AT HOMEONTHE GREATERWESTSIDE Chicago’s iconic bungalows haven’t aged perfectly
These programs are helping homeowners restore them
By DELANEY NELSON | Special Projects Reporter
In the first third of the 20th century, Chicago’s population more than doubled—and with it, the city’s architecture and housing stock transformed. Developers erected high-rise luxury apartment buildings for the city’s wealthier residents while immigrants and poorer Chicagoans were crowded into blocks of packed tenements. In the middle of the spectrum emerged the bungalow
Between 1910 and 1930, Chicago developers built tens of thousands of bungalows — one-and-a-half story buildings characterized by low-pitched overhanging roofs, a narrow rectangular shape, expansive front windows, front porches, and limestone detailing.
“You had a lot of immigrants and a lot of people crammed into homes that didn’t have ample light or air circulation, bathrooms,
electricity, any of it,” said Carla Bruni, the preservation and resiliency specialist at the Chicago Bungalow Association.
“Bungalows were built in a very affordable way, even though they’re really well-built by today’s standards. You would never build these anymore. They would be so cost prohibitive.”
In their heyday, bungalows were known for being sturdy and efficient to build. Plus, unlike some tenements, they were outfitted with electricity and plumbing. The brick buildings popped up in neighborhoods along the western edge of the city, including parts of what are now Austin and North Lawndale, creating the “Bungalow Belt.” A Chicago bungalow typically has bedrooms on the first floor and an unfinished attic space that could be expanded down the line, once the homeowners had enough cash.
Bungalows, which required a relatively small down payment and low monthly payments, helped foster homeownership
among the city’s middle and lower-middle class. While bungalows “provided Chicago homebuyers of moderate means with extraordinary levels of domestic comfort,” according to the National Register of Historic Places property documentation, Black people were mostly excluded from owning them until the 1950s.
“You’d have every sort of socioeconomic background. You’d have somebody who worked in the meatpacking plants, and maybe his wife would be doing clerical work somewhere, and then they maybe had five kids. And then you’d have a doctor and his wife only living right next to them on a corner lot, because those tended to be bigger bungalows,” Bruni said. “It was really a socioeconomic mix, excluding African American families.”
While the Great Depression severely curtailed bungalow See BUNGALOWS on page B3
Home buying feeling overwhelming or out of reach? These programs want to help
By DELANEY NELSON Special Projects Reporter
Homeownership offers many benefits to individuals, families and the wider community. Owning a home is one way to create generational wealth and invest in your neighborhood. It can create housing stability in a tumultuous rental market and stave off the displacement effects of gentrification.
On the other hand, homeownership is an investment – which means it costs money, whether that money comes from savings, loans, grants or other forms. The good news? There are countless programs on the neighborhood, city, county, state and national level that can help you buy a house and invest in your community
To get you started, we’ve gathered a nonexhaustive list of those programs and the organizations that offer them.
CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY
Home Ownership Made Easy
• Choose to Own allows qualified Housing Choice Voucher and Public Housing families to use its housing subsidy to buy a home and make mortgage payments.
• Down Payment Assistance Program assists first-time home buyers with grants of up to $20,000 to help cover down payments and closing costs.
• The CHA also offers virtual and in-person workshops for prospective homebuyers, Realtors and lenders.
CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
ChiBlockBuilder
• To encourage the purchase and redevelopment of city-owned vacant lots, Chicago has an application portal for selling land with preferred use based on zoning and community plans
• The latest round of land sales opened in October and targets North Lawndale. Lots zoned for affordable housing construction or urban agriculture projects are priced at $1 per lot.
CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING
The Building Neighborhoods and Affordable Homes Program
• BNAH provides eligible buyers with grants to help them purchase a newly constructed singlefamily residential building.
Repair programs
• Home Repair Program gives funding to low-income Chicago homeowners to make necessary repairs (previously called the Roof and Porch Repair Program)
• As of Nov. 1, the Emergency Heating Repair program is open to owner-occupants of oneto-four-unit properties earning less than 80% of the median area income. It offers grants to replace or repair heating systems.
The DOH has a longer list of programs available to homeowners on its website.
NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF CHICAGO
Homebuyer Education Course
• NHS offers virtual and in-person homebuyer education courses led by HUD-certified housing counselors.
• The course covers the basics of budgeting, credit, shopping for a home, closing on a home and more.
Neighborhood Lending Services
• NLS is the largest non-profit licensed mortgage lender in Illinois.
• The lender offers purchase and purchase with rehab loans, including up to 100% financing for qualified borrowers. Qualification is not based solely on credit score.
• NLS also offers refinancing and home improvement loans, as well as down payment assistance.
NHS also provides real estate services to help you search for and buy a home.
