants, families, elected officials, and community leaders gathered Wednesday outside the courtyard building at 2815 West Division and demanded that property owner, Amir Syed re-sign the affordable housing contract with HUD or abide by state law and sell to an affordable housing developer of the tenant’s choice.
Carmen Flores Ransom said she was displaced before by gentrification.
“When my parents came her from Puerto Rico we lived in Lincoln Park. It was called Urban Renewal, which was really urban removal," she said.
She said an entire community of working-class Puerto Ricans were pushed out of Lincoln Park.
State Representative Delia Ramirez stood with the tenants.
“This is not just about one building,” she said. “This is not just about tenants wanting to be able to stay in their neighborhood. This is about people who have been pushed out from Lincoln Park, from Wicker Park, from Logan Square and now they’re being pushed out of Humboldt Park and we are saying enough is enough.”
She said a dozen other buildings in the city that are currently affordable housing are also up for renewal with HUD and developers are anxious to turn them into luxury condos.
Alderman Roberto Maldonado is also standing with the tenants.
“We cannot afford to lose one single unit of affordable housing,” he said.
Amir Syed is ending the Section 8 contract with HUD in order to convert the building into market-rate units. Syed decision is contributing to the gentrification currently taking place in Humboldt Park that is displacing low-income families of color who have called the neighborhood home for decades.
“The tenants of 2815 W. Division refuse to quietly accept this cruel displacement of our families in the name of profit,” said Andriana Vera, one of the women representing the Tenant Association. “In his move to convert the building into market rate units, Mr. Syed has made it clear that he does not care about the well-being of the people who already live here - seniors, children, and working class families primarily of Puerto Rican heritage.”
Syed has also refused to make needed repairs to the building, requested by the tenants now residing there, and is refusing to make those repairs until he turns the building into market rate housing.
State law allows the forced sale of the building to an affordable housing developer.
Maldonado said there’s one lined up if the owner doesn’t do the right thing.
And he said the landlord is considering renewal with HUD.
“The 2815 W. Division Tenant Association is now interviewing developers who believe in and understand the need for affordable housing,” said Emily Coffey, Housing Justice attorney at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law who is representing the tenants in their search. “These residents are the very people who have helped make Humboldt Park the vibrant community that it is, which makes it especially unjust that they are being pushed out of their neighborhood at a time when our city desperately needs more affordable housing options, not less.”