COOK COUNTY BUREAU OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Down Payment Assistance Program
• Earlier this year, the county opened a $3 million down payment assistance pilot program for applications.
• As of Oct. 29, the initial investment for the program was fully allocated, but the county is seeking additional funding.
HOUSING AUTHORITY OF COOK COUNTY
Homeownership Program
• The homeownership program helps eligible first-time homebuyers afford a mortgage by providing vouchers that cover a portion of monthly mortgage payments.
ILLINOIS HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY
Home Repair and Community Revitalization Programs
• The Home Repair and Accessibility Program helps low- and very low-income homeowners pay for repairs related to safety, health and accessibility in their homes. Eligible homeowners (total household income must be at or below 80% of the area median income) may receive up to $45,000 in the form of a five- or three-year forgivable loan to fund repairs. Grants are administered by city/ town-level grantees.
Homeownership Counseling and Mortgages
• The IHDA funds a network of housing counselors across the state.
• The agency also offers affordable mortgages that require borrowers to take a homeownership course, as well as grants and loans for home down payments.
• You can learn more at ihdamortgage.org/ homebuyers.
Follow us each month in print and at https://www.austinweeklynews.com/ at-home/, where you’ll find additional resources and useful information.
BUNGALOWS
Continued from page B1
construction, more than 80,000 remain standing in Chicago, accounting for one-third of the city’s single-family housing stock.
The Chicago Bungalow Association was established in 2000 by Mayor Richard M. Daley to preserve the existing bungalow housing stock and prevent further demolition. The goal, Bruni said, was to save this relatively affordable housing type. Tearing down a durable structure like a bungalow is not only an affront to Chicago’s iconic architecture, but also contributes to landfill waste — and whatever a developer builds in its place would be more expensive.
The organization now serves all owners of homes older than 50 years and connects homeowners with resources to maintain their home, including webinars, a community social media forum and a database of referrals for contractors that can help with roofing, insulation, water systems, exteriors and more. About 1,000 members of the CBA live in Austin, Bruni said.
“A lot of people have fought really, really hard over decades to stay in their homes,” Bruni said. “With taxes going up, with insurance, utilities going up with repairs that get out of control, because it’s so hard to find the money to maintain your home, a lot of people are in very precarious situations. So we try to figure out ways through helping people understand how to repair things, what you might be able to do yourself.”
Owners of bungalows and other older homes
often have high electric, gas and water bills — a challenge CBA is addressing through its Home Energy Savings Program. In partnership with ComEd, Nicor Gas, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, CBA provides free home energy services and improvements, including a free assessment to identify energy use. The goal is to help homeowners seal and weatherize their homes, which makes the structure more energy efficient and helps to lower energy bills. The organization has conducted thousands of full air sealing insulations, with a typical error 40% to 50%, meaning more of the cooled air is circulated.
Barbara Seales, who moved into her Austin/West Humboldt Park-area bungalow mor than two decades ago, participated in the energy savings program. Contractors installed insulation under her porch and in her walls and attic, and installed an eco-friendly thermostat. Seales said she was pleased with the insulation process and has seen cost savings.
“Once I heard about this opportunity from a friend to get the insulation done, I followed up on it right away. Over time the house gets kind of airy—you get cracks and it settles and
The Bungalow Belt
An estimated 80,000 bungalows make up “The Bungalow Belt,” stretching along the outskirts of Chicago in a crescent shape between the suburbs and what used to be the industrial neighborhoods outside the Loop.
everything. So it was kind of airy, and I wanted it to be warmer. I’m one of the fortunate ones.
My enclosed back porch is heated, but it was still very airy in the winter time,” Seales said. “I love my enclosed back porch now, because I can go out there and enjoy it in the winter. It’s not just a seasonal part of the house.”
While energy efficiency upgrades can be helpful to owners of old homes, these improvements are not accessible if a home needs structural repairs like fixing a leaky roof. CBA has teamed up with social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson on unBlocked Englewood, an arts-driven community redevelopment project providing Englewood residents with funds to repair and beautify their homes.
One of the goals, Johnson said, is to use investment to address and counteract the historic disinvestment in Black neighborhoods that has made it difficult for residents to afford repairs for their homes. Of the 24 homes on the block that
the project is targeting, half have successfully undergone repairs, including addressing roofing, plumbing, and electrical problems.
unBlocked Inglewood isn’t just about repairing homes, Johnson said. It also encourages community engagement. She added that she hopes the project inspires city planners, policymakers and local government officials to address historic harms more directly and creatively
“If it were not for those homeowners, our neighborhood would be suffering even more. It is because of those owner occupied homeowners [that] we actually have a foundation to even consider building from,” Johnson said. “We have to address helping existing homeowners in Black neighborhoods because we want them to remain homeowners and pay property taxes and help support the public amenities in the neighborhood, and that can only happen if people can afford to live in the homes that they have, and they can do so safely.”
We’ve reached the end of “At Home on the Greater West Side”
Here’s what we learned
By DELANEY NELSON Special Projects Reporter
Last November, Austin Weekly News launched a new project called “At Home on the Greater West Side.” Our goal was to demystify the homebuying process, specifically for residents of Austin, West Garfield Park and North Lawndale and the surrounding suburbs.
Now, a year later, we’re wrapping up the series. In many ways, AWN learned along with its readers, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s that the journey to homeownership isn’t exactly easy But that doesn’t mean you — yes you! — can’t achieve it.
A 4-STEP HOME BUYING PROCESS RECAP
1. Get realistic and take a class
Realtor Camella Sutton tells her clients to be realistic about what they can afford, and to save up for the “what-ifs”: “Knowing what’s out there is big, and [so is] knowing what you can and can’t afford,” she said. “What are you willing to cut back on? What sacrifices are you willing to make to get to the point of homeownership?”
It might seem obvious, but you need a combination of loans and savings to buy a home. Experts suggest building up your credit score as much as possible and being realistic about how much you need to save for a downpayment on your ideal home. Real estate agents, lenders and community organizations can all help you with this early planning stage.
Many experts recommend HUD-certified homeownership courses to first-time buyers. We spoke with the folks at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago about their class, but there are tons of other options. HUD also has an online tool to search for housing counselors or courses based on your location and needs.
2. Find a lender and a real estate agent
Two primary people who will help make buying a home possible: A real estate agent and a lender. Real estate agents help buyers look at homes, make an offer and close on a home. Lenders deal with the financial side of things, pre-approving and approving buyers for a mortgage to buy property.
Before looking at properties, you’ll want to be preapproved for a mortgage. For this reason, many prospective buyers look for a lender first, work with them for their preapproval, and then find an agent, but you can pick an agent first. Lenders look at factors including income, savings and credit history to decide how much they would let you borrow to buy a home. You may want to shop around and get the opinion — and preapproval — of several lenders. Knowing how big of a mortgage you can get will help narrow your home search.
(Want to know more about lending and how to get a mortgage? Check out our guide at: https://ow.ly/Py6T50U2nvF Want to know more about finding the right agent and what their job entails? Read our Q&A with three Chicago-area real estate agents at https://ow.ly/6AGu50U2nxT.)
3. Look at homes, make an offer and close
This is the part of the process that likely comes to mind when you think about buying a house. With help from a real estate agent, prospective buyers tour properties, make offers and go through closing procedures that include getting a home inspection and meeting with a lawyer to finalize the terms of the sale.
Prospective buyers should make sure they budget for extra costs outside of a mortgage and downpayment. That includes closing costs, property taxes, home insurance and mortgage insurance, HOA fees, repairs, maintenance, renovations and more.
resource for West Siders who are interested in homeownership. But if the whole thing still sounds intimidating and impossibly out of reach, the good news is that there are countless community, city, county, state and national resources to help people like you become homeowners.
AWN is even hosting its own series of educational homeownership events. The final event “Before you buy, do these things,” will be Sunday, Nov. 24 at 2 p.m. at 1359 S. Kildare Ave., Chicago.
For more opportunities for first-time homeowners and home buyer education, check out the:
- Neighborhood Housing Service
- Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America
- Cook County Land Bank Authority’s Homebuyer Direct program
4. Complete renovations and repairs, and move in
Not all homes are move-in ready. A thorough home inspection before closing on the property can help buyers assess what work needs to be done on a property
After moving in, homeownership costs don’t end at mortgage and insurance payments. Treat your home like the major investment it is: experts say it is a good plan to keep
- Chicago’s Building Neighborhoods and Affordable Homes project
In 12 months and over 30 stories, AWN spoke with countless real estate agents, local homeowners and housing experts about issues like saving for a mortgage, strengthening your credit, first time homebuyer programs and resources and the benefits of homeownership.
It was our goal to make this project accessible to as many people as possible. So in addition to traditionally reported pieces and features of community members, we also created graphics, explainers, glossaries and resource lists. We hope that even a small piece of this project has helped homeowners or prospective buyers on the West Side make a commitment to investing in themselves and their community through buying a home.
1%-4% of the home’s total cost in reserve in case of an unexpected emergency. Regular maintenance of gutters, roof, appliances, plumbing and HVAC systems will also keep your property value up and ensure you get the most out of your investment.
For more about what to do once you become a homeowner, read our guide on what’s next. We have also written a need-to-know guide on Illinois and Cook County property taxes.